Prof Colin Raston and his colleagues in the Centre for Strategic Nano-Fabrication at the University of Western Australia are setting about cleaning up the world—and chemical industry in particular—through developing a suite of technologies to enable continuous, rather than batch, processing. “We’re working at getting rid of the round-bottom glass in the laboratory, and the…
Eight for apples, 46 for muffins Plants protect plants and triple yields in East Africa Spinning the world clean Thursday, 8 July 2010 at Chemistry for a Sustainable World, an international conference organised by RACI, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Speakers in Melbourne and available for interview. More info on all stories online.
More than 30,000 East African farmers are using plants to protect their corn (maize) crops from insect and weed attack. The crop protection strategy was developed by Kenyan and UK scientists. Termed “Push-Pull’, it relies on strategically deploying attractive and repellent plants in alternating rows to control the growth of African witchweed and stemborer insects….
Worst locust plague in 30 years this summer Can we feed nine billion people by 2050? Vegetable oil to lubricate your car, tractor and truck Wednesday, 7 July 2010 at Chemistry for a Sustainable World, an international conference organised by RACI, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Speakers in Melbourne and available for interview.
Victorian farmers are in a phony war right now – but in spring the invasion will come. We’re likely to see the worst locust plague for 30 years. David Hunter will tell the conference how plagues occur and what can be done to reduce their impact.
IUPAC Plenary Six and Seven, Wednesday 9:45am Chris Leaver, University of Oxford The world’s population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and the relative abundance of food has kept pace, with the poorest benefiting most. Yet one billion people are malnourished and live below the poverty line.
IUPAC Symposium 6B – Crop Biofactories: Plants as Sustainable Bio-Production Systems for Industrial Raw Materials, Wednesday 3:30pm Sten Stymne, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Vegetable oil is the agricultural product that chemically most resembles fossil oils and has therefore great potential to replace it, says Sweden’s Sten Stymne. He’s part of an 11-million-Euro global project…
Today at Tuesday, 6 July 2010 at Chemistry for a Sustainable World an international conference organised by RACI, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.
IUPAC Symposium 4A – Natural Products, Tuesday 1:45PM – 3:00PM Leslie Weston, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga Leslie Weston has discovered and patented two weedkillers made by plants. Now she’s investigating Patterson’s curse to see what tricks it uses to invade grasslands and repel herbivores. Her vision is to use plants or plant extracts to…
IUPAC Symposium 3B – Changing Pesticide use and Risk Scenarios with the Introduction of GM Crops Monday 3:30pm Gary Fitt, CSIRO Entomology GM cotton was released in 1996, as part of the fight back against Helicoverpa – arguably the most destructive agricultural pest in the world. Bollgard II varieties now make up 90% of the…