Boeing offers an even more striking instance of cross-fertilisation between the commercial and military sectors.

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ABB, a Swiss-Swedish engineering conglomerate, has based its entire strategy on the cross-fertilisation of ideas among employees from different countries.

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Cross-fertilisation between cultures and religions did, of course, take place, often despite the efforts of secular and religious leaders to stop it, or to ensure that influence only flowed one way.

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Yet, as the editors of this ambitious history point out in their introduction, neither such gastronomic cross-fertilisation nor the vaunted green revolution of the late 20th century has succeeded in eradicating malnutrition and starvation from many countries.

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This means that Dr Meredith's method can reach back into the distant past, and catch a glimpse of the act of cross-fertilisation between two different varieties of grapevine that created the strain that the cuttings have perpetuated.

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