Farmer, marketer at odds over sales of white nectarines • Hacker News Board

Re: Farmer, marketer at odds over sales of white nectarines

#141

Post by taejo » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:46 PM UTC

skeledrew wrote: post #124

cyberax wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. That's what is happening. The contest is called "market" and "the people" reward competitors by paying them. Patents are used to enforce the rules so that competitors don't cheat. Selective breeding requires sometimes _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work. This is not a good fit for academia and even worse fit for government programs.

> _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work Sounds like it's ripe for AI automation. Need less of this nonsense about restricting access because "effort should be rewarded with exclusivity".

How do you propose to use AI to grow fruit trees faster?

Re: Farmer, marketer at odds over sales of white nectarines

#142

Post by skeledrew » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

taejo wrote: post #141

skeledrew wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work Sounds like it's ripe for AI automation. Need less of this nonsense about restricting access because "effort should be rewarded with exclusivity".

How do you propose to use AI to grow fruit trees faster?

Not grow faster, but to reduce the R&D effort in increasing yield quality and quantity, similar to what this guy[0] did in his garage. And to directly optimize the production itself, like automatically managing FarmBots[1] at the family and community level. Entire plant food pipeline becomes essentially free, and similar can be done re animal food as well.

[0] https://twitter.com/DouglasYaoDY/status/2070904914050797582 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48706690

[1] https://farm.bot/

Re: Farmer, marketer at odds over sales of white nectarines

#143

Post by triceratops » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

Suppafly wrote: post #137

triceratops wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone grows a new tree from seeds after buying your fruit, their trees will take several years to bear fruit right? Works almost like a patent anyway. (I don't know fruit growing well so maybe that's not true)

You could graft a young tree to a mature one to decrease the time to market.

Again, not an expert, but I believe you need to graft a cutting from a tree that already bears fruit onto rootstock. Only the inventor of the new seed variety would have a fruiting tree.

Re: Farmer, marketer at odds over sales of white nectarines

#144

Post by Suppafly » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 2:14 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #143

Suppafly wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could graft a young tree to a mature one to decrease the time to market.

Again, not an expert, but I believe you need to graft a cutting from a tree that already bears fruit onto rootstock. Only the inventor of the new seed variety would have a fruiting tree.

You graft a bit from a small tree, to a much more mature rootstock, so the time to market is a lot of less than trying to grow a small tree from start. So like 1-2 years instead of 10+ years. Yes, you still need to get the scion from someone that has them because apples don't breed true, the only true one is the original that all the others are grafted off of.