How do academics make scientific discoveries if the results are public?
Government, industry, and private patronage. People want better crops, they’ll fund and make contests for 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.
Sounds like it's ripe for AI automation. Need less of this nonsense about restricting access because "effort should be rewarded with exclusivity".
[0] https://twitter.com/DouglasYaoDY/status/2070904914050797582 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48706690