By the end of the 1980s, the human race could grow golf course greens in the middle of a desert, breed bell peppers to look like chocolate, and raise pumpkins that weigh hundreds of pounds. But all that amassed knowledge wasn’t telling graduate student Hannes de Lange, then at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, how to grow the plant he wanted to study for his dissertation—or even how to get the seeds to sprout.
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