This post is for the environmentally-conscious meat eater. If you want to decrease your beef-eating carbon footprint, you might want to reconsider grass-fed beef.

Headlines claiming that GMOs are banned in Europe abound. These are often accompanied by an assertion that the United States should follow suit. Does the EU know something the US does not? Where are these claims coming from?

We know that plants can remember certain attacks or weather changes and learn to respond to them more quickly. Some have called this plant neurobiology. A new study just demonstrated that plants may have proteins similar to the ones that cause mad cow disease. It's the plants, they're learning, they...remember.

Superweed is a misleading term used to describe weeds that are resistant to an herbicide. It is conceptually possible that certain, herbicide-resistant GMOs could contribute to an increase in herbicide-resistant weeds; however, such concerns are not limited to GMOs, but are relevant for any crops used in conjunction with herbicides.

It’s springtime, so those of us with allergies might have noticed plants getting all animal planet with our sinuses. Seems most plants are pretty lose with their pollen, but when it comes to procreation, they’re very particular. So how do plants swipe right on a match?

Different images in popular culture are used to represent organic farmers versus conventional farmers, are these representations accurate? To find out, I interviewed four farmers across the country who use a wide range of farming techniques.

This fun, simple hands-on activity helps students understand the difference between plant breeding and genetic engineering. 

Introns -- the noncoding regions of genes -- are sometimes called junk DNA, but they play very important roles in controlling the activity of genes.

The current legislation surrounding GMO labels is full of inconsistencies. In a recent post, I discussed how challenging it is to define whether a genetically improved plant is technically a “GMO”. Determining if a given food item contains genetically modified ingredients is even more difficult. There has been a lot of recent discussion about GMO labeling.... Continue Reading →

Plants are extraordinary. In this post, I explain three surprising things you probably don't know about plants.