Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
James, over at James and the Giant Corn, has written a post about the long lasting tomatoes from India: Scientists at India’s NIPGR Create a Longer-Lasting Tomato (Studying The Regulation of Fruit Ripening). He does a great job of explaining cell wall chemistry, which I neglected to cover in I say tomato… I appreciate that…
Researchers at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research in India have found a surprisingly simple way to extend the shelf life of fresh tomatoes. Most tomatoes will last about 10-15 days before going unappealingly squishy. The enhanced tomatoes last 45 days or more and are firmer than unmodified tomatoes, which I imagine makes for…
If you are familiar with my past science media projects, you may remember that I used to host a radio show / podcast in Davis, CA. I have been eager to get that going again in Madison, so last fall I went through the training at the local student station, WSUM 91.7 fm, and they…
Anastasia was on the ball the other night with publishing her review of our evening with Michael Pollan. Mine comes a little late but not too little. We had all weekend to prepare our thoughts for what we wanted to talk about (And what we wanted to eat), and I daresay we did well on…
Read More “Talked with Pollan, not too much, mostly about plants.” »
Many people, including me, are concerned about potential harm to crop biodiversity from gene flow. Most people’s concern focuses on transgenics. There is a certain probability, albeit small, that transgenes will end up in the progeny of non-transgenic plants, weedy relatives of the crop, or wild relatives that grow nearby due to pollen flow. Transgenes…
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News reports that UC Berkeley and Stanford University are collaborating on a project to build a biotechnology resource called BIOFAB. This stands for International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology. (IOFAB?) I guess the missing B stands for BYOB, or “Bring Your Own B.” What’s so fabulous about BIOFAB? Well, genetic engineering requires…
If you have been paying attention to the blogosphere lately, you’ve heard about a study that came out in the International Journal of Biological Sciences called A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health, by Vendomois et al. It is a reanalysis of feeding trail data from Monsanto corn-fed rats….
Mark Henderson at the Times Online has just published an article about Genetic Engineering and Organic Agriculture. Organic farmers must embrace GM crops if we are to feed the world, says scientist. The scientist is non other than Agricultural Ecologist Sir Gordon Conway, and he argues that Organic Ag should be open to GE crops,…
The new year is here, and people everywhere are publishing their top 10 lists for the last year. Rather than try to come up with a similar list and fit exactly 10 items into it, I thought I would put together a short list of genetic engineering campaigns that rose and fell this year. Get…
Matt Ridley, author of an upcoming book on science called The Rational Optimist, wrote an article for The Economist called The new NUE thing. NUE stands for Nitrogen Use Efficiency, a trait that can maintain yields with lower applications of costly fertilizer. Nitrogen Use Efficiency has got him, well, rationally optimistic about the environmental benefits…