Edward Willett

Archives

Have yourself a genetically modified little Christmas

Searching for the perfect Christmas tree can be a hassle, and even a tree that looks great on the lot can turn out to have weird branches, flat spots or gaps once it opens up. But someday soon, every Christmas tree may be perfect, thanks to science. Around 40 million Christmas trees are harvested every year in the U.S. and Canada, most from Christmas tree farms. A small to medium tree farm will harvest 10,000 trees, and some of the multinational giants harvest up to a million trees annually on plantations from North Carolina to Nova Scotia. (Christmas tree farms, by the way, are also oxygen farms. One acre of ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 11:53, December 14th, 1999 under Blog, Columns, Science Columns | Comment now »

Genetic engineering

Though the word "biotechnology" sounds very modern, what it describes has been with us for centuries--if you define it, as one science encyclopedia does, as "using biological organisms, systems or processes to make or modify products." In other words, the first time somebody discovered the wondrous change wrought in grape juice by fermentation, or an excited baker got a little yeast in her dough and saw it swell up (think how brave whoever ate it must have been!), biotechnology was at work. In a broader sense, all agriculture is biotechnology, using biological organisms (plants and animals) to make a product (food). Through the centuries, selective breeding ...

Posted by Edward Willett at 11:51, March 20th, 1991 under Blog, Columns, Science Columns | Comment now »