On Saturday, May 18, the second international “

Check out this interactive map that shows all of the participating countries.

Here at the University of California, Davis, the renowned Botanical Conservatory will be open from 10am – 1pm on the 18^th of May to celebrate Fascination of Plants Day 2013. The conservatory is home to the titan, or Amorphophallus titanium, a truly fascinating plant that takes 15 years to bloom, and has only been known to flower about 100 times around the world, including 7 times at UC-Davis!

Two more exciting events are plants in California, one at the Plant Biology Department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford and the other at the Livermore Art Association. At Stanford, middle school students from East Palo Alto will use advanced imaging technologies to observe fluorescence and luminescence in plant materials. Further details about this event can be found here on the Fascination of Plants Day website. At the second event in Livermore, local artists and children will celebrate the impact of plants on our lives by decorating bicycle wheels with creative plant themes. On May 18th the wheels will be displayed by participating businesses in downtown Livermore along the path of the Amgen Tour of California. Details about this event can be found here.

The Fascination of Plants Day has attracted a lot of attention all over the world, with the Ministers of Agriculture in the Czech Republic, Norway and Slovakia officially serving as national patrons. The nearly 1000 events internationally will showcase about 250,000 plant species! Details about the various events and lots of fun facts and information can be found on Twitter.

The Ruminant Podcast episode 19: Pam Ronald on Genetic Engineering in Plant Breeding | the ruminant…sharing good ideas for farming and gardening.

Those are strong words, and not written lightly. However, when a journalist carries the imprimatur of the world’s most influential newspaper, he/she has standards to uphold, not the least of which is to know the basic facts about what one writes about. Bittman freely and often engages the debate over GMOs in food, from lobbying for government-mandated labeling to, most recently, attacking the biotechnology industry in a piece on the so-called Monsanto Protection Act (the debate about which the GLP deconstructed).

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Like a climate-denying archconservative, Bittman and hasn’t altered his views for years even as science has long since passed him by. As Keith Kloor, one of the world’s sharpest commentators on the politics of agricultural biotechnology journalism, recently noted in a response to Bittman’s latest, he couches his nutty views in reasonable-sounding verbiage that disguises the reality that his opinions are almost fact- and science-free.

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Bittman and his ilk may score points at foodie dinner parties, but increasingly they are becoming the butt of jokes in science circles. Even worse, their shrill but influential voices are making it increasingly challenging for federal and state regulatory agencies to follow the science when it comes to promoting good nutrition and public health.

Read the entire article here: On GMOs, New York Times foodie Mark Bittman is a dark cloud in the brightening sky of reasonGenetic Literacy Project | Genetic Literacy Project.

Today the NYT published an editorial concisely summarizing the issues and pointing out that there is little reason to make labeling compulsory.

Read more here:

Why Label Genetically Engineered Food? – NYTimes.com.

Keith Kloor;: “When I drew attention to the piece via Twitter yesterday, there was near instantaneous shock and outrage to it from some scientists. Others also shook their heads in disbelief. “

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