Hope New Years Eve (or Happy New Year if you live in the eastern hemisphere)! I’ve linked to and summarized five posts from the past year here at the site: TAMBI-TAM, Could we feed ourselves with Tomatoes?, Phylogeny of the Pineapple, a further explanation of awesomeness, Why is Wheat Is Losing Out in the Era of Modern Crop Breeding, and Figure from my Research Proposal. Come on inside to read more.
Posts from ‘December, 2009’
Why I’m so Excited About the Banana Genome
It looks like this time the banana genome really will be sequenced! The justification for sequencing is the combination of the vital importance of bananas as a source of food in the tropics and their lack of crop breeds since most bananas are sterile and only propagated vegetatively. Banana will be the first non-grass monocot sequenced, which is also awesome for me as a grass genomicist because the genome of the banana will be the new window into what the genome of the ancestor of all grasses might have looked like! But click through to read more!
Not 2 + 2 = 5, but close
In which a statistic makes it from a writer, to the new york times, to a greenpeace blog, apparently without anyone noticing that it was mathematically impossible. I’m not exaggerating for effect.
1% of 20 is .2 (not 1.3 nor 1.6)
By The Numbers 12/19/09
Some statistics pulled together from various sources on wheat production, monsanto, lawsuits (not wheat related), and a random moon fact for no particular reason.
Not Genetically Engineered: Square Watermelons
Square watermelons and pears in bottles. Weird plant things that can be accomplished without any genetics (no breeding, no genetic engineering, no mutagenesis, nothing)
How A Piece of Misinformation is Born
How misinformation can be born and spread using an example from a recent post to the greenpeace website about a court ruling regarding Bayer’s Liberty Link rice and how it could/will be misinterpreted
Name That Plant: Nondescript Root Edition
A new edition of Name That Plant (mystery vegetable) after almost a year long hiatus.
I know it’s a couple of years early for me but…
By Jorge Cham, author of PhD comics who really does capture grad student life. By way of The Daily Scan who in turn picked it up from The Intersection’s Sheril Kirshenbaum.
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas and blooming christmas cactus
Support Sugar Beet Farmers
I don’t know why people prefer cane sugar to beet sugar (given they’re chemically identical), but the latest label I saw at the grocery store seems especially uncalled for when beet farmers have already had such a hard year.