Fluidigm Corporation held a joint press conference this morning with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service to announce their new reusable bio-chip architecture which is a first for the commercial market. These reusable integrated fluidic circuits (IFCs) will dramatically lower SNP genotyping costs and are designed to support accelerated sample throughput, while maintaining data quality of 99.75 percent or greater accuracy …
John Deere To Build Tractor Museum
How about another John Deere story? The company is going to build a museum in Waterloo, IA to focus on the history of the tractor and engine design manufacturing. Construction on the John Deere Waterloo Tractor and Engine History Museum will begin in late 2010 with opening of the facility scheduled for late 2011. The museum will be an addition …
Syngenta Donating To Weeding Out Hunger Via Halex GT Sales
As Cindy has reported on earlier this year, Syngenta has started a program called Weeding Out Hunger. They just announced that a portion of their sales of Halex GT will be donated to the program. This season, growers can join the fight to weed out hunger by purchasing Halex® GT post-emergence corn herbicide for their glyphosate-tolerant corn acres. Through the …
Daryl Southard Joins Leica Geosystems
AgWired sponsor Leica Geosystems has added Daryl Southard, inside sales representative, to their North American Agriculture Solutions group. He started in early April, and is based out of Leica Geosystems’ Ag Solutions headquarters in Denver. With nearly a decade of sales and product development experience in GPS navigation and premium networking systems, Southard is a great fit for the Leica …
Bayer CropScience Completes Expansion Project
Bayer CropScience has announced the completion of their $15 million expansion of the company’s Muskegon, MI crop protection manufacturing site. You’ve got to love getting pictures with a release! Area elected and civic officials joined company global and local executives for a ribbon-cutting event to celebrate completion of the two-year project. The expansion is adding 10 full-time employees at the …
Book Review – Enough
As I write this review, I’m sitting on my deck looking out at dozens of acres of avocado, orange and lemon trees. Yesterday, I helped to plant a vegetable garden – the produce being grown for a local restaurant. The irony is that as I am surrounded by abundance here in America, I’m reading about those in other countries who …
DuPont TankMix iPhone/iPod App
I guess I just missed the announcement of the Dupont TankMix iPhone app which of course also works fine on an iPod touch. The DuPont Information Technology’s (IT) Innovation Office, under the leadership of John Puckett, director, IT innovation, sponsored the project. The TankMix App provides basic math calculations for the amount of product and water needed per tank or …
Spring Planting Advice
It’s spring planting time and in this week’s program you’ll hear some ideas and suggestions for row crop farmers. I interviewed Syngenta Crop Protection Technical Support Representative, Michael Leetch this morning. He’s based in Iowa and says there are areas that still have up to five percent of their corn left standing. Couple that with a very wet start to …
DuPont Pledges $200,000 to University of Illinois
Dupont has issued a “challenge grant” to the University of Illinois for improving communications effectiveness in agriculture. I think supplying some iPads to new ag comm students would be a good use of those funds! Of course they can also attend the AgWired School of Agricultural Communications too! DuPont announced a $200,000 grant to a University of Illinois initiative between …
HarvestMaster Releases New Field Research Software
HarvestMaster is bringing new research software to the field for agricultural research HarvestMaster is pleased to announce two exciting releases for the Field Research Software (FRS) suite. FRS NoteTaking and Harvest – new version 2.1 released The new release of FRS NoteTaking and Harvest is now available to users. FRS can be used to collect electronic field notes for field …