Scientific plant breeding, 1920s

Humans have been manipulating plant species for nearly as long as we’ve grown them, but it wasn’t until early-20th-century scientists discovered a forgotten 1866 paper by the Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel that we figured out how plant breeding—and, later on, human genetics—worked.

Colben Mae L. Solomon


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/innovations-list/309536/#sthash.H3HjsaJ4.dpuf