Celebrating insects
This week is National Insect Week in the UK. With over 900,000 different species, insects comprise over 70% of all known species and inhabit all habitats apart from deep ocean, so it’s hardly surprising they get a whole National Week rather than a mere day! Those of you who find insects a daily irritant may…
HIV transmission and maize consumption in subSaharan Africa
A BBC World Service news item alerted me this morning to a landmark study hypothesizing a link between consumption of fumonisin-contaminated maize and HIV transmission. The report suggested that HIV rates in subSaharan Africa could be significantly reduced by altering foodconsumption patterns and reducing maize contamination. Mycotoxins are responsible for many afflictions but this seemed…
Challenges of sharing knowledge – including volcanoes
The struggle to make agricultural information more widely available faces many challenges, but they do not normally include volcanic eruptions. For the last few days, the IAALD conference on Scientific and Technical Information and Rural Development’s website has been providing updates on the effects of activity from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. So it was a big…
Invasive plant to meet its match
Today sees an important milestone in a CABI project, led by Dr Dick Shaw. Defra gave the go-ahead to release an insect, a psyllid, to stop the spread of the non-native invasive plant, Japanese Knotweed.
Will Non-Transgenic GM Plants Win Favour with Regulators and the Public?
The creation of transgenic plants often involves the use of DNA sequences from bacteria and other non-plant organisms – in particular as vectors to introduce the desired genes. However, some people are concerned about the use of DNA from such distantly related sources, and regulators require separate rules to be complied with for transgenic plants…
Wallingford’s Part in the Revolution
If you walk just for a few minutes up the river from CABI’s headquarters near Wallingford, UK, you come across Jethro Tull Gardens. For people of a certain age this causes some confusion – why should the council have seen fit to commemorate Ian Anderson’s prog rock band with a street name? A little further…
How synchrotrons could aid crop protection
Image courtesy of Diamond (www.diamond.ac.uk) 2003 saw construction begin on a facility representing the UK’s largest investment in science for over 40 years. Diamond Light Source opened in 2007 and is an impressive structure on the South Oxfordshire landscape, 10 miles or so from where I’m sitting in CABI’s head office. It is a synchrotron…
Is it a bug’s life?
Avid followers of …handpicked and carefully sorted…. will recall my previous blog on bees and the debate on whether neonicotinoid insecticides should be banned or not. Well, unsurprisingly, the debate continues. A media release from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) on 11 September called for an “independent and comprehensive assessment of the impact of neonicotinoids”.…
Make sure broccoli is a definite in your five-a-day intake
Studies have shown a substance in broccoli has cancer-preventing ability – read on to find out how much broccoli you should be eating…
The International Day for Biological Diversity
The 22nd May 2009 is 'The International Day for Biological Diversity'. For 2009 the theme is Invasive Alien Species (IAS) – a major threat to biodiversity and food production – and a research and knowledge provision area that we here at CABI are are highly skilled in. The majority of our scientists time is spent…