By Vanessa Richins

By now, you have likely heard that the honeybee is in trouble.

Dubbed victims of colony collapse disorder, whole colonies are suddenly disappearing.

Scientists haven’t pinpointed the cause yet – some feel it might have to do with mites, but this has not been confirmed.

Without honeybees, crops will have trouble being pollinated or fail outright.

Now, scientists are discovering a similar problem with one species of bumblebee – Bombus affinis, the rusty-patched bumblebee.

Bumblebees are essential for pollinating some plants – for example, tomatoes, raspberries and sweet peppers. Because of the way they vibrate the flowers while pollinating, their efforts cannot be replaced by regular honeybees.

In recent years, Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

Students in robotics at MIT are getting additional lessons in horticulture.

At the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, robots are watching over tomato plants.

Through new technologies, they are able to watch for the plants’ needs and act accordingly.

As the Christian Science Monitor reports, Nikolaus Correll, creator of the experiment was experimenting with the capabilities of swarm robotics.

“Each robot is outfitted with a robotic arm and a watering pump, while the plants themselves are equipped with local soil sensing, networking, and computation.

“This affords them the ability to communicate: Plants can request water or nutrients and keep track of their conditions, including fruit produced; robots are able to minister to their charges, locate and pick a specific tomato, and even pollinate the plants.”

The robots use highly sophisticated Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

A recent KCAU-TV report says that sales of vegetable plants will continue to rise throughout 2009, showing a further trend in home gardens.

Horticulturist Dale Lindgren of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln West Central Research and Extension Center cites two main reasons for the increased interest in home gardening: food safety concerns and the poor economy.

One of the plants especially benefiting from more people gardening is, not surprisingly, our beloved heirloom tomatoes.

Are you and/or others you know gardening more because of the economy or food safety concerns?

By Michelle Fabio

It’s not often that tomatoes come up in the context of world sports, but that’s exactly what happened recently at a press conference for the Ireland rugby union team.

When asked what it was like to have played for the England coach, Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll responded:

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

I love this line, but I have no idea what is has to do with rugby (and apparently neither did anyone else as it became a hot topic of discussion).

Anyway, I’d like to thank Brian for sharing this wonderful turn of phrase with us. Do you have a favorite tomato aphorism?

By Vanessa Richins

The stories show up in the media – some new food has been found to be contaminated with E.coli.

While most varieties of E.coli are actually harmless, some are quite dangerous.

Illness and sometimes even deaths occur before the outbreak can be contained.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service and the Western Regional Research Center, Processed Foods have been experimenting with a film made from a mixture of tomato puree and carvacrol (the main ingredient in oregano oil). The film was placed onto an agar plate, then swabbed with E.coli.

The results were surprising. On plates without Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

As the economy continues to decline, charitable donations have swiftly dropped.

Many people are struggling and can no longer afford to send the donations that they once did.

Money from federal and state sources is harder to find.

The Loxahatchee Wildlife Center is a small charity based in Leeann Connelly’s backyard in Loxahatchee, Florida. The mission statement is that they work to “rehabilitate and release wildlife back into suitable habitat, and to educate homeowners on how to create a more wildlife friendly environment in their own back yards.”

The wildlife center is funded through Read the rest of this entry »