Quote:
Originally Posted by (E)
Regarding the speed of development. In modern selective breeding the speed of change is quite high. Admittedly there are lots of techniques that rely on modern equipment. Magic may replace them or not, personal world building decision there. Personally I would say not.
Anyway back to the speed of change. Chickens being the most extreme example have 800% more meat in their breastfeeding fillet than 40 years ago. The rate of change for their growth rate is 1 day faster for every year of breeding.
The genetics of the last Rams I bought for my farm are measured against the 1987 standard and cover some 50 or so characteristics and are financially weighted. In 28 years the improvement is 187% and thus is in an 800 dollar ram not an 8000 dollar one.
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And that's the sort of change that just a TL8ish UNDERSTANDING of genetics and inheritance could allow (which in my mind would mark them as a TL 0+8), which is pretty impressive.
What I was saying could not be done is some of the more freakish modifications relying on bombaring seeds with gold nanoparticles laced in genetic cutoffs or crispr-cas9 stuff, getting goats to have spider silk in their milk, golden rice, winter wheat, and other really cool 'full on genetic engineering' stuff.
In theory our ancestors could have brought about our current level of selective breeding pretty much anywhere along the line if they just had the understanding of genetics, inheritance, statistics, and measurement we have today (Oh, and if being able to wipe out a whole strain of goats because they are developing features you don't like would not cripple the farm/country- which comes with relative prosperity).