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Plants in a chemical world

Series
Botanic Garden
Audio Embed
Plants are able to metabolise a surprisingly diverse range of synthetic chemicals including pesticides and pollutants.
These chemical reactions are important in global agriculture, as the ability of crops to metabolise herbicides rapidly is the primary determining factor in selective weed control in all our major cereals. In addition these chemical transformations are of general interest to consumers as they determine the fate, and toxicity, of residues entering the food chain. Join us to hear Rob Edwards (Food and Environment Agency Chief Scientist) talk about the mechanisms by which plants metabolise synthetic chemicals and recent progress in understanding the underpinning biology and biochemistry.

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Modern medicine uses many compounds which are isolated from plants. For example, vinblastine, which is used to treat many types of cancer, is isolated from the leaves of the Madagascar periwinkle.
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Botanic Garden

Achieving food security and sustainability for 9 billion

To ensure food security for the increasing world population in a environmentally sustainable way, we must double productivity on the same area of land.
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Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Botanic Garden
People
Rob Edwards
Keywords
plants
botany
biology
biochemistry
botanic gardens
chemistry
Department: Botanic Garden
Date Added: 09/01/2012
Duration: 00:48:42

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