Tag: Coffee Rust

Better Know a Scientist: Rice Research Scientist Dr Nir Oksenberg

In this month’s “Better Know a Scientist”, I’m interviewing Dr Nir Oksenberg. He works in a lab that actually makes transgenic crops! Nir’s career seems to have taken a very windy road: he completed his PhD at UCSF studying a gene implicated in autism, but is doing his post-doc in Dr Pamela Ronald’s lab at UC Davis (if you aren’t familiar with Dr Pamela Ronald, please view her TED talk or her book “Tomorrow’s Table”. Her book is a fantastic read for anyone interested in learning about genetically modified crops and organic food). We “met” over the internet, when he kindly sent me an encouraging email on one of my articles. I have yet to take him up on his offer of visiting the lab in Davis, mostly because my kid would probably knock over someone’s research project or trample on a crop that took a few years to make.
Continue reading “Better Know a Scientist: Rice Research Scientist Dr Nir Oksenberg” →

When a new technology saved the French wine industry

grapes

Written by Steve Savage

Amy Harmon’s excellent article in the New York Times describes how the Florida orange juice industry may soon be wiped out because of a new bacterial disease spread by an introduced insect. There could be a technology fix for the problem using genetic engineering, but the question is whether the growers will get to apply that solution.

Coffee Rust - later these infected leaves fall off
Infected leaves fall off Coffee Rust (Hemileia vastatrix) image from Smartse

The sort of crisis situation now facing the Florida orange industry is not at all unique in the history of farming. There have been many times when some new pest threatened the economic viability of a major crop.
Sometimes the pest “wins” and a particular farming industry simply goes away. In the mid 1880s when Coffee Rust made it from Africa to the coffee plantations that supplied England from Java and Sri Lanka, the industry collapsed, and so the English had to switch to tea to get their caffeine. Continue reading “When a new technology saved the French wine industry” →