Category Research
Creativity comes in many flavors
Breeding soybean is a fascinating pursuit. There is always some new angle, some new tool to deploy, some new end use to target. And I value the challenge. It never gets boring. There are folks among us who are tasked with finding new uses for things… things such as soybeans. There are new spins on […]
Random thoughts
Random… as if this blog hasn’t been random enough. Today I’ll share a few things that have crossed the path over the last several days. These should touch upon science, farming, food, and living a measured life… hopefully going somewhat along the lines of the mission here. Science – several days ago I was doing […]
Farm music
Early of a morning, out in the fields, Mother Nature fills the quiet with a music of her own. Birdsong if you’re lucky, crickets otherwise. Sometime you might hear the patter of raindrops on the leaves, the pleating of a lamb, the grunting of a hog, or the crowing of a rooster. If you’d rather […]
The Poor Deer
Farming is a fascinating enterprise. We need food to survive, and as omnivores our food pallet is fairly extensive. If it’s not poisonous, make it a meal. Farming allows us to be selective in what we choose to consume. Farming also allows us to limit our footprint… though with over seven billion of us, the […]
Bravely Buzzing Big Brother Bee’s Bug Biodiversity Boudoir *
Over the last year we (the GP staff) have written about bees on several occasions. And you may be forgiven if you’d thought we’d run through the subject. I thought so. Now this story comes along, and we couldn’t resist. In the course of evaluating soybean germplasm we rely heavily on an instrument (NIRT – […]
Making crosses
After a long day in the sun, testing one’s fortitude in the hope of making something meaningful I retire to rest so that tomorrow we might try again. At work we are making crosses. Nope, not religious icons. We are crossing different strains of soybean. Beginning the process of developing new and better varieties for […]
To Kill a Monarch
Not exactly a Harper Lee title, nor is this a story about the run up to the first World War (Archduke Franz Ferdinand was, strictly speaking, not yet a Monarch… human or butterfly). And as we shall soon see, no monarchs were actually killed in this episode, tough some habitat was deliberately destroyed. Specialists, are […]
Clem claims Climate Clever Clovers courageous – not clueless
Back in October I posted a piece on cow guts. In it I mentioned two avenues to remediation of methane evolution from ruminant guts, the methane affecting atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming (a hot topic). Due credit was given to research to modify the cows through breeding, and to changing cow rations through […]
Last call for 2018
There seems to be value in reflection; where we’ve been, what we’ve done. Positive memories bring a nostalgia and warming of the heart. Negative memories call forth a resolve to learn from mistakes or guide us toward paths which avoid repeats. The turn of the year seems as good a place as any to take […]
Gulliver's Pulse 
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