| May Newsletter: Plant disease resources for your classroom - plus the story behind your supermarket lettuce | ||
|
If you're looking for support in teaching the new topics of plant disease on the curriculum, this newsletter has exactly what you're looking for. We've got posters and teaching resources to download, a reminder about our annual teachers' CPD residential, plus the latest intriguing scientific news - from lettuces and malaria to mole rats. |
||
|
|
||
|
New Resources - Plant pathogens: control and identification (14-16) These two new resources accompany our new plant pathology posters. Designed to meet the specifications for the new GCSEs, these resources include presentations, posters to print off at school, and detailed teachers' guidance for covering these topics. Download 'Plant Pathogens: control' |
||
|
Opportunity - Join us for the "inspirational" Plant Science Summer School Once again we will be running a plant science Summer School for biology teachers from 25th - 28th June. This course gives a select group of post-16 biology teachers the opportunity to join a plant science summer school hosted by some of the leading lights in biology, ecology and plant science. The programme aligns with the Gatsby Plant Science Summer School for biology undergraduates, and shares some of its inspiring practical workshops, contemporary plant science research updates, and discussions on the importance and relevance of plant science. A few places are still available on the course, which is funded by an ENTHUSE award from the National STEM Learning Centre. Please note that the deadline for applications is 9am, 19th May. |
||
|
News story - The story behind our lettuces Behind the bags of washed, assorted lettuce leaves that fill the supermarket shelves lies a complex story of evolution and plant breeding - but at what nutritional cost? "These cultivars are thought to originate from a single ancestor – the prickly lettuce Lactuca serriola. It’s hard to imagine that plant breeding over several centuries has moved us from this prickly lettuce to what we now know as ‘iceberg’, but during that process, much of the nutritional value in the dense green leaves, packed full of chemicals to defend plants from insect damage has somehow been lost," says the AoB blog. |
||
|
News story - Transgenic plants against malaria Malaria cost over 420,000 lives in Africa in 2015. Artemesia plants have been used in traditional Chinese remedies against malaria for over 2000 years. More recently, Chinese scientist Youyou Tu was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of artemisinin and its application in therapies against malaria. A recent breakthrough has produced transgenic artemesia annua plants which produce double the amount of artemesinin in their trichomes. Researchers hope that this could play a role in tackling this global killer. |
||
|
News story - Sweet? Naked mole rats can survive without oxygen using plant sugar tactic How do you survive in a 0% oxygen environment? The subterranean rodents are able to switch to a fructose-based metabolic system previously only observed in plants, a new study reveals. |
||
|
Science and Plants for Schools, 1 Brookside, Cambridge, CB2 1JE |
Search:
