by Guest Posts on 15 April 2013 
By John Bowman. Republished with permission from The Conversation. Sex without seed. Seed without sex. It’s been said that the greatest gift of science to humankind would be achieving those two goals. Effective contraceptives such as the pill have pretty much nailed the first goal. Our findings, published recently in Science, could be significant pieces of the puzzle for the second. That’s because by helping solve one of the fundamental questions in the evolution of plants, we may also have brought closer the possibility of cloning a plant with good traits through easy-to-distribute seeds, rather than cuttings. This so-called
by Jonas Kathage on 4 April 2013 
The issue of pest resistance to insect resistant Bt crops receives regular media attention, partly because anti-biotechnology lobbies use it as an argument to vilify GM crops. The German NGO testbiotech, in a recently published report commissioned by Member of the European Parliament Martin Häuslingof the Green Party, argues that because of potential resistance development, GM crops should not be allowed for cultivation in the EU: There must be no large-scale, commercial cultivation of GE herbicide-tolerant or insecticide-producing crops. Such crop cultivation is unsustainable and will lead to a ‘race’ to step up their cultivation. The idea that a
by Joe Ballenger on 17 March 2013 
Parasitoids play a huge role in regulating insect populations. They have a lot of tools to do this, including using genetic modification to disable the immune systems of their hosts, as I described in Polydnaviruses: Nature’s GMOs. In agriculture, if you remove parasitoids, you end up applying far more insecticides… and nobody wants that. In apiculture, removing parasitoids such as Apocephalus borealis could help honey bee populations. Parasitoids are important. The Strepsiptera are one group of Parasitoids that I haven’t yet discussed. These are particularly bizarre insects. The males are relatively unremarkable… they’ve got six legs, antennae and wings. Relatively bug-like. The females, however, don’t
by Joe Ballenger on 12 March 2013 
Shortly after I graduated high school, commercial apiaries started to report massive losses of honeybees. Honeybees are probably the most economically valuable insects in the world, and are responsible for pollinating most of the food we eat. Here in the United States there’s an entire industry built up behind honeybees, with most US honeybees being transported to California to pollinate almonds at some point in the year. Unfortunately there are a lot of wrong-headed things out there in the press. One common idea I see spread through facebook meme, such as the image to the left, is that biotech crops
by Karl Haro von Mogel on 10 February 2013 Have you ever wondered what goes into breeding your favorite fruit varieties? Breeding apples, plums, oranges and pears is made understandable with this video that explains the basic biology, origins, and techniques involved in breeding fruit trees. This is the latest in my series on how to breed plants. If you are interested to see my other videos, check them out at my graduate program’s YouTube channel. So, now that you’ve seen this, who wants to be an apple breeder?
|
|
Recent Blog Comments