“Frankencrops:” a biotech bust?

Despite decades of hype, high hopes, and investment, the market for genetically engineered crops seems to have hit a plateau. Currently, almost all genetically engineered crops are planted in four countries-the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Argentina-and three kinds of crops dominate: corn, cotton, and soy.

There are different takes on the matter: the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications says that genetically engineered crops have increased the incomes of more than 7.7 million farmers in the developing world, and that there is room for more.

Others point to the three powerful companies in agricultural biotech sector-Monsanto, Syngenta, and Bayer-and allies among the U.S. Government and World Trade Organization, as proof that plans are afoot in trying to sell genetically engineered crops to the rest of the world-especially to Asia and Africa.

Source: Inter Press Service News Agency

Barrett boosts botany

You may think botany a 19th-century preoccupation, now withering on the vine. Not so, argues Dr. Spencer Barrett, of the department of botany, in an editorial this month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Despite a “gradual attrition of ‘botany’ departments on university campuses worldwide as a result of reorganization within the life sciences,” botany can still inform society on issues such as “environmental consequences of GM crops, invasion biology and global environmental change,” he writes.

Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Ski season’s over on Mars

But a few million years ago, Mars’ poles pointed closer to the sun, which caused massive amounts of frozen water to evaporate, which eventually fell as frozen precipitation on mountains around the planet’s equator, scientists now report. The snow formed glaciers, which gouged the landscape.

Since 1976, when NASA’s Viking probes first caught sight of Mars’ cornucopia of craters and canyons, scientists had been puzzling about how these features were created. “The findings are important because they tell us that Mars has experienced big climate changes in the past, the kinds of climate change that led to the Great Ice Age here on Earth,” said Brown University lead researcher Dr. James Head.

Source: Science, Brown University News Service