The Nutrition-Industrial Complex

"cheez-its are not nearly as good as generic cheez-its," 
I posted on Facebook. 


Dennis suggested I had bought low-sodium ones - though I was sure it was due to the presence of "real cheese" in the generic. 

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...

The FAO made me do it!

I "attended" an email conference a year ago sponsored by the FAO:

Learning from the past: Successes and failures with agricultural biotechnologies in developing countries over the last 20 years.

I really enjoyed it. The vast majority of "presentations" were given by scientists working in the developing world and the topics ranged through sustainability, biotech and appropriate technology.

They've published the official summary of it now and asked the attendees to distribute it, so here you go.

(pdf)

Climate Change and the Importance of Maintenance Breeding

Variety IR8 is the original "Miracle rice" of the 1960s. This carefully-crafted variety has a stunted, semi-dwarf phenotype, which increases it's harvest index (the proportion of grain biomass to total biomass), and allows it to resist lodging (falling over into the mud), even when heavily fertilized. As with wheat, the creation of dwarf varieties of rice played a major role in the enormous yield gains of the Green Revolution.


But now it's in trouble!