Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
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…
Written by Matt DiLeo The “perennial grain” story seems to pop up every few months. The basic idea is that perennial crops would have higher yields and lower environmental impacts than their annual kin. The picture on the left explains pretty clearly why – large permanent root systems secure the topsoil, exhaustively scavenge water and…
Written by Matt DiLeo It’s an exciting time in genetic engineering! I’ve long been bored by the simplicity of our contemporary transgenic crops and the single-minded focus on agronomic traits. Dropping in an herbicide or pest resistance gene is good for the environment and the farmer, but it doesn’t visibly benefit the consumer very much…
Written by Matt DiLeo This is why farmers like hybrid seed. The parents on the left and right are inbred lines that have been self-pollinated for many, many years.* The two rows of much bigger plants in the middle are simply their hybrid offspring – they grow faster, produce higher yields and are tougher in…