Karl Schmid

Estimating allele frequencies, ancestry proportions and genotype likelihoods in the presence of mapping bias Abstract. Population genomic analyses rely on an accurate and unbiased characterization of the genetic composition of the studied population. For short-rea

Results of our (extremely long-term) side project with @amygoldberg.bsky.social and @jgschraiber.bsky.social out now in G3: doi.org/10.1093/g3jo...

We benchmarked methods for estimating ancestry proportions under mapping bias and present an adjusted GenotypeLikelihood to mitigate its impact (1/2)

I am seeing those same arguments returning en force.

If I remember correctly, in the early 2000's when @spicybotrytis.bsky.social and I worked at the same institute, a member of the advisory board said that we should work only on plant systems that are diploid and obligatory outcrossers if our goal is to understand popgen and evolution.

Please don’t use AI to write your cover letters! 😒
Why?
Well, all cover letters generated by AI will be highly similar. Yours will sound impersonal and will definitely not stand out.

I hope so!

A male race biker ascending on Mont Ventoux in Southern France

Today's #TDF2025 stage ends on Mont Ventoux.

Nice memories come back of my own ascent some years ago on my vintage race bike, a Giant Cadex 980C, which was the first mass-produced carbon fibre road bike from the late 1980s.

I am no longer chairing defenses or joining committees where students use generative AI for their writing
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/07/18/i...

Moving on to research assessment, Philip Campbell emphasizes how hard it is to change system when senior people have been successful in that system - suggests we have to wait for lots of people to die ("Planck's Law")

We demo’d a “self driving” tractor the other day. While it is cool, I’m not interested in outsourcing my equipment ops to an ag tech firm. They’re gonna hustle hard in the next 3-5 years to build a client base then sell off to Microsoft or whoever and leave growers screwed.

Which Kind of Science Reform What hope is there for science reform, if we can't agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices.

How can we reform science? I have some ideas. But I am not sure you’ll like them, because they don’t promise much. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...

Scheme of meristem development in maize embryos, highlighting the expression domains of key regulatory genes.

The Cereal Stem Cell Systems Consortium published a comprehensive review in Plant Cell on how meristems shape cereal architecture.
If you are not a fan of cereals except for breakfast, your teaching will still benefit from the amazing figures!
‪@cerealcell.bsky.social‬
tinyurl.com/32a74xpd

From Jan 2026, @unituebingen.bsky.social will host a new @dfg.de cluster of excellence #TERRA to study geosphere-biosphere interactions, together with Uni Hohenheim and Senckenberg. There will be many opportunities, incl. several professorships. Stay tuned, and follow this account!

🌾 Breeding for extreme climate resilience: Together with @unihohenheim.bsky.social & Universidad del Altiplano, we developed 3 new quinoa varieties to support Andean smallholders—thanks to the 24 Peruvian students who completed their theses through this project! 🙏🌟
🔗 www.kws.com/corp/en/sust...

Proposed EU NGT legislation in light of plant genetic variation The European Commission (EC) proposal for New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) of July 2023 specifies that Category 1 NGT (NGT1) plants, which are considered equivalent to conventional plants, that is those...

Hot off the press: our analysis of the proposed EU limits to NGT1 category of genome editing in light of recent data on genomic diversity.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A young girl standing in front of a barley variety trial.

My youngest daughter just learned about Mendelian genetics in school, so we took an evening walk to the state variety trial in my wife's hometown.

We discussed how #genetics applies to agriculture using #barley varieties as examples. So let's hope she wants to know more about the topic😉

X ist ein rechtsfreier Raum › Blog von Armin Wolf „Bösartige Drecksau“, „korrupter Lügner“ oder „verlogener Psycho“ sind „keine Verstöße gegen die X-Regeln“. Gesetze und Behörden, die ...

Warum es praktisch unmöglich ist, gegen anonyme Hass-Postings auf X vorzugehen - ein Erfahrungsbericht:

A field of quinoa plants in the highlands of Peru

"Quinoa trifft KI" - Pressemitteilung der @unihohenheim.bsky.social zu unserem Quinoazüchtungsprojekt in Peru

www.uni-hohenheim.de/pressemittei...

Dazugehörige Publikationen:

- doi.org/10.1007/s106...
- doi.org/10.1111/pbr....

Gäste vor dem Schloss am Tag der offenen Tür der Universität Hohenheim

Sa 5. Juli 2025, 12–17:30 Uhr: Wissenschaft & Sommerfest: Die #UniHohenheim lädt ein zum Tag der offenen Tür. Von spannenden Experimenten & Vorträgen bis zum Blick in Labore & Ställe bietet er ein buntes Programm für Gäste jeden Alters. www.uni-hohenheim.de/pressemittei...

Figure of from research paper showing the dynamics of maize pathogen straints over time (years)

New preprint led by our bioinformatician Mireia Vidal Villarejo on the demography of a maize fungal pathogen in Switzerland 🇨🇭.

Main finding: In a multiyear survey we observed a rapid replacement of established by exotic, tropical genetic lineages of the pathogen.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I enjoyed Carl Bergstrom's @carlbergstrom.com talk today @unswbabs.bsky.social on the current 'Peer review meltdown' phenomenon. Misery loves company, so I was glad to find out I'm not the only editor struggling to find reviewers. Carl et al. have narrow it down to a few factors including ->

Show Your Stripes Visualising how the climate has changed for every country across the globe

The recent acceleration of climate change is wild. Brace for the impact, and get our shit together, world! #ShowYourStripes day. showyourstripes.info

Tidy Population Genetics We provide a tidy grammar of population genetics, facilitating the manipulation and analysis of data on biallelic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). `tidypopgen` scales to very large genetic data...

We are excited to announce that tidypopgen – a new package for rapid population genetic workflows in R – is now available at evolecolgroup.github.io/tidypopgen/ 🧬💻 Read more in the preprint describing its features here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #popgen #Rpackage #genetics 1/2

Woah! Such an important study published in Nature today! Quick thread with some of their key figures!
🧵

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model.

What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it?

A 🧵

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

A plant breeder explaining a trial to students

Swimmers in a Swiss mountain lake.

The highlight of our course on plant genetic resources was the excursion with the students to public and private plant breeders in Switzerland 🇨🇭. And I could show them my favorite swimming spot at Walensee.

Photo of Menton, a town on the border between France and Italy © Adobe Stock, Freesurf

River Dunajec in the Pieniny Mountains on the border of Slovakia and Poland © Adobe Stock, Laura

Douro river with Saucelle Dam on the border between Spain and Portugal © Adobe Stock, anetlanda

View over steep slopes at the Ischgl/Samnaun ski resort on the Swiss-Austrian border © Adobe Stock, Leonid Tit

More than 450 million Europeans. 29 countries. 1 shared freedom.

In 2025, we mark 40 years since the Schengen Agreement was signed.

This landmark event has reshaped how over 450 million Europeans live, work and travel.

#PlantScience colleagues, please think twice before working with the new Springer Nature Discover branded journals. And then don't.

Fiber Optic Bird’s Nest Heralds A Fiber Drone Summer In Ukraine Both sides are now using large numbers of attack drones controlled via fiber optic cables which are immune to radio jamming making them effectiveley unstoppable.

There are now so many fiber-optic cables from tethered #drones laying around in Ukraine, birds integrate them into their nests

www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...

Our ExcellenceCluster GreenRobust is now on Bluesky: @greenrobust.bsky.social

Follow us for more information about what we do!