Jun 26

Broadcasting Plant Science Live to the World

By Isabel | Blog, Plantae, Public Engagement, SEB

Dr Ian Street

This week’s post was written by Dr Ian Street (@IHStreet), the Resources Editor at AoB Blog. He is also a science writer and plant scientist. His science blog is The Quiet Branches.

On 18th May 2017, plant scientists from all over the world celebrated “International Fascination of Plants Day”. This year, plant enthusiasts could follow events around the world – thanks to social media and live-streaming. Scientists shared live broadcasts about the science they do, the facilities where they work, models from history, about engaging students with plants, and more. Botany Live, organized by the AoB Blog, was an experiment in science engagement supported by the Society for Experimental Biology, The Annals of Botany Company, and Plantae. Overall, thousands tuned in to 31 planned events registered with Botany Live.

Using Periscope and Facebook Live, some reported from dedicated events planned around Plant Day. Others talked directly to the camera and their virtual audience about plants, plant science, and communicating plant science.

The Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center (ABRC) at Ohio State University showed off the facilities and robots they use to maintain both gene stocks and seed stocks. These facilities and resources, which provide essential support for plant research, are often only known within the plant science community. Even there, how they operate on a day-to-day basis remains a mystery to many. Botany Live allowed us to take a peek at the support structures that make international plant science possible. The ABRC videos also showed how plant science is using cutting edge technology with robots to automate seed sorting and gene stocks.

Frame from the Hounsfield Facility Botany Live Broadcast, showing the glass house and the robot that carries individual plants to be scanned.

A tour of the Hounsfield X-ray Facility (@UoNHounsfield) demonstrated the high-tech nature of modern plant science too. The staging the Hounsfield video was clever, as the scientists there clearly set up marks they had to hit to be on camera at certain times demonstrating the three sizes of scanner at the facility. Their live-stream ended with Malcolm Bennett in the glass house talking about the importance of exploring root traits, a big part of what they track at Hounsfield with robots and 3D X-ray tomography.

The National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) wheat transformation facility broadcast brought us cutting-edge biology directly from the field. Alison Bentley (@AlisonRBentley) guiding us around the facility, where scientists develop and field test new varieties of wheat, followed by a look around their glasshouses. Geraint Parry (@GARNetweets) then interviewed several NIAB conference attendees. A specialized facility for wheat transformation (making transgenic wheat) is, like the ABRC and Hounsfield, a resource of a special capacity to do something technical that not all individual labs can develop.

An infected plant in background and flower in the foreground from Monica Lewandowski’s Botany Live Broadcast.

Another outdoor tour of a garden in California was given by Monica Lewandowski. She highlighted the diversity of plants grown in the state’s central valley. She also spoke about some of the challenges that plants face, and why we need plant scientists to study them. It showed the simplicity possible with Periscope broadcasts, as her session focused on just her with planned talking points, a walking path, and her voice-over.

Alun Salt of the AoB Blog brought us some short broadcasts from Kew Gardens. He gave a brief tour of the Wollemi pine, an ancient lineage known only from fossils until 1994. He also gave a quick overview of the garden’s carnivorous plants, including the coolest plant in the world, Darlingtonia californica.

Darlingtonia californica at Kew Gardens from Alun Salt’s Botany Live Broadcast.

Several Botany Live recordings involved school students. Alistair Culham and Dr M (@drmgoeswild) broadcast a video with students about what they’d done earlier, counting plants and observing them. Many of the students were surprised to learn where pineapples come from: not from a tree, but a bush yielding a single pineapple a year. The Gramene Database (@GrameneDatabase) broadcast a talk with students about plants’ superpowers such as resurrection plants, which can lose 95% of their water and seemingly come back to life upon rehydration. Maria Papanatsiou (@m_papanatsiou) from the University of Glasgow broadcast Plant Day activities engaging students, and many of the videos can be found on the social wall of tweets made for Botany Live.

The most popular Plant Day broadcast was from the Manchester Museum, featuring botany curators Rachel Webster (Manchester) and Donna Young (Liverpool) talking about Brendel’s Plant Models collections from Manchester and the Liverpool World Museum. They’re remarkable models of plants, made of paper mache amongst other materials, created in 1880-1920 by a father/son team in Germany. They were designed to teach plant anatomy and many are incredibly intricate, with some even being able to be taken apart to show specific parts of a flower.

Brendel Plant Model Nr. 10, Pisum Sativum: Accreditation: By David Ludwig (own work at Botanical Museum in Greifswald) Image credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Botany Live broadcasts came from all over the world, and the event can grow in the years to come. The format of live streaming is flexible, with elaborate or simple setups possible. Most broadcasts were under ten minutes, but some lasted almost an hour, and of course, they can be done nearly anytime and anywhere with a good data connection.

This first year of Botany Live was an experiment. With thousands of people reached (and likely more, as many of the videos are still available), it was a success and a boost to the Plant Day events already taking place, extending their reach online. Given the success the Manchester Museum had with their broadcast, more institutions being directly involved will help promote the live broadcasts and engage even more people in the fascinating world of plants.

Further reading:

GARNet newsletter also covered Botany Live in its May 2017 issue (pdf)

Jun 05

0

The State of the World’s Plants 2017 by Bursary Winner Harison Andriambelo

By Isabel | Blog, GPC Community, Scientific Meetings, SEB

This week’s post was written by Harison Andriambelo, a PhD student at the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Harison was the awardee of the Early Career Researcher travel bursary from the Society for Experimental Biology in association with the Global Plant Council, enabling him to attend the State of the World’s Plants Symposium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Here’s how he got on!

Attending the State of the World’s Plants Symposium 2017 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was a fantastic opportunity for me to get a detailed insight into many aspects of plant conservation, including the latest emerging research. Scientists from all over the world attended the symposium and shared results from several ecoregions, including tropical, boreal, and temperate biomes. It was also great to visit the Gardens, which were looking amazing in the British summertime.

As a botanist from Madagascar, I found the focus session on conservation in my country particularly useful, and I really enjoyed the talks by Pete Lowry and George Schatz, both from Missouri Botanic Garden.

Other sessions in the conference highlighted important issues including fires and invasive species. We heard that fire is not always bad for plants, especially in savannah systems, where plant diversity is maintained by the fire regime. I believe better scientific communication to the public is urgently needed on this issue.

Another great session concerned invasive species. I have worked across all the biomes in Madagascar, from humid forests to the dry spiny forest, and I have seen first-hand the effects invasive plants can have. A detailed assessment of invasive plant species in wetlands and in the western dry forests of Madagascar made me more aware of the potential impacts of these species. By attending this symposium, I learned about several programs and efforts by the Invasive Species Specialist Group and will spread information about invasive species management to colleagues once I return to Madagascar.

For me, the highlight of the session on medicinal plants was a talk by the President of Mauritius. It was inspirational to see that scientists can even become a head of state. Such leadership offers great promise for addressing environmental issues at national scale. I am certain that having an ecologist as President in Madagascar would allow much greater progress on conservation issues in my home country, which has many highly threatened endemic species. Scientists can bring their understanding and ability to analyze complex systems to bear on policy. Good leaders can take a long-term holistic view and accord the appropriate priority to the environment in national plans for development.

This symposium allowed me to present some results of my research activities in Madagascar and get feedback from an international group of scientists. A deep discussion with people working at RBG Kew about how to scale information on tree dispersal processes from the plot to landscape scales was very valuable. As they know the Madagascan context, they were very interested in my results and a possible collaboration is on its way.

Finally, this trip to London allowed me to spend more time with my colleague Dr Peter Long at the University of Oxford and to make good progress for my scientific research activities. I am very grateful to the Society for Experimental Biology for supporting my travel to the UK to participate in this meeting.

May 29

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The flower breeders who sold X-ray lilies and atomic marigolds

By Isabel | Blog, Public Engagement

The Chelsea Flower Show is a world-renowned garden show held every year in May by the UK’s Royal Horticultural Society. There are exhibits of garden design, educational outreach, and exciting new varieties of ornamental plants, fruits and vegetables, with prestigious awards given for each category.

This week’s blog post is republished with permission from The Conversation, under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.

The flower breeders who sold X-ray lilies and atomic marigolds

By Helen Anne Curry, University of Cambridge

The Chelsea Flower Show, one of the biggest and best known horticultural shows in the world, took place on 24-28th May 2016. Some 150,000 visitors made their way to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, UK, to be wowed by innovative garden designs and especially by gorgeous flowers. Among other things, show-goers had the chance to learn the winner of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Plant of the Year award. This annual prize goes to the “most inspiring new plant” on display at the show – a high honor indeed given the number and range of varieties introduced each year.

The relentless pursuit of showy flowers for garden display extends back significantly further than the 104 years of the Chelsea show. One need only recall the infamous Dutch tulip craze of the 17th century to be reminded that fascination with floral novelties has a long and storied history.

Over the centuries, entrepreneurial cultivators have endeavored to create unique plant varieties, either by bringing together the genetic material from established lines through hybridization or through the discovery of new genetic variation such as a chance mutation in a field. Today, flower breeding is pursued with a far better understanding of plant biology than ever before, in some cases with the aid of technologies such as tissue culture and genetic transformation. Yet the goal remains the same: the creation of tantalizing tulips, ravishing roses, show-stopping snapdragons and myriad other plants that will ideally prove irresistible to gardeners and turn a handsome profit.

The quest to produce profitable new varieties – and to do so as fast as possible – at times led to breeders to embrace methods that today seem strange. There is no better illustration of this than the mid-century output of one of America’s largest flower-and-vegetable-seed companies, W Atlee Burpee & Co.

Gardening with X-rays

In 1941, Burpee Seed introduced a pair of calendula flowers called the “X-Ray Twins”. The company president, David Burpee, claimed that these had their origins in a batch of seeds exposed to X-rays in 1933 and that the radiation had generated mutant types, from which the “X-Ray Twins” were eventually developed.

At the time, Burpee was not alone in exploring whether X-rays might facilitate flower breeding. Geneticists had only recently come to agree that radiation could lead to genetic mutation: the possibilities for creating variation “on demand” now seemed boundless. Some breeders even hoped that X-ray technologies would help them press beyond existing biological limits.

The Czech-born horticulturist Frank Reinelt thought that subjecting bulbs to radiation might help him produce an elusive red delphinium. Unfortunately, the experiment did not produce the hoped-for hue. Greater success was achieved by two engineers at the General Electric Research Laboratory, who produced – and patented – a new variety of lily as a result of their experiments in X-ray breeding.

Though Reinelt’s and other breeders’ tangles with X-ray technology resulted in woefully few marketable plant varieties, David Burpee remained keen on testing new techniques as they appeared on the horizon. He was especially excited about methods that, like X-ray irradiation, promised to generate manifold genetic mutations. He thought these would transform plant breeding by making new inheritable traits – the essential foundation of a novel flower variety – available on demand. He estimated that “in his father’s time” a breeder chanced on a mutation “once in every 900,000 plants”. He and his breeders, by comparison, equipped with X-rays, UV-radiation, chemicals, and other mutation-inducing methods, could “turn them out once in every 900 plants. Or oftener”.

Scientific sales pitches

Burpee’s numbers were hot air, but in a few cases plant varieties produced through such methods did prove hot sellers. In the late 1930s Burpee breeders began experimentation with a plant alkaloid called colchicine, a compound that sometimes has the effect of doubling the number of chromosomes in a plant’s cells. They exploited the technique to create new varieties of popular garden flowers such as marigold, phlox, zinnia, and snapdragons.

All were advertised as larger and hardier as a result of their chromosome reconfiguration – and celebrated by the company as the products of “chemically accelerated evolution”. The technique proved particularly successful with snapdragons, giving rise to a line of “Tetra Snaps” that were by the mid-1950s the best-selling varieties of that flower in the United States.

Burpee’s fascination with (in his words) “shocking mother nature” to create novel flowers for American gardeners eventually led him to explore still more potent techniques for generating inheritable variation. He even had some of the company’s flower beds seeded with radioactive phosphorus in the 1950s. These efforts do not appear to have led to any new varieties – Burpee Seed never hawked an “atomic-bred” flower – but the firm’s experimentation with radiation did result in a new Burpee product. Beginning in 1962, they offered for sale packages of “atomic-treated” marigold seeds, from which home growers might expect to grow a rare white marigold among other oddities.

Burpee was, above all, a consummate showman and a master salesman. His enthusiasm for the use of X-rays, chemicals, and radioisotopes in flower breeding emerged as much from his knowledge that these methods could be effectively incorporated into sales pitches as from his interest in more efficient and effective breeding. Many of his mid-century consumers wanted to see the latest science and technology at work in their gardens, whether in the form of plant hormones, chemical treatments, or varieties produced through startling new techniques.

Times have changed, 60-odd years later. Chemicals and radiation are as more often cast as threatening than benign, and it is likely that many of today’s visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show hold a different view about the kinds of breeding methods they’d like to see employed on their garden flowers. But as the continued popularity of the show attests, their celebration of flower innovations and the human ingenuity behind these continues, unabated.

Helen Anne Curry, Peter Lipton Lecturer in History of Modern Science and Technology, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Jan 18

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Creating stress resilient agricultural systems: Video interviews

By Isabel | Blog, Scientific Meetings, SEB

The global population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, and to accommodate this, crop production must increase by 60% in the next 35 years. Furthermore, our global climate is rapidly changing, putting our cropping systems under more strain than ever before. Agriculture will need to adapt to accommodate more extreme weather events and changing conditions that may mean increased instance of drought, heatwaves or flooding. The Global Plant Council Stress Resilience initiative, was created to address these issues.

Back in October the Global Plant Council, in collaboration with the Society for Experimental Biology brought together experts from around the world at a Stress Resilience Forum to identify gaps in current research, and decide how best the plant science community can move forwards in terms of developing more resilient agricultural systems. We interviewed a number of researchers throughout the meeting, asking about their current work and priorities for the future. Watch the best bits in the video below:

Aug 28

0

Plant Biology Scandinavia 2015

By Isabel | Blog, GPC Community, Scandinavian Plant Physiology Society, Scientific Meetings

Celia Knight and Saijaliisa Kangasjarvi at the conference dinner

The 26^th Scandanavian Plant Physiology Society (SPPS) Congress took place from the 9^th – 13^th August at Stockholm University. Celia Knight attended the meeting and has written a report for the blog this week, so that those of you who couldn’t attend are up to speed!

A diversity of speakers and topics

Attending SPPS 2015 was a fantastic opportunity to hear about progress across a really broad spectrum of plant biology research. The program included sessions on development, epigenetics and gene regulations, high-throughput biology, photobiology, abiotic stress, education and outreach, and biotic interactions. There really was something for everyone! Additionally, the organizers had made a notable effort to include a good mix of both established and early career researchers, further adding to the diversity of talks on offer.

I was struck by the contributions from the various Society awards so will focus on these.

Beautiful Stockholm where the meeting was held

SPPS awards

Gunnar Öquist (Umeå University, Sweden) was given the SPPS Award in recognition of his outstanding merited contribution to the science of plant biology. His talk entitled “My view of how to foster more transformative research” provided a reminder that the dual aims of research, both to solve problems and to seek new knowledge, are very important if global challenges are to be met.

The SPPS early career award recognizes a highly talented scientist who has made a significant contribution to Scandinavian plant biology. This year two early career awards were given. The first recipient, Ari-Pekka Mähönen (University of Helsinki, Finland), received the award for his work on growth dynamics in Arabidopsis thaliana, and showed some amazing sections to follow cambium development. Nathaniel Street (Umeå University, Sweden) also received an award for his work “Applying next generation sequencing to genomic studies of Aspen species and Norway Spruce”. Both gave great talks including strong research in these areas; it was great to see upcoming researchers take the spotlight and give us a glimpse to the future of plant biology.

Torgny Näsholm (SLU, Umeå Sweden) was awarded the Physiologia Plantarum award. This award is given to a scientist that has made significant contribution to the areas of plant science covered by the journal Physiologia Plantarum. Torgny uses microdialysis, a technique currently used by neuroscientists, to investigate the availability of soil nitrogen to plants. Data generated using this technique are now bringing into question our current view of nitrogen availability measured using traditional methods.

Additional activities included a tour of the Bergius Botanic Garden

The Popularisation prize, awarded to Stefan Jansson (Umeå University, Sweden), recognizes significant contributions to science communication and public engagement. Stefan’s work in public engagement has been wide-ranging. He has been involved with The Autumn Experiment, a citizen science project engaging schools in observation, data collection and real research. Recently Stefan published a book in Sweden, called ‘GMO’, which tackles the response of societies to genetically modified organisms.

At the congress, Stefan took over as the new President of the SPPS. This could lead to further emphasis and resources being placed on communicating science as the society moves forward.

Poster prizes

Prizes for the best posters are also awarded at the meeting. Five judges, including myself, assessed the posters, and the competition was fierce. It was impossible to split the top prize, so joint 1^st prizes were awarded to Veli Vural Uslu (Heidelberg University, Germany) on “Elucidating early steps of sulfate sensing mechanisms by biosensors” and to Timo Engelsdorf (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway) for “Plant cell wall integrity is maintained through cooperation of different sensing mechanisms”. Joint second prizes went to Zsofia Stangl (Umeå University, Sweden) on “Nutrient requirement of growth in different thermal environments” and to Annika Karusion (University of Tartu, Estonia) for “Circadian patterns of hydraulic and xylem sap properties: in situ study on hybrid aspen.”

Additional activities

Like any meeting, SPPS wasn’t all work and no play! Lisbeth Jonsson (Stockholm University, Sweden) and her team organized an excellent program. I feel very fortunate, on this short trip, to have had the opportunity to view Stockholm’s fine City Hall where Nobel laureates have dined, as well as the incredibly preserved Vasa ship, which sank in Stockholm bay on its maiden voyage in 1628.

I very much look forward to seeing how the society progresses in the future, and nurturing new friendships and collaborations I made at the congress.

The Drinks reception at the City Hall, walking in the footsteps of Nobel Laureates

May 27

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Fascination of Plants Day 2015

By Isabel | ASPB, Blog, GPC Community, Public Engagement

Plants really are fascinating, and their continued research and conservation are vital for our survival. To this end, the third international Fascination of Plants Day (FoPD) was held on 18th May 2015, led by Global Plant Council member organization EPSO (European Plant Sciences Organisation). The aim of the day was to enthuse as many people around the world as possible about plant sciences, and to demonstrate the importance of plants in everything from sustainable food production to pharmaceuticals.

The day was a great success with over 874 events held at over 500 institutions in 54 countries around the world! Events were attended by a diverse range of people from all backgrounds and ages, and held at a variety of organizations including museums, universities, research institutes, schools and botanic gardens.

Thank you to everyone who sent their lovely photos to us – it was absolutely wonderful to look through them all! With so many people taking part, we couldn’t possibly report on everything, so in this blog post we provide you with a small snapshot of the diverse FoPD activities from around the world.

ARGENTINA

Events were held in several cities across Argentina including La Plata, Diamante and Esperanza.

Under the microscope

A wide variety of events were held across Córdoba aimed at every one from pre-schoolers to adults. The Museum of Natural Sciences had 18 stands featuring exhibits, games, and activities aimed to increase awareness of native forests. The National Academy of Sciences hosted lectures by distinguished scientists on diverse topics ranging from curious plant names to biotechnology; the enthusiastic audiences responded well by asking thought-provoking questions. In addition, The School of Biology at the National University of Córdoba prepared six stands and offered visits to the Botanical Museum. The Catholic University of Córdoba focused on how natural insecticides are obtained from plants and microscopic plant structures.

AUSTRIA

During the workshop “What does the Bee search for in the Flower” visitors could learn more about why insects visit flowers, and the benefits provided to both the insects as well as the plants.

‘Making the invisible visible’ was the theme of a joint event between the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Vienna and the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Over 500 people attended a family event on Sunday, May 17, which involved exciting hands-on experimental workshops and guided tours. An international ‘root race’ allowed visitors to bet on how fast roots from Arabidopsis plants collected from six locations around the world would grow. Visitors also had the chance to see CT-scans and 3D rendering in action to see inside of a plant.

BULGARIA

Six FoPD events were held across Bulgaria, all of which can be seen on this blog.

At Sofia University, a variety of presentations, photography contests, demonstrations, performances and experiments explored the diversity of exotic plants, the magic of Bulgarian herds, the forests that are the lungs of the Earth, plant diseases, and the role of aquatic plants for life in the water.

Fascinating plant activities at Sofia University

GERMANY

Members of the Institute of Plant Sciences at Forschungszentrum Jülich gave guided tours and presentations to the public during the morning of FoPD. In the afternoon they built a willow hut close to the institute that will provide shade in summertime and will also be used for social events in the future.

Researchers from the institute also went into local schools to talk to young children about the importance of plants.

HUNGARY

There were 36 diverse events organized across Hungary.

In Szeged, the University of Szeged joined forces with the Institute of Plant Biology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Cereal Research Non-Profit to organise a two-day event. Lectures covering a diverse range of topics were delivered by university lecturers and plant breeders on subjects including Hungary’s biggest trees, a plant’s dispersal strategies, and the effect of climate change on plants. In parallel to these lectures were a series of demonstrations. Visitors could explore DNA extraction from strawberries using rum and pineapple, photosynthesis, writing onto leaves using light, and take part in a discussion on genetic modification.

MEXICO

A big welcome to Mexico who participated in FoPD for the first time this year! A range of diverse events were held at universities, NGOs, museums and botanic gardens across the country.

A variety of events were held at the ENES UNAM Leon. Talks and activities focused on the evolution of maize, and traditional agricultural methods used by the Aztecs. Students had the opportunity then to help plant trees and make the very first vegetable gardens on campus.

FoPD was also celebrated in Mexico by NGO Signos Iraputo, The Institute of Technology in Purisima del Rincon, the science museum in Mexico City, and the botanical gardens of INECOL in Veracruz.

RUSSIA

Fifteen hundred people attended 48 events across Russia in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Kemerovo, Petrozavodsk, Perm, Pskov and Tula.

To see more from Russia, visit the Russian FoPD blog.

UK

A variety events were held across the UK to celebrate FoPD.

On May 16^th the World Museum in Liverpool hosted its third FoPD in collaboration with scientists and educators from the University of Liverpool.

Over 500 visitors passed through the exhibition with Rose Froud and Andrew Lambie showing visitors of all ages how to make pots out of newspaper and then helped them plant either sunflowers or runner beans. Elsewhere, GARNet’s Geraint Parry helped visitors to extract DNA from strawberries and then load them onto a genome sequencer.

At Kew Gardens, Hugh Pritchard, Wolfgang Stuppy, Peter Toorop and Charlotte Seal welcomed over 60 visitors. Wolfgang spoke about the biodiversity of the Brazilian Amazon, and guided tours were given of the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building.

Over 170 people visited scientists at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, who hosted an open day highlighting the importance of plants in everyday life. During the day funds were also raised for the Nepalese Earthquake Appeal using plants donated from a local gardener.

The Oxford Fascination of Plants Day event took place at the Harcourt Arboretum. Displays at the event came from several different groups and organisations, including several stands from the University of Oxford Department of Plant Sciences.

For more photos from the University of Reading FoPD visit Dr M Goes Wild blog, and for more from Greenwich University see the MSc Applied Plant Science Facebook page.

USA

Co-ordinated by GPC member organization the ASPB, a number of events took place around the USA. More information and detail about all events can be found on the ASPB FoPD blog.

ASPB member David Puthoff from Frostburg State University explored how plants sense their environment, as well as how plants are used in everyday food, clothes and medicine. Over 60 first-grade students discussed how plants can tell up from down, and what cues the plants might use to make their decision.

In New Jersey, Leeann Thornton, a plant biology professor at The College of New Jersey, taught third graders about plant diversity and identification. Some children were so excited by this that they took plant identification books outside at break time to learn more trees! In addition to this pre-schoolers explored the life cycle of a plant through dancing. The children watched time-lapse movies of growing plants before talking about the role of plant stems, roots and flowers and pretending to be growing plants. The next day several parents commented that their children had talked all evening about plant dancing!

Apr 28

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The Next Generation

By Isabel | ASPB, Blog, Future Directions, GPC Community, SEB

Meet Amelia and Sarah, the two newest additions to the Global Plant Council team.

As a coalition of plant and crop societies from the around the globe, the Global Plant Council (GPC) aims to bring together scientists, policy makers and other stakeholders to engage in coordinated strategies to find solutions to global problems.

The GPC currently has 29 member organizations representing thousands of scientists in diverse disciplines around the world. Online media such as this blog and the @GlobalPlantGPC Twitter account provide a fantastic resource for our member organizations to stay in touch, share ideas and develop interdisciplinary collaborations.

For Spanish speakers, we’ve also recently launched a Spanish version of our Twitter feed at @GPC_EnEspanol, kindly translated for us by Juan-Diego Santillana-Ortiz, an Ecuadorian currently studying at Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Amelia is in the third year of her PhD at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK. She is researching how altering the biochemistry of epicuticular waxes affects the physiology and ultimately yield of UK wheat. She tweets @AmeliaFrizell (https://twitter.com/AmeliaFrizell)

Amelia Frizell-Armitage is in the third year of her PhD at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK. She is researching how altering the biochemistry of epicuticular waxes affects the physiology and ultimately yield of UK wheat. She tweets @AmeliaFrizell.

To further enhance this network, the GPC has awarded two New Media Fellowships to early career plant scientists Amelia Frizell-Armitage and Sarah Jose. The role of the Fellows will be to increase visibility of the GPC through managing this blog, devising new strategies to promote GPC activities and to increase traffic flow and engagement on Twitter.

A key priority will be to increase members’ contributions to this blog to promote their organizations and associated activities. Contributing to the blog is a fantastic way to interact with other GPC members, and we are always open to suggestions for guest posts. Perhaps you want to talk about a recent meeting or activity, discuss a particularly exciting piece of emerging research, promote a newly published book, or even just give some insight into your everyday life?

Sarah Jose is a third year PhD student at the University of Bristol, UK. She is investigating the link between wax biosynthesis and stomatal development in barley and Arabidopsis, and its potential impact on the water use efficiency of plants. Find her on Twitter @JoseSci.

Whatever it is, we want to hear from you! Please get in touch on Twitter, via the comments section on the blog, or by emailing our Outreach & Communications Manager Lisa Martin.

It is an exciting year ahead for the GPC with the launch of a new online platform for the plant community that is being built in partnership with the ASPB and with support from SEB. There are also various fundraising initiatives in the works, and a Stress Resilience Forum coming up in October, which is being organized in collaboration with SEB.

Stay tuned to this blog to keep up to date with all our activities. The events calendar for member organizations is also looking busy and vibrant, and can be found here.

events Archives - The Global Plant Council

The State of the World’s Plants 2017 by Bursary Winner Harison Andriambelo

The flower breeders who sold X-ray lilies and atomic marigolds

The flower breeders who sold X-ray lilies and atomic marigolds

Gardening with X-rays

Scientific sales pitches

Creating stress resilient agricultural systems: Video interviews

Plant Biology Scandinavia 2015

Fascination of Plants Day 2015

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