A BERRY HAPPY ACCIDENT
The word ‘hybrid’ can bring with it some negative connotations when it comes to food crops. It conjures up images of some Frankenstein’s monster of a plant, perhaps with a dash of genetic modification, all carried out by an anonymous corporate monolith more interested in marketing and profit than taste and flavour.
But for thousands of years, farmers and gardeners have been manipulating and interfering with nature, from the earliest practices of saving only seeds from favoured plants to the present situation where universities and organisations engage in extensive and highly complex plant breeding programmes. The results have undoubtedly changed the face of gardening and fruit production – if you only had the option of planting strawberry varieties from the 1800s, you’d
