The Sex Life of Plants

Supernova

In this episode, Marco and Alessandro chat with Dario Fé, an Italian scientist working for DLF-Seeds a Danish cooperative and one of the largest seed producers in the market of forage and turf grasses - as well as a guest researcher at Aarhus University.

In this interview of Supernova Podcast, Dario Fé guides us through the process of raising and breeding plants. The many ways we can manipulate the breeding of plants to our own goals are impressive, and Dario Fé will talk about it today: genetic manipulation in plants and the many ways in which plants, essential to our survival, can reproduce and produce food for our consumption.

Dario Fé has studied Agricultural and environmental sciences at the University of Perugia (Italy) and wrote his PhD at Aarhus University (Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics). The title of the thesis was “Establishing the basis for Genomic Prediction in Perennial Ryegrass”. Genomic prediction consists on predicting phenotypes (observable characteristics) of individuals based on their DNA. In animals and plants this allows to identify the best individuals and select them as parent as soon as they are born or germinated.

If you are curious about today’s topic you can find more info in any of these links:

● Some amateur videos on pollen clouds:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhYtwBA3NNs

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owBjOFHoHew

● Video on animals that transport pollen

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5uRVv7GGQM

● Genomic selection (about animals, but same concepts)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sEqM9wfvOg

- https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61741352

Produced by: Rosa Duran and Marco Germinario