Colin Osborne

Event is in the Spiegeltent, pitched and ready outside the City Hall

Sheffield people - join us on Weds for an evening of psychoactive crops - history, biology and art - it’s a heady mix festivalofthemind.sheffield.ac.uk/2024/spiegel...

Science would be so much more pleasurable to read if we could revive introductions like this - why shouldn’t science be a little more poetic?

I asked my first year #botany students to find botanical anomalies in movies, comics, book, etc.

And WOW, they found a LOT!

Some of my highlights:

Diversification of quantitative morphological traits in wheat AbstractBackground and Aims. The development and morphology of crop plants have been profoundly altered by evolution under cultivation, initially through uncons

Some traits changed in a punctuated way at particular times, others more gradually through history. But some effects of domestication have had to be reversed by modern breeding

academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...

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Diversification of quantitative morphological traits in wheat AbstractBackground and Aims. The development and morphology of crop plants have been profoundly altered by evolution under cultivation, initially through uncons

Modern wheats differ quantitatively in many ways from their wild relatives - but when did these differences arise? New paper with Yixiang Shan uses a comparative approach to map these changes.

academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...

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Sorry to hear about the passing of Neil Baker, a pioneer in photosynthesis research. Chlorophyll fluorescence approaches we now take for granted are based on his work www.essex.ac.uk/blog/posts/2...

Come work with us!

We're hiring two postdoc research fellows working broadly on nature-based climate solutions, including mitigation and natural sinks.

If you'd like to chat about these, please get in touch.

tinyurl.com/mt8stvmr

@sheffieldpps.bsky.social @sheffielduni.bsky.social

Standing room only for Merlin Sheldrake’s talk today - lots of love for soil fungi here in Sheffield @sheffieldpps.bsky.social

🥳This paper from Besiana Sinanaj’s PhD on role of diverse symbiotic 🍄 in plant nutrition was published in @funecology.bsky.social today: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... It's her last day with us in Sheffield so this is a lovely farewell & thanks! short 🧵…

A Saturday mycorrhizal treat - I'm so pleased to share our latest findings from our research into the interactions between plants, mycorrhizal fungi and parasitic nematodes in
@NatureComms, open access link to the article here: rdcu.be/dw3NU

Early human selection of crops’ wild progenitors explains the acquisitive physiology of modern cul... In this study, Gómez-Fernández and colleagues show that crops were selected from wild progenitors with productive ecophysiological traits, conflicting with the hypothesis that these resource-acquisi...

📜 Early human selection of crops’ wild progenitors explains the acquisitive physiology of modern cultivars

🧑‍🔬 Alicia Gómez-Fernández, Rubén Milla, et al.

📔 @natureplants.bsky.social

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#️⃣ (Feeds) #PlantScience #Crops #Agriculture #PlantBreeding #HumanSelection

It's come a long way,
But it's here to stay.
A constraint on the sensitivity of GPP to CO2.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The origins of maize were the subject of controversy for well over a century. Even in the 1950's botanists like Edgar Anderson weren't totally sure what continent it came from!

We published today a new model for maize origins (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). Let me tell you how we got here. 1/

Pretty amazing graphical abstract of a vascular plant anatomy class

You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food i... “Eat local” is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it's come from?

ourworldindata.org/food-choice-...

£250 million endowment for new Royal Society Fellowships | Royal Society The Royal Society intends to deliver a new mid-career Fellowship, funded by a £250 million endowment from Government. The funding will support outstanding researchers and scientists for up to ten yea...

The Royal Society intends to deliver a new mid-career Fellowship, funded by a £250 million Government endowment. To be launched in 2024, the Faraday Discovery Fellowships, will support scientists to pursue discovery-led ground-breaking #STEM research:
royalsociety.org/news/2023/11...

Few days to apply and become an integral part of our team @BlackInPlantSci . We are looking for a coordinator. All guidance for how to apply are at the university website. jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?r…
We need you!! #communitycoordinator. Please share

In her webiner today, Amanda pointed out that she has opportunities for two postdocs. She's wonderful - a real gem. Great work too!