Wednesday 8 July 2015

Fish Farming Landed?


There has been some excitement about a project where workers at Rothamsted have successfully used GM technology to encourage greenhouse-grown Camelina plants to incorporate omega-3 fish oils into their seeds (http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/alpha-omega-making-omega-3-fish-oils-gm-plants). Somewhat remarkably, there appears to have been very little by the way of a negative response from the anti-GM lobby. Although the oils could be extracted to supplement human diets (and reduce the need to get the same materials from fish), a more likely use, according to the scientists (involving Sterling University), is to see whether the seeds could replace some of the fish meal that is fed to their bigger cousins in fish farms. The argument is that this would reduce some of the pressures on our oceans and make fish farming even more sustainable. Having said that, quite a lot of fish meal is used as fertiliser for plant crops!

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What's In a Critter's Name? 11. Comma butterfly

The Comma butterfly ( Polygonia c-album) gets its name from the punctuation-like mark, on the underside of its wings.