How can you say something is historically important or not unless you observe it? What happens if you set up conditions where you intentionally cannot observe a site’s historical importance? I said in the opening post that some sites might have been chosen as a deliberate trolling for comment, and I think the Svalbard Global [...]

It’s easy to pin scientific credit on a person. He or she usually has a name on the key publication, but how do you credit a place? Science is a human activity, so is it just the humans that matter or are there things were place contributes as much as people? While I was kicking [...]

General Perspective During the 20th Century national, regional and international gene banks established major collections for most crops to ensure the conservation of plant genetic resources. However, the use of this crop genetic endowment remains limited due to the lack of systematic research to provide a comprehensive framework for the efficient identification and introgression of [...]

TIME has recently published 100 greatest places in the world. The book is a collection of sites that, the editors argue, have had the biggest impact on world history. It’s excellent blog material because hardly anyone has read it (including me), any list will be personal and omit something someone feels is important and, following [...]

Global agriculture is facing major challenges to ensure global food security, such as the need to breed high-yielding crops adapted to future climates and the identification of dedicated feedstock crops for biofuel production (biofuel feedstocks). Plant phenomics offers a suite of new technologies to accelerate progress in understanding gene function and environmental responses. This will [...]