Review of International Chromosome Conference

The programme  at #IBC18 shows how botanical science has moved forward at an unprecedented rate since IBC17 in 2005. Not only has the science advanced, but the critical importance of plants to the world has been seen and recognized so much more widely. As Simon McKeon, an investment banker, Chair of the CSIRO Australian science research […]

This week, a good proportion of the world’s botanists will be meeting in Australia for the 6-yearly International Botanical Congress. Actually, the hard work started a week ago – with the long, scholarly and dry sessions making far-reaching decisions about plant and fungal nomenclature. Of course, it is pretty important to know what plant one […]

  In my research, I always seem to be somewhere near the extremes of having too much data or not having enough data to address the questions I am asking. Even in experimental design, there seems to be a similar dichotomy: how to find the answer when you can only realistically use eight microscope slide […]

Early summer brings the elderflower (Sambucus nigra, either a variable species or a species complex) into flower in hedgerows, woodland openings and waste ground throughout Europe. The flowers have a unique sweet smell, and making elderflower champagne, a non-alcoholic sparkling lemonade-type drink, is one of the pleasures of what is the first (and sometimes last) […]

  Development of thoughts or ideas, and dissemination of techniques or methods, happens not only in the pages of Journals or on the web, but in books too. Over the last couple of years, we have increased the number of book reviews in Annals of Botany, and put them prominently at the front each issue. For me, […]

Our favourite fruit, the banana, is threatened by fungal, viral and bacterial diseases. This was discussed on the BBC TV programme ‘The One Show’ on 13 May, to include an interview with Pat Heslop-Harrison by renowned journalist, food critic and presenter Jay Rayner. The bananas we eat in the West are almost all of the single variety […]

Several AoBBlog.com posts have discussed presentations, because both teaching and conference talks are such an important part of what many botanists are doing – telling people about our research. Annals of Botany sponsors several conferences a year, our review and briefing articles are all freely downloadable, and all images from every paper can be directly […]

  Why not simply post your manuscript on your own or your Institute’s webserver, at minimal cost, fast and available to all? Following Annals of Botany’s decision to reduce our open access charges to be below those of the major on-line subject OA Journals, I have obviously been looking at the different ways Journals are funded […]

  Individually, as researchers and scientists, we want to read high-quality information, we want to find everything that is relevant to our interests, we want our own writings and publications to reach all the people that are interested in seeing them, and we want to discus and develop ideas with our peers and those interested […]

  Next week, a virtual conference is addressing some very pertinent questions of universal relevance to science. In fact, CIARD (Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development) is asking more specifically about e-agriculture and their e-agriculture platform, but I expect the answers will be of wider value: + What are we sharing and what needs to be shared? […]