Embryo Culture
Tissue Culture techniques.
Biology Lecture videos
Integrative Biology notes.
June 12, 2009
January 23, 2009
December 1, 2008
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August 14, 2008
879000 farmer families are engaged in paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka Expecting high production this year
Rice is the main food in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka also export some quantity of rice every year. Last few years that did’nt happen. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Agriculture is expecting a paddy harvest of 2.7 million MT in the Yala season, which runs from late April to mid September. Around 807,763 hectares of land cultivated in Sri Lanka for paddy, 64% is cultivated in Maha season while 35% is cultivated in Yala season.
Around 879,000 farmer families are engaged in paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka. They are 20% of the country’s population and 32% of the employment. Now most of the farmers are cultivating Genetically improved seeds. If weather is good farmer will get a good yield. Dry weather in harvesting season is necessary. Rain in last season Destroy harvest of over 10000 farmer families.
Nature’s Pollinator
The main job of a flowers is to attract pollinators (mainly insects, Birds) and also reproduction of the plant. Their beautiful colors, shapes and delicious scents have one purpose only to attract pollinators.
So, who are these very important creatures. Mostly we are talking about insects, but there are some birds, bats and other small mammals, even a lizard some time humans. But I have to tell you that vast majority of pollinators are flying insects. When we talk about pollinators the ones that come to mind are honey bees and butterflies, but there are also many other insects that perform this job for flowering plants, as well. There are flies, wasps, beetles and even some other insects that most people know nothing about, such as hemiptera and thrips.
Pest Insects also pollinators even if the Agriculturaly harmful to Crops.
Transgenic microbes
Bacteria were the first organisms to be modified in the laboratory, due to their simple genetics. These organisms are now used in a variety of tasks, and are particularly important in producing large amounts of pure human proteins for use in medicine. Genetically modified bacteria are used to produce the protein insulin, to treat diabetes. Similar bacteria have been used to produce clotting factors to treat haemophilia, and human growth hormone to treat various forms of dwarfism. These recombinant proteins are much safer than the products they replaced, since the older products were purified from cadavers and could transmit diseases. Indeed the human-derived proteins caused many cases of AIDS and hepatitis C in haemophilliacs and Creutzfeldt Jakob disease from human growth hormone.
