Talking Biotech #228 - Improved Oils from Plants with GE

-


Plants produce a variety of oils, many that are critical to the human diet.  The precise chemical qualities of plant oils dictate its stability, use, nutrient quality, or even its use as fuel.  Dr. Surinder Singh is an expert in plant oils at CSIRO, the Australian National Research Laboratory.  His laboratory has been working on projects in a variety of crops to improve the oil quality for human nutrition, but also as a potential fuel.  Such efforts provide a renewable and more sustainable source of valuable oils, taking pressure off of fisheries and carbon-intensive practices.


 Listen to this week's podcast here. 

Popular posts from this blog

Film Review: The Need to Grow

-
Image
The recurring ads on Facebook pulled at me to watch The Need to Grow , a documentary film about food and farming.  As someone connected with these areas professionally and personally, I thought it would be worth a watch.  Here is a review. First the good things.  The film is nicely shot and well written.  The majority of the work builds on themes such as nutritious diets healthy soils, and efficient energy. Those are the central underlying values of the film, and ones that I wholly endorse.  However, where the film falls apart is in its approaches to achieve those end points.  Two of the "experts" recruited for the film are none other than Jeffrey Smith and Vandana Shiva, two people with little training in science or farming (and no, Vandana Shiva is not a physicist as the film claims).  The narrator is actress Rosario Dawson, who early in the film makes the proclamation, "Agriculture is the most destructive human activity on the planet." It is...
Read more

Food Babe Visits My University

-
Image
It was 6:30 pm in the lab and I was just thinking about the last things I'd need to get done before I could go home.  Typical night.  Usually I'm riding home about 7 pm, but an email popped up asking me if I was going to go watch the Food Babe.  A click on a link would take me to the note on a UF Dean for Students Good Food Revolution Events website.  Vani Hari would be spreading her corrupt message of bogus science and abject food terrorism here at the University of Florida. Oh joy. There's something that dies inside when you are a faculty member that works hard to teach about food, farming and science, and your own university brings in a crackpot to unravel all of the information you have brought to students. She might have started from honest roots.  Her story says she was duped by an organic yogurt stand (join the club) into buying taro toppings that were filled with artificial, non-organic colors.  She realized that she could use social m...
Read more

Shame on Pediatrics. Rejecting Scientist's Comments

-
 A lot has been said about the journal Pediatrics December 2023 Clinical Report on "Using GMOs on Children". The poor scholarship and citation bias are alarming, and the bias against safe technology is clear.  When I wrote to editor-in-chief Dr. Lewis First, he indicated that I was invited to submit a response to the article that would be posted below the article on its website. I submitted my response, and it was not published on the site. My guess is that it illuminated the bankruptcies of the article in a manner that ran counter to the authors', editor's and journal's narrative.  So I'll publish my comment here.  Dear Pediatrics Readership,  The article by Abrams et al. represents a stunning example of how misinformation spreads- even through a credible conduit. Pediatrics is a respected journal, so when a paper implies a technology is dangerous, physicians and the general public take note. That’s good. But if the message runs counter to the scientific con...
Read more