Another month has gone by with plenty of plant science to celebrate! Read on and explore the links to catch up on the latest news, views, events, opportunities and stories from the Global Plant Council community and beyond.
Looking forward, don’t forget that 18th May is international Fascination of Plants Day (FoPD)! Plant enthusiasts from all over the world will be hosting a variety of events to enthuse people of all ages and from all walks of life about the Fascination of Plants and plant science! Check out the website at www.plantday.org to find out what’s happening in your region, or to contact your local coordinator to discuss hosting your own event – it’s not too late!
One exciting and rather innovative FoPD initiative you might like to participate in is ‘Botany Live‘. During this virtual event, taking place between the 18th and 21st May, scientists from all over the world will be live-streaming short online broadcasts at www.botany.live. If you are interested in streaming your own live broadcast, please download further information here.
Finally, places are still available for our upcoming workshop, “New Breeding Technologies in the Plant Sciences” on the 7th and 8th July 2017. This satellite event of the Society for Experimental Biology’s annual main meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden (3–6th July), will be of great interest to plant and crop scientists who are invested in the future of gene editing both on a practical and regulatory level. We will provide a forum for debate around the broader policy issues, while including opportunities for in-depth discussion of the techniques required to make this technology work in your own research.
From Elsevier: Free access to all Flora articles To celebrate 200 years of Flora, Elsevier is providing free, open access to all articles from this journal until March 2020. What fascinating gems from the past will you discover?
If you have a conference, meeting, workshop, training course or other event coming up, we can include it in our Events calendar! Please email lisa@globalplantcouncil.org
Lots of new reports, and an archive of useful documents from the last few years, are available on our website. Head to the Resources page and click ‘Reports’.
Feeding the Future: Four Years On A new report by the UK’s National Farmers’ Union urges government and research providers to invest in agricultural research and development, and to enable British farmers to use the latest technologies.
Nearly 2 billion people depend on imported food
Finnish researchers have been able to show a broad connection between resource scarcity, population pressure, and food imports, in a study published in Earth’s Future.
Would you like to contribute an article to the GPC’s blog? Please get in touch! Email lisa@globalplantcouncil.org
Creole maize reveals adaptation secrets In this repost from SciDevNet, Lucina Melesio explores recent work from Mexico that has identified 100 genes that influence adaptation to the latitude, altitude, growing season and flowering time of nearly 4,500 native maize varieties in Latin America and the Caribbean. [Spanish version here].
Roots of a second Green Revolution We spoke to Professor Jonathan Lynch from Penn State University (USA) about his research on root traits, and how this has deepened our understanding of the way in which plants adapt to drought and low soil fertility.
Healthy soil is the real key to feeding the world In this report from The Conversation, Professor David Montgomery (University of Washington, USA), explores how regenerative farming practices can increase agricultural productivity and sustainability, even on small scales.
How diverse is your food? Dr Colin Khoury, food biodiversity scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, has launched the Changing Global Diet website, where you can interactively explore how and why human diets have changed over time in 152 countries.
Please contact us (info@globalplantcouncil.org) to find out how your organization can join the Global Plant Council.
The GPC is a coalition of plant and crop science societies and affiliates from across the globe. The GPC seeks to bring plant scientists together to work synergistically toward solving the pressing problems we face.