Cracker Wheat?

British (who else?) scientists say that they've cracked the genetic code for wheat, helped by Ian Botham and that really large shredded wheat off the telly.

Boffins from the University of Liverpool say that they were "just passing" Elstree studios one day when Ian Botham offered them the 14 foot tall shredded wheat in exchange for a lift home as his feet were killing him.

Cracking the human genome took fifteen years, but the scholarly Scousers took only a year to crack the wheat genome despite it being five times more complicated. Most of their work was done during Liverpool home games, so there was nothing to distract them, they said:

Genome breakthrough heralds new dawn for agriculture

Fifty pound/tonne inside five years?



A British scientist in Liverpool