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 …
Ag Research Key To New Green Revolution
I previewed the keynote address to open the Corn Utilization and Technology Conference earlier today. Now here’s the full comments from Dr. Gale Buchanan, former USDA Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics. Dr. Buchanan was introduced by NCGA President, Darrin Ihnen, and I’m also posting his welcome message. During the next couple days I’ll be doing …
Seed Company Loyalty Drops According to New Seed Study
While most of the seed decisions have come and gone for the 2010 growing season, farmers are always thinking about the next year and marketers are always thinking about how to encourage farmers to buy their seed. This year, Successful Farming (SF) conducted a seed study, (and they also do a Farmer Insight Study each year) one that they have …
How Farmer Insights Can Improve Your Marketing
For those of you in the agriculture business, you probably have spent countless hours wondering what farmers are thinking and how best to reach them. Well, there is no need to wonder any longer, now you can just know. How? Through Successful Farming’s Farmer Insight research. Here is a quick fact: did you know that farmers under the age of …
Africa Rice Center Receives Communications Award
The Africa Rice Center received two awards at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Now that’s a mouthful. The conference is taking place in Montpellier, France. One of the awards was for communications, which caught my eye. The 2009 CGIAR Outstanding Communication Award was presented to Dr Paul Van Mele, …
Corn Ethanol Still in Its Infancy
The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) is relatively new to Commodity Classic with this being their third year. You could tell when you talked with John Caupert, the director of NCERC, how excited he was to be there so I asked him why. “There’s energy, there’s enthusiasm back around around ethanol and biofuels. Some people believe that corn ethanol is …
8 Days Remain for Public Comments: Roundup Ready® Alfalfa
Just thought I would post a reminder that the deadline for all comments on Roundup Ready® Alfalfa are to be received by USDA on February 16, 2010. If you have not given your comments about this product, now would be a great time to do it. There are only 8 days left to discuss this American farm technology. Please, take …
Techniques for Increasing Corn Yield
Dr. Ron Heiniger with North Carolina State University is an expert in corn. For many years, he has been researching how to increase corn yields and some of the research he has done in his test plots are showing promising results – 300+ bushels per acre results. To put this number in perspective, the average bushel per acre yield for …
U of I Unveils First Ever Miscanthus Harvester and Planter
Farmers who are considering growing miscanthus as a bioenergy feedstock now have a tool to make it easier. After years of collaboration and research, a miscanthus rhizome regeneration harvester and planter system has been developed. The unveiling took place during the Bioenergy Feedstocks Symposium held at the University of Illinois (U of I). Typically, miscanthus is a labor-intensive crop requiring …
Fluidigm System Work Flow
In this latest edition of the stories about Fluidigm Corporation you’ll get to meet Amy Hamilton, Technical Support Specialist. Amy works in the lab at Fluidigm headquarters. She walks us through a workflow of the Fluidigm System. As you’ll see in the video, the size and scale of equipment needed for the Fluidigm System to conduct many different simultaneous samples …