Talking Biotech Podcast

Tweet   This week features two discussions with fellows serving in the Global Leadership Program of the Cornell Alliance for Science.  The first part is a discussion with Nassib Mugwanya, Outreach Leader for the Ugandan Biosciences Information Center.  He discusses the state of biotech solutions in Uganda, both in terms of critical needs and the current pipeline.  The second part is a discussion about the public Ask Me Anything event that was held near the university where I served as a panelist.  Jayson Merkley is another Fellow in the program.  We discuss the surprises and the lessons learned in the event. Like the podcast?  Please subscribe and review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM

Tweet This episode is an introduction to tomatoes, popular fruits that provide great variation to the eye and palate, as well as the foundation of many recipes. Surprisingly, tomatoes are fragile fruits and the plants can be difficult to grow.  They are under constant attack from pests and pathogens, and new varieties must deliver profits for growers and beautiful, flavorful fruits for industry and the consumer. Tomato improvement is happening in several ways. Dr. Sam Hutton is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center outside of Tampa, FL.  Dr. Hutton is a traditional breeder that uses molecular tools to speed development of new cultivars for Florida growers.  He talks about the origins of tomato, it’s domestication, and the current breeding priorities.  He also discusses the challenges to the industry and future opportunities. The second part of the podcast is Dr. Diana Horvath form Two Blades Foundation.  Dr. Horvath discusses the BS2 transgenic tomato. The plant has been engineered with a gene from pepper that confers resistance to bacterial diseases.  These diseases profoundly affect yields, and require use of anti-microbial compounds in both conventional and organic production.  Adoption of the BS2 tomato could increase yields for farmers, decrease production costs, and require fewer pesticides. Like the podcast?  Please subscribe and review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM

Tweet   This week’s Talking Biotech features discussion of Huanglongbing (HLB) also known as Citrus Greening Disease.  The disease is devastating Florida citrus, and is causing a massive hardship on the State’s iconic industries.  We are joined by Ricke Kress from Southern Gardens Citrus, one of the largest producers and processors.  Southern Gardens has experienced massive losses from citrus greening, losing over 800,000 trees.  They are now in the process of deregulating the first genetically engineered citrus variety.  A gene from spinach moved to citrus trees confers tolerance to this disease, and the plants are asymptomatic and productive so far.  This is another excellent example of how these technologies, developed by small companies or universities, can solve issues that help ensure future delivery of fresh, healthy fruit. Like the podcast?  Please subscribe and review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM  

Tweet This week I had to address the elephant in the room. What’s up with the recent flack about Monsanto funding a science communication outreach program? What is happening with FOIA?  What is the future of the Talking Biotech science communication program? Yes, I actually went on a vacation-vacation, first time since April 2002. And it was in a place with no cell signal or internet access. Like the podcast?  Please subscribe and review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM  

Tweet This week’s podcast discusses Kevin Folta’s public records situation for 60 seconds. That is followed by a talk with Dr. Andrew McKemey from Oxitec in Oxford, England.  Oxitec has a technology that allows rearing of male mosquitoes that transmit a gene that disrupts offspring from developing.  This technology has been show to work field situations, providing potential solutions to mosquito-borne disease.  Dr. McKemey describes the technology and addresses ecological concerns. In the second part Dr. Phil Stewart from Driscoll’s Strawberry Associates talks about careers in plant breeding.  There is a desperate need for plant breeders in both industry and academia.  These high-paying, satisfying careers outnumber the supply of graduating students to fill the positions. Dr. Stewart discusses his job, the required preparations, and how interested students can target these lucrative and fulfilling career paths. Like the podcast?  Please subscribe and review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM  

Tweet This week’s podcast is an important analysis of two published reports. First, the results from the famous Rothamstead wheat trial show that their transgene does not confer resistance to aphids, inconsistent with their laboratory findings.  While this outcome was considered to be a successful, reliable answer, it was billed as an abject failure on anti-biotech activist websites. Today we revisit the issues of publication and peer-review, and the story of the threats of vandalism against the experiment.  We then will speak with Prof. John Pickett from Rothamstead Research Institute. We’ll discuss the lab work the trials, and future directions. The second part of the podcast discusses the recent publication from Adyydurai et al that claims transgenic soy produces abnormal amounts of formaldehyde, relative to non-transgenic controls.  The conclusion comes from a computational approach that was never experimentally validated.  Since, I have extended an offer to test their hypothesis, yet they have not accepted the opportunity to examine if their prediction is in fact correct.  Meanwhile, they are using this paper as a warning about transgenic crops. Like the podcast?  Please subscribe and review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM  

Tweet This Talking Biotech Podcast features Dr. William Powell from SUNY, where he is co-Director of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project.  The American Chestnut was a dominant forest tree in Appalachia until the late 1800’s when it was destroyed by disease. Dr. Powell’s project has used a transgenic approach to confer resistance to the disease, with the goal of repatriating the forest with this dominant tree species.  Dr. Richard Michelmore from UC-Davis talks about lettuce history, genetics, genomics and breeding, with surprising information about lettuce that will make you never look at a head of lettuce the same way again. Do me a favor– Subscribe, and please write a review!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM

Tweet Ag professionals know their businesses and on-farm practices better than anyone. However, they don’t tend to share their story in public space, allowing others (including unscrupulous hucksters and activists) to warp their reality. How do we get the real experts excited about communicating about new technology, and how it is used on the farm?  New innovations in crops and animals stand to improve productivity and quality of farm products, with benefits to farmers, the consumer and the environment. This is the topic of Dr. Kevin Folta’s presentation to the Florida Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers and Ranchers Leadership Symposium in Naples, FL, July 18, 2015.  An accompanying slide show is available at www.slideshare.net/kevinfolta .  Please use it to talk to others, especially family, concerned friends, and people that need to understand the value of biotech innovations. Innovation goes to application with communication.    Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM

Tweet Salmon is an outstanding food for protein, and undeniably great table fare. The AquaBounty company has produced the AquaAdvantage salmon, a fish that grows to production size in less time. This means the same amount of healthy fish using less food, labor, water, and other limited resources. Dave Conley speaks about the salmon, how the trait works, it’s deregulation, and addresses questions about safety and containment.  The second part of the podcast visits with Professor Pat Heslop-Harrison, where we discuss banana origins, applications and the challenges to modern cultivation– with an eye on how breeders and biotechnologists might impact the future of this important fruit.  Special Guest Host, Ms. Val Swenson. Please subscribe!  Stitcher       iTunes   Player FM

Tweet This episode of Talking Biotech features stories of genetically engineered chickens that do not spread the avian influenza virus. This year over 45 million birds have died or have been euthanized because of illness from the avian flu. Prof. Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland is part of the research team that engineered chickens using a clever strategy– they can catch the virus and become ill, but they do not transmit it. She discusses the technology and its hurdles to commercialization.  In the second segment Dr. David Spooner from the USDA ARS and University of Wisconsin talks about the origins of potatoes, the evidence of his path to domestication, and aspects about the future of potato biotechnology.  Special guest co-host Amira- Executive Chef. Download / Subscribe on iTunes Download / Subscribe from Stitcher Download / Subscribe from Player FM

Tweet   Several trends are present in the anti-ag-biotech literature.  First, many papers are poorly done, present opinion without data, or overstep the data accumulated. These papers appear in low-impact journals, oftentimes without peer review, and typically are experimental dead ends.  These works, and their authors, have limited credibility in the scientific community, yet are darlings of the activist movement. Today a more disturbing trend is apparent.  Good science, performed correctly and rigorously, is misrepresented in the popular media.  A case is Dr. Fiona Young’s work published in Integrative Pharmacology, Toxicology and Genotoxicity. The work showed that glyphosate has little effect on tissue culture cells, but the formulation with surfactants (‘detergents’ that help penetrate cells) does kill cells at higher concentrations, likely due to the surfactant effects on membranes.  There was no evidence of endocrine disruption. But an overzealous activist movement, including author Jeffery Smith, reads a title and spreads the message that Dr. Young’s group shows evidence of endocrine disruption. In other words, they get it 100% backwards from what the report really says, and then they use this misrepresentation to generate fear around agricultural chemicals that people rarely encounter anyway. In Questions and Answers:  A video spread like wildfire about a family and pesticides in their urine. What does it really mean? In Amazing Crop History, Drs. Shelby Ellison and Philipp Simon talk about carrot’s evolutionary roots, where it came from, its interesting history, and the future of carrot in modern breeding efforts. Download / Subscribe on iTunes Download / Subscribe from Stitcher Download / Subscribe from Player FM

Tweet This week’s Talking Biotech discusses a recent trek to Washington DC, where Kevin Folta, Chris Barbey and Alejandra Abril Guevara answered questions for the US House Science, Technology and Space Committee.  The three has a conversation about the experience, including the challenges and surprises of working with lawmakers.  The importance of outreach and communication strategies are discussed. The second part is an interview with Andrew Wamsley from American Farm Bureau. The current state of ag biotech topics, such as labeling, regulation and new products, are discussed. Download from iTunes Download from Stitcher

Tweet This week’s podcast features an interview with Neal Carter from Okanagan Specialty Fruits.  His biotech megacorporation of eight employees has developed the Arctic Apple, a product where a gene central to the browning reaction has been essentially turned off.  The result is an apple that can be cut and does not brown.  Carter speaks of the advantages of the product, the challenges to commercialization, and the future outlook on marketing. Dr. Jonathan Wendel from Iowa State University discusses the genetic origins of cotton and its strange journey across oceans, a few million years of separation, followed by a genetic reunion between Old World and New World cotton types that gave rise to the major commercial types used today.  Your questions are answered;  Special guest host, Dr. Karen Cyphers. Download from iTunes Download from Stitcher

Tweet   Dr. James Dale from the Queensland University of Technology speaks of his banana engineered with beta carotene that can soothe blindness and death in central African countries. He speaks of the product, the process and challenges of introducing a needed technology to the African continent. Your questions are answered using the hashtag #Talkingbiotech Dr. Sean Myles of Dalhousie University talks about grape domestication, grape genetic improvement, and the genetic racism of wine snobs. Download on iTunes Download on Stitcher

Tweet   This episode of Talking Biotech features Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam from the University of California at Davis.  She is a Cooperative Extension Specialist working in genetic improvement of cattle.  Dr. Van Eenennaam discusses the new project to produce hornless cattle using gene editing technology. Your questions from Twitter are answered using #talkingbiotech In Amazing Plant History Dr. Paul Lyrene from the University of Florida talks about the domestication of blueberries and the future of blueberry breeding.