Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
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…
The Chlorofilms plant biology video contest has just closed the entry period for Round 2, and here is my submission. Pollination Methods: Solanum. Everything you need to know to make your own crosses with tomatoes and potatoes, two crops that are very much alike, believe it or not. I am producing these videos as a…
As a society, we are scared of viruses. They are too small to see, insert themselves into our own cells, and turn our bodies into factories for making more of them. On top of that, they make us feel ill and can be tough to beat. HIV, H1N1, Papaya Ringspot Virus – it’s hard to…
Today, Biofortified gained another 120 votes in the Ashoka Changemakers contest, coming in at 812 at the time of this writing. It would be great if in the last day of voting, if we could top 1,000. To help to that end, I will present the fourth reason why I think we deserve a little…
Friday was the first full day of the 51st Maize Genetics Conference, and it was filled with all kinds of genetic fun. When I saw the program, I knew I would be up for the first talks of the morning at 8 am, because they were about transposons. The rest of the day was filled…
Welcome to the 29th edition of Mendel’s Garden, the monthly one-stop-shop for the best the blogosphere has on Genetics. I have hosted the Garden a couple times before on my personal blog, but this month we find ourselves on Biofortified. This is a group blog on plant genetics and genetic engineering, to try to sprinkle…
Are you a backyard breeder? Do you want to be? Well with this video, now you can! Well, I think if you are a plant breeding student, a breeder looking to train a new workforce, or someone who’s really just curious about how you can possibly make seeds to grow ‘seedless’ watermelons, you’ll like this…
The 28th edition of Mendel’s Garden is up at Quintessence of Dust. An excellent collection of the latest in genetics blogging, this issue includes a post by Biofortified’s own Anastasia. The next edition of Mendel’s Garden will in fact be hosted right here at Biofortified, so send your submissions to karl [AT] inoculatedmind (DOT) com….
In the debate over genetic engineering, there are many emotions in play, such as optimism, anxiety, compassion, greed, joy, and fear. One emotion seems to dominate the anti-GE activists, and that is fear. Fear of corporations, fear of science, and fear of the unknown are wielded as weapons to scare the public into rejecting the…
Monsanto’s press releases on Roundup Ready 2 Yield uses the term “advanced gene mapping and insertion process”. This sounds impressive, but what does it mean? A colleague asks: “can advanced gene mapping and insertion tech improve yield of the plant or would other factors like selection and crop physiology really be what’s improving yields?” From the…