The spectacular Cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis), it’s in the same botanical family as the Brazil nut (Lecythidaceae), is native to Central and South America, and is widely planted as an ornamental around the world
An alarming clash between Classical Liberal epistemology & identity-based ideologies is endangering science, a key driver to human progress & improved environmental outcomes
Scientific institutions & Universities must re-embrace Liberal epistemology
Agricultural innovation has decoupled land use from agricultural production. We passed peak farmland more than 20 years ago!
A remarkable win for the environment & human welfare!
It’s a common misperception that modern crop varieties are less diverse than previously grown landraces. In fact modern breeding is constantly introducing new genetics, often from wild species. This often makes modern crops more genetically diverse
Increasing use of no-till, and reduced ploughing have cut erosion, improved soil structure, and saved massive amounts of greenhouse emissions
(no-till, and reduced ploughing use herbicides, like glyphosate instead of ploughing)
Erosion 1982 on left and 2007 on right:
@evornithology
@realHollanders
Obfuscating on an issue which is obvious even to young children doesn't bode well for academics or confidence in science
Yield % gap "Organic" vs. Conventional farming
Data from European Union Joint Research Center
Widespread adoption of Organic can't make environmental sense. Organic rejects technologies with no environmental downsides and lower yields will lead to more farmed land!
In New Zealand, these irrational beliefs around "Indigenous Knowledge" have melted scientific institutions and even canceled an eminent Maori scholar because he didn't toe the line
See here:
Beautiful multicolour landrace peanuts at farmer's market!
They are peruviana or aequatoriana peanuts, with characteristic deeply reticulated pods.
Usually only grown in Peru or Equador they have found their way into the speciality market in Athens, Georgia.
@EUAgri
@Best4Soil
@REA_research
@CORDIS_EU
@EU_ecoinno
In line with much of EU policy, photo portrays a romantic, totally unrealistic notion of agriculture - It’s boutique hipster, nothing to do with the modern farming which actually feeds the world
Over the last decades
#glyphosate
substantially replaced other herbicides;
the reduced ploughing decreased energy use, and very substantially reduced soil erosion;
at same time, non-Hodgkin lymphoma incidence remained unchanged:
Pure cultivated peanut on the left, improved peanut, with wild species genetics on the right.
From Dr. Albert Culbreath's "Disease Nursery" planted for screening for resistance, in Tifton
@UGA_CollegeofAg
. The disease is mostly Late Leaf Spot.
@GoodPoliticGuy
This is the “two movies phenomenon”, an analogy made by Scott Adams about two groups of people who have such strong, and different lenses of perception (biases) that after being shown the same film, the two groups retell the same film as two different stories
In a heavily nematode-infested field, in South Georgia.
Center stage is very popular elite Peanut cultivar - yellowing and sick from root damage.
Flanking are peanuts with genetics from the wild species Arachis stenosperma - they are completely resistant!
Peanut evolution confusion resolved!
In 2019 two back-to-back genome papers were published in Nature Genetics with conflicting conclusions!
The inconsistencies were due to a simple error, a wrong parameter which filtered all values at or close to zero
Newest data in!
Disease resistances from the wild peanut species Arachis cardenasii incorporated into agronomically-elite market-types yield 6 tonnes/ha (5,350 lbs/acre)
Without ANY sprays for foliar diseases!
@DrDeCaluwe
@professor_dave
John Stuart Mill developed a fundamental account of how social and scientific progress occurs through vigorous debate involving opposing points of view. To generate different points of view, people must have freedom of thought and speech. Karl Popper developed similar arguments
Such disappointment!
@Quaker
that is associated with fond childhood memories has adopted the
@NonGMOProject
label.
Now
@Quaker
is actively supporting a marketing machine based on misinformation and lies.
I will buy generic oats from now on.
Many small farms are now using ‘regenerative’ farming techniques that indigenous people have been using for centuries - and in doing so, they may have found the key to protecting our entire global food supply from climate change.
Peanut arose from a hybridization of two wild Arachis species in South America thousands of years ago. Today we publish the genome sequence of one peanut cultivar, together with characterisation of the genomes of >200 diverse peanuts from around the world.
Our paper out today in PNAS uncovers how strong disease resistances dispersed around the global peanut crop via international seed exchange and collaboration, spreading humanitarian and environmental benefits
UC Berkeley gave the lowest score to those who committed to treating people equally in their “Diversity” statements
They eliminated 680 out of 894 applications based on DEI statements alone, before considering any academic criteria at all
The Osage orange tree (Maclura pomifera, Moraceae) produces hard fruits which ooze a sticky latex. They evolved for dispersal by extinct megafauna, American mastodon & giant ground sloths, who ate whole fruits and then pooped out the seeds! Resistant wood valued for making bows!
Science can only function in societies which embrace rationality. Since the 1970s, long-term post-Enlightenment trends have reversed, society has shifted away from rationality to emotional reasoning
From
@PNAS
Herbicides conserve soil!
Unfortunately, a proxy-war against GMO has targetted the safest herbicide -
#glyphosate
.
At epicenter of this proxy-war is IARC.
Here Reuters outlines how IARC simply edited the non-carcinogenic findings out of their report:
@CarlosCMTF
@ShantMM
There was substantial evidence. From the location of the outbreak to the peculiarities of the furin cleavage site. I don’t agree that people were truly free in their ability to discuss this, there was an intense politicization and asymmetrical fear of social sanctions
Soil erosion down by 44% since 1982 in USA!
Erosion down by 9% since 2000 in EU!
Both trends driven by soil conservation through decreased tillage (Data from USDA and EU JRC)
@MapleLeafFoods
Maple syrup is a complex mix of chemicals almost no one can spell the names of.
The chemicals are made by the tree, but it doesn’t stop them being chemicals
#factsnotfear
@JoyfulSisyphean
There is much value (both for science & in other ways) in people's beliefs & observations. But what's being pushed is a fusing of belief systems, with one part mandated as sacred and the other not.
Check out how this melts scientific institutions here:
I’m pleased that intellectual giants like Steven Pinker are saying it like it is
DEI statements are particularly damaging to Agricultural Colleges because they discriminate against rural people who have a distinct culture from urbanites
DEI Statements are one of the rituals turning academia into a national laughingstock. They are compelled speech, and either weed out independent thinkers or force them to be liars. (Grads & postdocs on the market ask my advice on how best to game them.) "DEI Statements Stir
"Peanuts" from Arachis villosulicarpa, a completely distinct species to normal peanut (which has four sets of chromosomes). A. villosulicarpa is diploid (two sets of chromosomes) and independantly domesticated, only cultivated by a few native peoples of Mato Grosso, Brazil.
Great quote from article
“Today, biology is again being subjugated to ideology—medical schools deny the biological basis of sex, biology courses avoid teaching the heritability of traits”
When Scientific authorities deny the obvious, the authority of science is fatally undermined
155 science Nobel Laureates have petitioned Greenpeace to stop GMO anti-science. That's all (or almost all) living science Nobel Laureates! +14 who have passed away since signing! No other organization been so widely criticized by science Nobel Laureates!
This is one to watch: former Greenpeacer, now federal cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault, is now part of inner group making environmental plans in Ottawa, as Cdn finance minister is being shunted aside.
The philosopher of science Karl Popper coined “Pseudoscience” for systems of thought that are unfalsifiable and without predictive power. His archetypal examples were Marxism & Freudian Theory- fields from which Critical Theories are built
Sad to see this rot in
@NatureChemistry
@ronkwahrhakonha
Prof Cooper, a Māori philosopher of science who spent his life bridging the gap between cultures, maintains that Mātauranga Māori & science each have their own value, but are distinct. He was cancelled
So much for empowerment of indigenous scholars…
The full genome sequence of cultivated peanut (A. hypogaea c. Tifrunner) is available at
@PeanutBaseorg
A superb genome sequence of a very complex tetraploid!
Sequencing the genome of a crop plant is a game-changer for understanding its genetics, and for crop improvement!
"extrudable xylem" it's a botanical party trick!
To tell if a plant is from the dogwood family (Cornaceae), fold the leaf in half & press down the crease. Gently pull apart the two halves. The xylem will unravel, forming gossamer threads like this!
It's an oldie, but a goldie!
Some claim that old varieties grow better without fertilizer than new ones can.
A >160 year wheat growing field experiment from
@Rothamsted
doesn't support this.
Yields of old and new varieties are similar with no fertilizer, but new varieties yield much better with fertilizer.
Insecticide use has increased since the neonic ban in the EU, because alternative insecticides are less effective and need to be sprayed multiple times (instead of a single seed treatment). The reauthorization of neonics on non-flowering crops is a victory for the environment.
Vavilov founded a key area of crop genetics, yet he starved in prison. His fate serves as an example of the dangers of politicization of science.
Cornell's exhibit “Cultivating Silence: Nikolai Vavilov and the Suppression of Science in the Modern Era”
My wonderful daughter, Sofy Bertioli (just out of high school) illustrated the strawberries for the figure in the accompanying News and Views article!
"The origin and evolution of a favorite fruit"
Imagine how proud I am.
Here is the SharedIt link:
@BenGoldsmith
Perhaps a good moment to learn some basic agronomy. The N that is removed every year from fields, in the harvest to feed people, needs to be replaced. Natural processes only have the capacity to replace about half
Tetraploidized hybrids from wild peanut species are vigorous and gigantic!
Flower from:
new tetraploid hybrid on the left
cultivated peanut on the right
Like all plants, peanut's genome is a complete ecosystem of transposons (selfish DNAs), they make up 74% of the genome! Since the hybridization of the wild ancestors formed peanut, more than 350 Mutator elements have inserted in, or near genes!
Great paper on the cultivated peanut genome with superb assembly. Includes ~3300 pararetrovirus insertions. Goes to show, nature is still the most prolific genetic engineer of all.
Among the environmentally conscious (& well-fed)
#yield
in farming is a forgotten or even 'dirty' word, but without yield natural spaces can't be preserved (& we couldn't be fed)
New Nature Sustainability study shows land-sparing potential of high-yields
Industrial Agriculture Deniers have the delusion that the world can be fed by ruddy-cheeked hipster small-scale Organic farmers purveying their slow food in chic markets! So virtuous!
(No need for “nasty industrialism”!)
Here is Sofy's original draft version of the figure of the hybridizations that formed modern cultivated strawberry
(which actually I think is better than the published version)
Soil erosion is an enormous problem in the tropics where fine latosol soils and torrential rain are combined. Notill farming has been one of the greatest advances for sustainability, reducing soil erosion and energy use.
Notill relies on herbicides.
#StopSoilErosion
Tracking down the "mother of peanut", and how did peanut generate so much diversity in less than 10,000 years?
UGA today from the Wild Peanut Lab....
@SorayaBertioli
A new source of nematode resistance for peanuts!
By making a new tetraploid from wild species, and crossing & backcrossing with peanut, we have been able to integrate two new, very strong sources of root-knot nematode resistance into cultivated peanut.
@klemme_susan
@DannyDeraney
The gentlemen may well be one and the same. Acts of compassion like this are usual for hunters. To hunt one must be part of nature, and being part of nature naturally brings compassion.
If you find this dissonant, it’s because you haven’t experienced it.
A new study from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology shows UK crop pollinating bee species increased by 12%. Social bee species, including the bumblebees, increased by 38%.
"The pursuit of knowledge can unite diverse cultures and political views, but any push for social justice is, by nature, culturally and politically narrow."
My letter in the Economist commenting on the current tensions facing universities
A sterile diploid wild species peanut hybrid has given rise to a fertile tetraploid, via treatment with colchicine, a chemical from the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale)
The tetraploid hybrid (right hand side) is larger and can be used in breeding with cultivated peanut
The Wild Peanut Lab experimental field at
@UGA_CollegeofAg
Midville. Plants have unique mixtures of cultivated and wild peanut genetics
Lots of new traits here! Early and Late Leaf Spot resistance, Rust fungus resistance, Root-knot nematode resistance..
The term Climate Deniers is well known,
why not Fertiliser Deniers?
Data showing Haber-Bosch fertilizer feeds 1/2 the world is clear. Simpler to interpret than data on Climate change. Yet upmarket supermarkets sell us Fertiliser Denial the whole time!
An example of society’s standard misandrist lens of perception, this time from
@TheEconomist
. In the graphic, men are underrepresented in at least as many academic fields as women, still, the problem is only the fields with under representation of women
Roland Fryer for Harvard President! A brilliant scholar who must thoroughly understand the rottenness of the mindset that needs to change, because he was a victim of it.
The
@BBC
has corrected inaccurate statements about Organic farming in information aimed at school pupils. These welcome changes show just how important it is to stand up for science!
A society where very few are involved in farming has an unfortunate consequence: Urban misconceptions about farming - Great Falsehoods - gain common currency. Here
@SciSustAg
takes the
@BBC
to task for spreading these falsehoods in educational material.
Those who criticize the achievements of Norman Borlaug have many things in common:
They have never experienced hunger, famine or war,
They live in countries with strong laws that protect the environment,
They are very poor at counterfactuals
@PBS
@washingtonpost
@heroinebook
Professors & students self-censor for fear of mob-rule punishment. We need a critical mass, enough people daring to confront the yelling thought police.
University bosses, stop your cowardice. Do your job. Back free speech. Protect academic freedom.
The Eastern Yellow Passionflower (Passiflora lutea) has such an intricate little gem of a flower! Widespread in the Southeast, it’s not showy enough for mainstream gardening - but it does have one big advantage! Deer don’t like to eat it!
Different types of leaves of the red mulberry (Morus rubra) native to Georgia. The different leaf shapes are characteristic of mulberries. These were all growing on the same tree
This tiny hummingbird was stuck in our garage, flying up at the ceiling. (It seems to be some optical illusion to them!)
Fortunately it got caught in a spider web and I was able to catch it and set it free outside
On a remarkably serendipitous day in 1977, three botanists passed a bridge 30km N. of Villa Montes, Bolivia. There they collected one of the diploid ancestors of peanut, Arachis ipaënsis. Shortly afterwards the area was disturbed. The species was never found in the wild again
The closest thing to the original peanut is from Villa Montes, Tarija, Bolivia
This peanut "Rastrero Colorado de dos Granos" has the most ancestral (wild-like) characters: strongly prostrate, large size, dark green leaves, no flowers on main stem, and small two seeded pods
Those who deal with land management be it farming or conservation know the value of glyphosate. In reducing erosion, in eliminating invasive plants and restoring native flora. We shouldn't let misinformation, propaganda and ideology take this product away.
Interesting read...
"A total ban on all glyphosate use would be an unmitigated disaster for fish and wildlife. Glyphosate is the most effective tool, often the only tool, wildland and aquatic managers have for restoring fish and wildlife habitats destroyed by alien plants."
The closest thing to the original peanut is from Villa Montes, Tarija, Bolivia
This peanut "Rastrero Colorado de dos Granos" has the most ancestral (wild-like) characters: strongly prostrate, large size, dark green leaves, no flowers on main stem, and small two seeded pods
It's a myth that modern wheat varieties are more heavily reliant on pesticides & fertilisers. Old landraces are an important source of genetic diversity, but modern varieties produce better, under optimum & harsh growing conditions.
The heartwood of fallen pines can under certain conditions form “fatwood” on the forest floor. Densely impregnated with resin, it becomes orange-yellow. It’s an amazing natural fire-lighter!
Harvest of new peanut variety ‘IAC Sempre Verde’ (Forever Green) with wild disease resistance it needs NONE of the customary nine foliar fungicide sprays!!!
Developed by IAC - Instituto Agronômico de Campinas
with partnership of
@UGA_CollegeofAg
and
@MarsGlobal
France is somewhat of a darling for those who favour small farms and
#Organic
Here's their use of pyrethroid insecticides over time compared to the UK
#tradeoff
#RealWorld
The flowers and fruits grow straight out of the bark of the trunk, a type of growth most common the tropics and known as cauliflory. The flowers produce two types of pollen, fertile and sterile. The sterile pollen is produced from the hood structure and is food for pollinators
#StopSoilErosion
we need more advocacy on the importance of farming that reduces ploughing, usually by using herbicides instead of tillage. This reduces soil erosion & energy use. Soil strcuture should be built from the top down!
170 academics so far, including yours truly, have signed a letter condemning the censoring, by the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society, of a conference panel on the importance of biological sex as a category for scientific study.
FIRE and faculty from across the country are calling on
@AmericanAnthro
and
@CASCATweet
to reconsider their decision to cancel a panel on biological sex at their upcoming annual meeting over subjective concerns that the panelists’ views would cause “harm.”
One of the thousands of genetically unique peanuts breaking through the ground at our field trials in Midville, Georgia!
Each peanut mixes wild and cultivated genetics bringing new traits to the peanut crop!
Planting peanut field tests at Midville,
@universityofga
experimental farm. Plants are descended from wild species by cultivated peanut crosses. About 2,000 seedlings transplanted for single plant selections this season. Screening for disease resistance, vigor, productivity...
Peanuts with new wild species resistances to root-knot nematode & rust fungus planted yesterday in Tifton Georgia for Preliminary Yield Trials! Plantings will be replicated in 2 other locations, including a heavily nematode infected field!
@UGA_CollegeofAg
Congratulations to Embrapa researcher Francisco Aragão who led the development of these virus resistant beans! Cutting edge technology was needed to develop them. Buddha-like calm and dogged persistence to get them through the absurd regulatory hoops!
Viva Brasil! GM beans, resistant to virus, developed by
@embrapa
is finally on the market in Brasil. Developed by public sector scientists in a developing country first! Thanks Alda Lerayer
@hgupta84
@AcademicChatter
The PI was wrong to write you off, but looks like a mistake to review the paper. You should have declared conflict of interest
Without GM crops, the world would have needed 3.4% more cropland
If there hadn’t been GM bans, more than 10% global cropland wouldn’t have been needed for current production. That’s equivalent to vast swathes of tropical forest
See this link for article:
Very excited today to be publishing my complete guide to all necessary knowledge for gardeners in the South East of the USA
Don't plant things that deer eat!
That's it