Review of 2007
Happy New Year and a big thank you to all those who subscribe or read our blog. It was a good 2007 for the hand picked … and carefully sorted with a full calendar year of blogging under our belt, turning 1 year old on 2nd November. We posted 167 articles on a variety of…
Trade, biotechnology, biofuels, ethics: some issues that the sugar industry is thinking about
Having more or less recovered from the flu mentioned in Sarah’s blog entry of 22nd November (no, I wasn’t complaining I was dying — quite the opposite; I kept expecting to be fully recovered the next day and then finding I wasn’t), I went last week to the International Sugar Organization’s annual international seminar (see…
The superfood of the future – Chenopodium quinoa
You may or may not have heard of this already. It’s called quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) and it’s a pseudocereal with properties that have made it an attractive staple food to peoples since the Incas – it was cultivated as early as 3000 BC.Nutritionally, quinoa is thought to be superior to cereal crops as it has…
Do you blog about peer reviewed research?
If so, the recent announcement from BPR3 (Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting) might be of interest to you and potentially increase the readership of your blog.
Needle cast diseases on Christmas trees
Christmas tree growers are advised to be on the lookout for needle infections by fungal pathogens causing discolouration and defoliation. Severe cases of needle drop not only decrease tree value, but result in poor tree health and vigour. Although most conifers are somewhat susceptible to needle cast diseases, certain varieties of Scots pine, Douglas-fir and…
Gardening in Microgravity
Long-term space missions would need plants for recycling carbon dioxide and oxygen and producing food. However, growing plants in space is a tricky business – some of the basic signs of over- or under-watering (wilting and flopping) are simply not present in microgravity, and water does not spread through the soil as it would on…
Pine beetles continue marching east
If this press release is anything to go by, hard times in Canadian forestry are about to get harder. The Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) has been chomping its way through the lodgepole pines of British Columbia since a shortage of cold winters has allowed it to spread unchecked. The beetles spread the deadly "blue-stain"…
Can Bt Maize Beat Down Mycotoxins?
Reducing fumonisin through Bt could have significant benefits in developing countries, especially where unprocessed maize is a key part of the diet
Vote for the winner of the “Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting” icon contest
As mentioned in a previous article, there is growing debate in the blog sphere over the need for a means to identify the sources of science being reviewed or used as evidence by bloggers. Well, the authors of “Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting” or BP3 for short, devised an icon design competition for which CABI,…
Highlighting the use of evidence
I spotted this blog article on Friday morning and sent it on to one of my colleagues, and soon it was sent around all the blog team here at CABI. This whole topic of the use of an icon/logo to highlight the use of peer-reviewed evidence has caused a great deal of discussion and a…