openSNP and Personal Genomics

So if you haven't heard, Direct to Customer (DTC) genomics has hit the mainstream. Multiple companies (23andMe, deCODEme, etc.) will now genotype you, providing you with a detailed rundown of all your genetic traits and tendencies...
Well, not exactly.

Opportunistic Gardening

It's amazing what you can accomplish with some reckless enthusiasm and an emergency shovel.

I've been out of grad school/postdoc for half a year now but have been slow to acclimate to my new budget. After spending 75 bucks to rent my garden plot, I couldn't help but balk at the idea of spending hundreds more on tools, containers, plants and fencing - so I started cutting corners.

Warning: irrational frugality will be a theme here...

Wednesday Links

1. Man, oh man. Possibly the coolest website ever and more chemical ecology than I know what to do with (and here's another).  h/t OrchidGrownMan from Biofortified
2. Open source Legos for grownups. Can I have a microtractor? or a microcombine? or a dimensional sawmill? Pleeeease?
3. More scientific sour grapes. Why won't grad students sacrifice their entire careers to do what we think is important?
4. And, as always, maps! This time, watch agriculture spread.  h/t Seed.Feed.Food

Which Clementines Taste Good?

Citrus season is here! Hooray!!!


I bought my first box of "clementines" and am already disappointed. and I've decided to do something about it...

Panis Ex Machina

Encountering primitive technology is a visceral experience for me. The real meaning and intention of tools can still be seen in the early stages of human invention - before they're wrapped in metal shielding and anonymous plastic curves.

The People's Garden: part II

Well, all the plants are in the ground in our food bank garden.

It was pretty fun listening to all the real horticulturalists hash out the details to our plan, with frequent reference to the classic Knott's Handbook, which is definitely now on my wishlist. Those guys really know production ag - especially through their professional and familial ties to our local upstate farmers.

So here's our acre: It was winter cover-cropped in rye, the farm crew tilled it in, built up beds and lay plastic mulch (picture 2 x 200' strips of black plastic garbage bags) over granular fertilizer. We decided to take our chances and skip the irrigation tape. The whole thing was split into four blocks - each containing the appropriate number and width of rows to allow a tractor with 20' booms to reach everything. Each block needed to be limited to one crop family in case we need to spray pesticides later (which are regulated by crop family).

Tobacco!

Humans sure love tobacco. It's the world's most widely-grown non-food crop (117 countries) and exists as 1500 varieties in the USDA database alone.

It's also one of the most-studied and best understood of all plants. 3,000 chemicals have been identified in the plant itself and 4,000 have been identified in its smoke!

Nicotiana tabacum is the main commercially-grown species and is thought to be descended from some combination of wild species such as N. sylvestris (the gardener's woodland/night-scented tobacco). Many of these wild Nicotiana species, which are found around the world, are also able to accumulate nicotine and related alkaloids just like N. tabacum.

Window Farming

While sitting bored at work, waiting for a computer alignment to run, I came across this on the NPR website.

It's an organization that's working to promote the collaborative design and construction of urban hydroponic vegetable gardens grown in plastic water bottles that hang in front of windows like curtains.
Hence, "window farming."

I'm pretty skeptical that the light that trickles through most windows will produce a crop that justifies the effort and expense of such a system. As someone who's spent many hours making Hoagland's, I can say that hydroponic systems are a real pain and, unless you could somehow feed them with worm compost tea, this system is a little too open-loop for my gardening aesthetics.* It's telling that the plants in all their pictures are pretty spindly. It's a lot more difficult to produce robust, good tasting food with hydroponics than with dirt and sunshine.

It looks pretty cool and I definitely get it from an art perspective, but it seems pretty gimmicky from a food perspective. I'm sure winter herbs could be grown just as well in pots on the sill.

At any rate, their primary focus seems to be developing an interactive and supportive online community around the practice, which is outstanding. I'd love to see more internet-based collaborations built around other forms of amateur farming too.**

We'll see if they prove me wrong about growing useful amounts of food though.


* oh wait! connect your hydroponics to your aquarium and you'll have most of your plant nutrition! On further inspection of the website, they're working on that too.
** hint hint, plant breeding

Basement Chickens and Cardboard Desks

At The Sustainability Workshop, Glynn Bebee is perfecting the art of turning trash into electronics-integrated tools for the New Urbanist.

I first saw his work this past summer as he was building (surprisingly hefty!) furniture and sculpture out of used cardboard and exotic glues (desk shown). I particularly like the helix, though.










He makes beautiful kitchen utensils out of waste wood.








A few weeks ago, I watched on Facebook as he tested his solar cooker on a cold winter day. Here, Lily demonstrates the oven's effectiveness by basking in her own body heat.




Today I got a tour of his basement workshop, full of various recycled scraps, power woodworking tools and aquaculture tanks. He's currently designing a series of indoor chicken incubators and coops. Danielle is much bigger today and her new sister just hatched a few hours ago. She's even more social than her two brothers and loves perching on visitors' arms. Predictably, one of the biggest challenges of indoor chicken-raising is controlling the smell. I was really impressed how inconspicuous even this first prototype is.

Outlaw (DIY) Biology Symposium

The Outlaw Biology: Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio symposium is currently running at UCLA.

This whole genetic-engineering-in-your-garage movement scares me - particularly with all the anti-establishment language recorded by DIYbio's post. It's really easy to picture some malcontent reproducing some formerly-extinct human pathogen or changing the transmissibility of a living one. We're not there yet, but eventually we'll also be capable of creating organisms that affect ecosystems in really meaningful ways. It's easy to think of good and bad results of this (waves of new invasive organisms or acid-tolerant reef-building corals?) but I suppose it's all totally moot. It's going to happen in our lifetimes and no amount of regulation can stop it (not here, not in China...).

I guess the only solution if for professionals to get involved in the movement and encourage its development. Maybe if citizens get as involved in genetic engineering as they are with software and the Internet we can dilute out and keep an eye on the cranks.

Thoughts?

h/t: DIYbio

On the Road + Open Source Seeds

Well, I'm packing for the PAG conference...

Goal 1: Learn some new statistical/ecological genomics

Goal 2: Get some leads for a real job

It's a pretty long conference, so I'll have plenty of downtime to work on my backlog of manuscripts and job applications (and get my fill of Mexican food!). Hopefully when I get back we'll get our LCMS pipeline patched back up and I can run through the rest of our 2009 field samples.

At any rate, I'm excited that I got my 2010 Seed Savers Exchange catalog in the mail today! I'll spend part of my plane ride looking forward to moving somewhere I'll hopefully have a yard.

On a related note, Joseph is instigating some participatory amateur breeding over at Greensparrow Gardens (which I think is brilliant!). Does anyone know if there's much of an amateur breeding movement out there? I've only ever known one amateur (rose) breeder, but I'd love to hear if there was some interest out there.

I picture a wiki where amateur breeders could set up pages for their creations (with pedigrees, characteristics, etc.) and trade seeds, pollen and tips...