Matt DiLeo « Biofortified

Practical Agricultural Development

by Matt DiLeo on 10 November 2011

Among plant geneticists, breeders are always held up as the pragmatic experts who know what matters in the Real World. But not all fields perceive breeders this way…

Sustainable agriculture was a popular session topic at the tri-societies joint meeting in San Antonio. More specifically, many speakers took pleasure (rightly so) in pointing out the subtle complexities of local agricultural systems that many of us in breeding gloss over when trying to help.

Some highlights:

Genetic Engineering vs. Breeding

by Matt DiLeo on 13 October 2011

“Many administrators, private and public, have decided that the future of plant breeding lies in genomics, relying on claims that molecular genetics has revolutionized the time frame for product development. ‘Seldom has it been pointed out that it is going to take as long to breed a molecular engineering gene into a successful cultivar as it takes for a natural gene’” - Goodman 2002

Polycultures in Modern Ag?

by Matt DiLeo on 20 September 2011

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 very difficult to maintain complex plant mixtures – usually a single species will come to dominate. * Our crop monocultures represent those

Evolution of Fruit Shape in Tomato

by Matt DiLeo on 5 September 2011

Someday you’ll be able to use CAD software to draw up what you want a plant to look like and the software (containing detailed growth models) will tell you what genetic constructs you need to bring it into the world…

But for now we barely understand how natural morphological variation is controlled. So I was excited to see this paper out of the van der Knaap and Francis labs. In it, they review some of the known levers by which tomato plants control fruit shape and investigate their historical appearance.

What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?

by Matt DiLeo on 13 June 2011

I just went to the new “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” exhibit at the National Archives. It tells the history of the government’s role in U.S. food and agriculture – a story of market protectionism, social engineering and the regulated tension between the aspirations of business and the demands of the people…