It’s kind of like an extreme form of an ecotype. I’m of two minds about it. It’s certainly fine to have functional categories for many fields (ecology, physiology, etc), but for evolutionary studies I’m a pretty staunch proponents of classifications based on ancestry.
If it wasn’t for all the mess it’d introduce to past literature I’d be for revising as many polyphyletic taxa as possible, including my beloved Brassica
On that topic, how do farmers keep pollinators from cross fertilizing the various cultivars and accidentally breeding cabbage-kale, or something?
I haven’t seen major commercial operations. I’d imagine the fields are just far enough apart? In field trials I believe they put nets over plots so less cross-fertilization happens but that feels too onerous at commercial scale.
I wonder about improving density and yields by splicing in genes that make them incompatible, in effect forcing speciation.
