Pining to evolve. Many people in Australia, New Zealand, Chile and South Africa will be familiar with tree plantations of Pinus radiate (Monterey or Radiata pine) throughout the rural landscape. The genes of Pinus radiate have been one of the most selected gene pools of trees on the planet. A native of western USA, it has been planted on more than 4 million hectares around the world. Tree breeding programs have been undertaken now for many decades to select desirable timber characteristics including straight timber grain, high growth rates and small branch size. But the bad news is the native population of 8,500 hectares of pine trees on Monterey Island near California is currently threatened with extinction and a fungal disease called pitch canker is putting the native populations at further risk. Strange, since the native pine trees still have the widest range of genes for the whole species, and since scientists are combing the world for native gene pools to use in breeding programs because of their greater gene pool.
Editorial Comment: All of this brings to light a weakness which has been in the evolutionist’s basic argument since the days of Darwin. Domestic selection, even over many decades, has never enhanced genetic diversity. Darwin was wrong to conclude that domestic selection was like a natural selection process that resulted in the evolution of new life forms. All known cases of increased specialisation due to selection have only led to devolution and a reduction in genetic information from the original kind. Nothing has evolved. Our Monterey pine selection has only decreased the pine trees gene pool as we sought to increase specialisation in the types of trees we have bred.
Natural selection works in the same way. Pine trees, pumpkins and petunias are reproducing after their own kind just as the Bible says God created them to. Evolutionary science is completely barking up the wrong tree when it concludes natural selection is an uphill process! (Ref. botany, forestry)
Source: The Mexican Island Populations of Pinus Radiata: An International Expedition and ongoing Collaboration for Genetic Conservation By D.L. Rogers, J.J. Vargas Hernández, A.C. Matheson, and J.J. Guerra Santos (2002) Forest Genetic Resources No. 30. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
29th August 2007