Biofortified

What makes an organically grown strawberry environmentally friendly?

Strawberries are a particularly pest prone crop. To control these pests, more than 9.5 million pounds of pesticides, including over 3 million pounds of methyl bromide, a toxic ozone-depleting chemical is applied each year. Methyl bromide is also associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer in farm workers. We all like strawberries, but this…

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Thesis

If you read my post “I’m back!” then you know that I recently finished my thesis. Now that it’s all safely submitted and I can’t make any more changes anyway, I wanted to post parts of the thesis for anyone who might be interested. Here, I’ll start off with the abstract, rationale, and organization scheme….

Polycultures in Modern Ag?

Written by Matt DiLeo The September issue of CSA news has a nice (open access) article entitled: “Do polycultures have a role in modern agriculture?” Some key caveats: * While diverse plant mixtures have been associated with many benefits, high biomass yield (i.e. what farmers get paid for) is usually not one of them. * It’s…

Science

I’m back!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post. The last substantial post was Biotechnology: communication and politics back in May! I’m slowly getting back into blogging as time allows, such as with the DNA for dinner, and I have quite a few drafts that need to be polished before publishing, half written posts…

Waiter, there’s DNA in my dinner!

Threadless recently hosted* a t-shirt contest for Jeffery Smith‘s Institute for Responsible Technology: the No GMO t-shirt design challenge (see Karl’s post Vote for talking, not fighting for more details). One of the shirts really struck me: GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. The artist proposes an equation: plants + DNA = death This slogan really makes me wonder…

Food

Evolution of Fruit Shape in Tomato

Written by Matt DiLeo Someday you’ll be able to use CAD software to draw up what you want a plant to look like and the software (containing detailed growth models) will tell you what genetic constructs you need to bring it into the world… But for now we barely understand how natural morphological variation is…

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Vote for talking, not fighting

The T-shirt design and manufacturing site Threadless is hosting a T-shirt design contest, sponsored by Jeffrey Smith – to design and vote for an anti-genetic engineering shirt that will eventually be produced to support his organization. However, the theme of this contest is “Food Fight”, and if the contest entries are any indication of what…

Commentary

What would Rachel Carson say about genetically engineered crops?

Generalizing about “GMOs” is almost completely useless. Each food we eat and each farm is so different that the genetic technologies and farming practices needed to optimize sustainability must be different too. That is why each crop (GE or conventional) must be looked at on a case-by-case basis, using science-based evidence. I recently wrote a…

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Myths about eggplant (brinjal) as medicine are holding up Indian release of GM brinjal, but brinjal is not a medicine

Book available as pdf for free download (see link below) Previous posts at GMO Pundit have covered GM insect protected eggplant being developed as a new crop variety in India. This insect-protected crop, making use of Bt protein trait, could avoid a large amount of current synthetic pesticide spraying in India and prevent many poisoning…

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Natural GMOs Part 105. Comparing more ancestors clarifies family relationships of a nasty germ

Genome and plasmid comparisons of Enteroaggregative E. coli strains, Rasko and others NEJM 2011, illustrated by comparisons of the main chromosome, and two plasmids, one encoding antibiotic resistance, including extended spectrum beta-lactamase, the other (pAA) encoding enteroaggregative virulence traits. An amazing amount of genetic analysis has been rapidly published about the huge recent outbreak of…

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