Recent Posts

Review: Many shades of gray – The context-dependent performance of organic agriculture

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“The benefits of organic agriculture are widely debated. Although some promote it as a solution to our sustainable food security challenges, others condemn it as a backward and romanticized version of agriculture that would lead to hunger and environmental devastation.” Seufert and Ramankutty address…

Review: Wheat genomics comes of age

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Due to its highly repetitive, polyploid genome, wheat genomics has lagged behind that of other cereals, but new tools promise to begin closing that gap.  Uauy reviews these new tools, which include access to full genomes of several wheat varieties, gene expression data from hundreds of publicly available…

Aflatoxin-free transgenic maize using host-induced gene silencing

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Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites produced by some species of Aspergillus fungi that can occur on numerous crop plants. When ingested by animals, aflatoxins cause health problems including liver cancer and stunted growth. Thakare et al. used host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) to block aflatoxin production…

Reviews: Nature Insight: Plants ($)

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Nature journal published a special “Plant Insights” section featuring several excellent reviews.  Zipfel and Oldroyd review Plant signalling in symbiosis and immunity (10.1038/nature22009), Bevan et al. write about Genomic innovation for crop improvement (10.1038/nature22011), Scheres and van der…

Toward Designing Tulips for a Warmer World

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Most cultivated tulips (Tulipa gesneriana) are produced in The Netherlands, which has a temperate climate resembling the Central Asian climate in which they originated. The growth cycle of cultivated tulips starts in autumn, when the bulbs are planted in the field. At that time, all organs, including…

Reducing pesticide use while preserving crop productivity and profitability ($)

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To safeguard human health and the environment, the French government has called for a nation-wide reduction in the use of pesticides (herbicides, fungicides and insecticides). Towards this end, they have been collecting pesticide usage and yield data from French farmers. Lechenet et al. explored these…

Research Highlight: Knocking out consumer concerns and regulator’s rules with CRISPR/Cas

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When is a genome-edited plant a GMO (and subject to GMO-restrictions)? Wolter and Puchta summarize two important papers that show that CRISPR/Cas genome editing can be achieved in wheat and rice without the introduction of foreign DNA (making these plants “not GMO”), by delivering complexes of enzyme…

Review: Modifying bananas: From transgenics to organics?

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Did you know that bananas are: one of the top ten world food crops, the world’s most popular fruit, eaten in nearly every country, and an important food security crop in regions where they are grown? Did you also know that most bananas are triploid and usually sterile, making conventional breeding…

The Science in Our Food - Jim Carrington

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Jim speaks on the benefits science has allowed for in the advancements in growing food. He suggests that global changes will create a need for us to leave romantic visions of farming in our past. With exploding population growth and climate change, we are at an important cross roads. Jim Carrington…