Dangerous rust puts strain on food security
Back in the 1950s, North America saw 40% of the continent’s spring wheat crop lost to stem rust fungus infections. In the late 80s, yellow rust went on a rampage across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia causing crop losses worth over 1 billion US Dollars. In 2007 and beyond, the world could…
‘Obese people like chewing’
While Professor Steve Bloom’s statement on BBC Radio 1’s ‘news’ this morning did at least see me giggling into the office this morning (it’s Monday, so well done, Prof. Bloom!), it did strike me that his statement was a little like suggesting nicotine should be available in inhalable form…because smokers like inhaling (aren’t they called…
Dolly for Dinner?
In the future your Sunday roast may come from a cloned animal but would this be such a bad thing? The US Food and Drug Administration has recently released draft documentation of the safety of animal clones which reports that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is as safe to eat as…
Bunny Rabbits
Fluffy and cute they may be, but rabbits cause around £115m worth of damage to UK crops annually. New research suggests that a quick and cheap method for repelling the fuzzy little menaces is to dust a wheat crop with slag – a readily available and cheap-as-chips byproduct of blast furnaces. The scientists at Central…
A Whiter Shade of Pale found in Chrysanthemums
Chrysanthemums may appear fairly uninteresting compared to the many exotics of the plant world, but recent research proves they really are fascinating. As the world’s most important ornamental flower, it is thought that today’s modern varieties originated from white and yellow flowered plants. Crosses showed that white petal colour is dominant over yellow and it…
Send a rat?
Charitable giving to developing countries has shown a new trend in recent years with ‘send a cow’, and ‘send a goat’- schemes supporting the supply of said livestock to farmers in Africa. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the latest is- ‘send a rat’. A rat? However for reducing food insecurity farming-rats and…
Chikungunya virus – hard to pronounce but becoming easier to catch.
Hundreds of tourists from South and South East Asia have been going home to the US, and Europe with Chikungunya virus. Quiescent for many years this mosquito-borne virus has reemerged in the last 2 years in India, South East Asia and Indian Ocean Islands. In the island of Réunion, the main industry, tourism has been…
Musical Interlude
Discerning common carp find music, Morzart’s “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik”, to be precise, stress relieving or inducing depending on how it is played to them. The authors of this study discuss the possible use of music as a growth promoter or an enrichment tool to improve fish welfare in intensive fish farming. This fascinating application…
What do trees wear when it gets cold? Fir coats!
What’s going on here then? Is it the arrival of a sentient machine from another planet, interfacing with the local plant-life for purposes unknown? I’m afraid not, contact with ET will have to wait. What we have here is a new technique, pioneered by the USDA Forest Service, for measuring the below-ground sequestration of carbon…
Climate Change Catastrophy for Californian Crops?
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say that increasing temperatures in California will damage yields of almonds, walnuts, oranges, avacados and table grapes. These crops are long-lived and are only planted once every 25-40 years. This could expose them to a projected temperature change of two to four degrees celsius over the next 45 years.…