Monsanto's GM Drought Tolerant Corn

DroughtGardTM maize will be the first commercially available transgenic (GM) drought tolerant crop if it's released in 2013 as planned. Hybrid seed sold under this trademark will combine a novel transgenic trait (based on the bacterial cspB gene) with the best of Monsanto's conventional breeding program.

The Union of Concerned Scientists threw their usual wet blanket on the development. I think their gloomy assessment of transgenic drought tolerance is pretty biased but they do make a few good points that the public should understand. Primarily, "drought tolerance" does not mean that these plants can be grown with little to no water.

Herbicide Resistant Johnsongrass: Coming soon to a farm near you!

Pioneer and K State are jointly releasing a set of new herbicide resistant sorghum varieties, which will incorporate resistance to ALS and FOP herbicides. Ironically, these non-genetically modified varieties invoke one of the classic bogeymen of anti-GM thinkers - herbicide resistant weeds.

Practical Agricultural Development

Among plant geneticists, breeders are always held up as the pragmatic experts who know what matters in the Real World. But not all fields perceive breeders this way...

Sustainable agriculture was a popular session topic at the tri-societies joint meeting in San Antonio. More specifically, many speakers took pleasure (rightly so) in pointing out the subtle complexities of local agricultural systems that many of us in breeding gloss over when trying to help.

Some highlights:

Genetic Engineering vs. Breeding

"Many administrators, private and public, have decided that the future of plant breeding lies in genomics, relying on claims that molecular genetics has revolutionized the time frame for product development. ‘Seldom has it been pointed out that it is going to take as long to breed a molecular engineering gene into a successful cultivar as it takes for a natural gene’" - Goodman 2002

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.

California Almonds

I recently got a tour of some Cali Central Valley almond farms from the Almond Doctor.

The nuts were in the process of being harvested. The first step is to shake the nuts off the tree with a machine that grabs them around the trunk (here's a video*). One way you can tell almond and peach (both Prunus species) orchards apart is to look at how low the first branches are. Almond trees are trained to branch higher above the ground to give the machine room to grab them. Peach trees are trained to branch almost immediately above the ground to help most of the canopy stay low enough to be reached without ladders (due to the increased chance of injuries). Maximum canopy height is more rigorously limited in peaches for the same reason.

Blue Potato Chips

JetBlue airlines now gives out blue potato chips as their "official" snack.

I'm very impressed by the fact that these blue potato chips exist. It's no small feat to create a good-frying potato with excellent agronomic qualities in itself. I can't imagine crossing in blue coloring (anthocyanin expression) on top of this in a reasonable amount of time - especially since potatoes aren't true to seed. Non true to seed crops like potatoes have messy, highly heterozygous genomes that when crossed (or selfed) produce offspring that segregate for all the traits you care about. I've been told that potato breeders typically make a bunch of crosses in the first year of their program - and then spend the rest of their careers evaluating and propagating the resulting segregants asexually.

Though the chips really are purple, not blue...

Polycultures in Modern Ag?

The September issue of CSA news has a nice (open access) article entitled: "Do polycultures have a role in modern agriculture?"

Some key caveats:

• While diverse plant mixtures have been associated with many benefits, high biomass yield (i.e. what farmers get paid for) is usually not one of them.
• It's very difficult to maintain complex plant mixtures - usually a single species will come to dominate.
• Our crop monocultures represent those crops that are best adapted to a given region.
• Establishing, maintaing and harvesting polycultures will require significant effort, risk, investments and training for farmers.

They conclude that polycultures are intriguing but definitely require more (agronomically realistic) research. 

Thoughts?

Evolution of Fruit Shape in Tomato

Someday you'll be able to use CAD software to draw up what you want a plant to look like and the software (containing detailed growth models) will tell you what genetic constructs you need to bring it into the world...

But for now we barely understand how natural morphological variation is controlled. So I was excited to see this paper out of the van der Knaap and Francis labs. In it, they review some of the known levers by which tomato plants control fruit shape and investigate their historical appearance.

I have a yard!

I spent the day moving the first of my stuff into the new house I'm renting. I'm very excited to finally be somewhere besides a one bedroom apartment. The yard's pretty shady but presents some interesting gardening opportunities that I'm working over in my head.

Putting up Hay

It used to be a common sight for me this time of year (on the way to the maize experimental fields) to see straw and hay being raked into windrows by hay rakes (video 1 2). Though most of us tend to use these words interchangeably, hay is a crop grown specifically for animal feed and straw is the leftover stems and leaves of a harvested grain that may be used for animal feed, bedding or construction. Common annual and perennial hay crops include legumes (e.g. alfalfa and clover) and grasses (e.g. timothy, brome, orchard grass and tall fescue). Straw usually comes from whatever grain is being grown in your area (e.g. wheat or barley).

First! (to harvest garden sweet corn)

Well, it's not from the garden, per se. It's from the greenhouse.

When I got the keys to my greenhouse space, one of the first things I did was sow a bunch of field crop seeds. I didn't know if there would be a need for me to grow them in the greenhouse, but I did know that it can be a tricky proposition. Better to sketch out a quick SOP now than wait till I need one and then add a 6 month delay to the project as I figure it out on the fly...

What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?

I just went to the new "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" exhibit at the National Archives. It tells the history of the government's role in U.S. food and agriculture -  a story of market protectionism, social engineering and the regulated tension between the aspirations of business and the demands of the people...

Twitter Update

I love this stupid service. I can flag all the interesting papers and articles I find in a week (with room for a little commentary) but without needing to sit down and come up with a coherent 500 word essay!

I could automatically feed these tweets into the blog, but it would just clog my page up with text. If you're interested in tapping this new stream, just add my twitter account to your blog rss feed. I promise not to gum it up with updates on what I'm eating.

I'll probably continue to write actual blog posts at about the rate I've settled into.

Now on Twitter

Thought I'd give this stupid twitter thing a shot... 


Seems like a good way to share links and blog post updates for those times that I don't feel like putting hours into a full post. Follow me.

Commercial Perennial Crops?

The "perennial grain" story seems to pop up every few months. The basic idea is that perennial crops would have higher yields and lower environmental impacts than their annual kin.

The picture on the left explains pretty clearly why - large permanent root systems secure the topsoil, exhaustively scavenge water and nutrients and support more vigorous shoot growth over a longer season.

This week, it's perennial maize.

Weed Seedling ID

I've spent the past hour reacquainting myself with the likely weeds I'll find in my plot, which ones are useful and what they look like.

While pulling up some chenopods among other weed seedlings, it occurred to me that some of these "volunteers" would be worth sparing. I went through my "Wild Plants to Eat" book along with a mess of extremely helpful extension weed seedling ID websites and came to the conclusion that I'll spare the two little dicotyledonous pseudograin weeds: amaranth and quinoa. 

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

Ketchup and the Future of GM Food

It's 3 am local time and I'm wide awake, fixated on the challenge of brand differentiation in ketchup...

I recently spoke with one of the ketchup tomato breeders I know. Among other topics, he lamented the consumer's irrational fixation on price. He pointed out that most of us won't hesitate to grab a generic bottle of ketchup over a trusted brand for a difference of only 20 cents - which breaks down to no difference over the months it sits in your fridge: How do you sell a better product to a customer who's not willing to pay 1 cent more per week?