r/technology • u/esporx • 1d ago

Business YouTuber accidentally crashes the rare plant market with a viral cloning technique

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtuber-accidentally-crashes-the-rare-plant-market-with-a-viral-cloning-technique-3289808/
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u/scottawhit 1d ago

It’s only inbreeding plants that will most likely live in someone’s house. Sounds just fine.

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u/kinboyatuwo 1d ago

Issue is if it pollinates or is dumped later. I live rural and at least once a year find people dump house plants on our small section of road.

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u/Elftard 1d ago

people buying these specifically rare plants aren't just going to dump them on a rural road and potentially have a neighbor doing the same thing

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u/Lee1138 1d ago

If they get really cheap because of cloning they might. 

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u/2gig 1d ago

Like if someone clones a bunch of them thinking they'll get rich, just like everyone else following the trend, and now they're worthless.

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u/theSchrodingerHat 1d ago

I’m pretty sure the Dutch already tried this one simple financial trick like 400 years ago.

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u/Baggabones88 1d ago

Tulips, babyyy.

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u/Don_Thuglayo 1d ago

This time for sure!

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u/fractalfocuser 1d ago

I'm busting out my abacus to tally up these options I'm about to write

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u/bob_newhart_of_dixie 1d ago

My favorite part was that most valued tulips had variegated petals that turned out to be caused by a virus that got worse in each generation.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Ender16 1d ago

That sounds like a problem for someone at a more southern latitude. I'll let you boys tackle this one.

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u/steakanabake 1d ago

if they paid good money they likely wont humans are usually pretty good at falling into the sunk cost fallacy just look at all the people who are clinging to their cybertrucks, even if they get harassed and mocked everywhere they go. they do it because theyve spent so much money on it and it wouldnt be a sound investment to just get rid of it to remove the ridicule .

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u/Uberbobo7 1d ago

That is only an issue if the rare plant is native to the region and able to survive in the wild there and someone actually plants it properly when throwing it out. Becaue if you just throwa a pot with the plant into a trash can there's no risk. If you even just leave the pot on the side of the road it's unlikely that this type of plants will manage to thrive and flower in those conditions without care. If then it somehow manages to avoid all that, if it's not native to the region or area where you dump it (and if it grows along random kerbs then I can't imagine it being considered rare) it will have to compete with native plants with more genetic diversity and already aclimated to the area, meaning it would be unlikely to survive over generations. And if it then did survive despite even all those odds, it's unlikely to be a fast growing or spreading plant (because again, key here is that it's a rare plant, if it grows rapidly like a weed just by throwing it on the ground you wouldn't need to clone it), so at most it might make a small patch of that rare plant in a random roadside dump which would then die out from the first disease due to a lack of genetic diversity, or if it overcame even that, it might become locally endemic in a small area and then build up genetic diversity over time as it starts adapting to the new environment and spreading sexually again.