I have been working on understanding this study because they analyzing some qualities beyond yield, and there is tons of data… but if you have already done the work to understand all the abbreviations and what is going on, it would be super helpful if you could make a little screenshare summary explaining this graph … I already tried that with my husband but didn’t get that far 
It’s possible I’ve spent too much time on books re: this topic and less on peer reviewed studies, so I’m happy to change that starting now.
In the meantime I have a few comments on what I’ve gone through so far.
I’m convinced that commercial hybrids are higher yielding than landraces overall, but I’m not quite convinced they’ll be higher yielding in challenging conditions. I’ve read too much other stuff to overturn that one so far, but I plan to keep digging.
The definition of Heterosis is: “the tendency of a crossbred individual to show qualities superior to those of both parents”
‘qualities superior’ is such a subjective term. In most cases that are written by people associated with modern breeding, there is an extreme focus on yield/productivity, to the exclusion of everything else. In the graph above they analyze quite a few qualities that go beyond yield, but I don’t see any of them have anything to do with ‘superior qualities’ according to a consumer (grinding qualities, disease resistance, flavor). In fact the obsession with productivity in wheat has arguably made it much less healthy/digestible (high gluten showing up as gluten intolerance in consumers). The higher the yield, the cheaper, the more we eat, the less healthy we are.
Landraces are farmer grown and selected, and farmers care about different things than industry, so it makes sense that the selection process for “superior qualities” is different. It’s possible modern studies/industry is comparing apples to oranges and calling them all apples.
I want to leave a few relevant books here that talk in depth about these issues,
Restoring Heritage Grains which in the first few chapters talks in depth about the differences between modern and ancient wheats. Interesting even if you aren’t interested in growing wheat (I’m not).
Shattering: Food Politics and the loss of genetic diversity.. This book goes into depth on what the effect of introducing modern hybrids was on communities around the world. Makes the case that hybrids are more like Holsteins cows: High yielders, but without corresponding high inputs they yield less (or die). This phenomenon caused a widening income gap for the farmers that bought into them: The farmers that could afford the irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticides did get much higher yields and got richer. The farmers that had no access to credit had lower yields than before because they could not afford the corresponding inputs needed to get the higher yields. I think that the resources posted here dispute that… so this is the place I need to fill in with more information.
Darwinian Agriculture: How understanding evolution can improve agriculture. My main takeaway from this book wasthat one set of genetics can not excel in both fertile and non fertile soil. If a plant is more productive in poor soil, it will be less productive in fertilie soil than a plant that has been bred to be very productive in fertile soil. I think this applies here we don’t want to dock certain populations for being low yielding in a fertile environment, when their genetic diversity/heterosis might only shine in a challanging conditions. But again, I think this might conflict with research papers, so I need to go back to both sides of the argument and dig in deeper.
Anyway, thanks Madison for bringing all this up! It’s really interesting to me. I want to make sure the language in the course (especially what’s written because I might have written that) is correct, so if you can point me to something specific in a lesson I will review and edit
