Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
More live blogging from The Aspen Environment Forum, sponsored by the National Geographic and the Aspen Institute. Panelist include: Brian Keane, Amory Lovins, Will Wynn, with moderator Jack Riggs. Brian: Each one of us can and must be part of the energy efficient solution. It is the small little simple things that we do everyday…
Read More “Why is it so hard to achieve Energy Efficiency?” »
Climate change is the ultimate threat multiplier that will make other problems such as agricultural productivity worse. This is one of the conclusions at a panel called “Trusting Climate Science” here at the Aspen Environment Forum, sponsored by the National Geographic and the Aspen Institute. I am experimenting with liveblogging from the meeting. Lets see…
Read More “Bridges to Sustainability: People, Planet, Possibility” »
SeedQuest – Central information website for the global seed industry FAO publication: Induced Plant Mutations in the Genomics Era Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)Rome, 2009 Preface The year 2008 marks the 80th anniversary of mutation induction in plants. The application of mutation techniques, i.e. Gamma-rays and other physical and chemical…
Read More “All you wanted to know about induced mutations in crop breeding” »
ACT FOR FREEDOM NOW!: 2 GM Maize trials trashed in Catalonia, Spain Today, 12th July 2010, dozens of people came together to sabotage two experimental GM Maize trials belonging to Syngenta, located in the municipality of Torroella de Montgrí (Baix Empordà, Girona, Catalunya). They explain why: … GM agriculture makes it impossible to develop and…
Read More “People who destroy scientific experiments on GM maize in Spain explain why.” »
Clearly, transparency is critical but how much does the source of funding matter if it is fully disclosed? Among the scientific community, government funded research is generally considered trustworthy and as a benefit for the public good. Still, that view is not universal. I have been accused of “taking government funding” for my research (which…
Tasmania fumes over media misconduct – On Line Opinion – 7/7/2010 Scaremongering on shoddy ABC TV program Australian Story about supposedly “GM trees” has been dissected at On-line opinion. A few snippets from Online Opinion are given below Tasmania fumes over media misconduct Mark Pointer
For the Grow your Own Bakeoff, a blogging event that celebrates the foods we grow or raise ourselves and the dishes we make using our homegrown products, I baked a Swiss chard-Gruyere pie. Here is the recipe: First, gather as many ingredients as you can from your garden. In our garden, I found multi-colored swiss…
Superman had the yellow sun of earth, spiderman had a radioactive spider-bite, but what about superweeds, where does their super power (surviving application of Round-up/glyphosate) come from?
To understand how superweeds survive, we first have to understand why normal weeds (the Jimmy Olsens and Lois Lanes of the plant world) die. <– last superhero reference of this post I promise.
Written by James Schnable Popped corn Photo: D3 San Francisco, flickr (click to see photo in original context Popping corn, or anything else, all comes down to pressure. Pop-corn has a particularly impermeable pericarp (the corn kernel’s shell), so as it is heated, the water inside the kernel vaporizes into steam and the starch turns…