MAX FACTS
growing tips, news and trivia
Frozen Oats
David P Livingston, a USDA agronomist in North Carolina, has developed an imaging technique to uncover
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fresh details about what happens to oat plants when they freeze. The technique involves making highresolution digital photos of slices of plant tissues and creating a 3D perspective, similar to images
produced by MRI and CT scans. His images of oats revealed that when plants freeze in winter, ice forms
in the roots and portions of the crowns, which lie just below the soil surface and connect the roots to
the stalks. The images also show the ice in the crown is limited to its lowest and upper level parts,
apparently leaving the middle portion ice-free—at least free of crystals big enough to visualize. The
crown is critical to growth because it is where the plant generates new tissue if it survives the winter.
(Source: ars.usda.gov)
Spice Up Your Memory
Adding just one gram of turmeric to breakfast could help
improve the memory of pe ople in the early stages of
diabetes and at risk of cognitive impairment. The
finding has particular significance given that the
world’s aging population means a rising incidence of
conditions that predispose people to diabetes, which
in turn is connected to dementia. Early intervention
could help halt the disease or reduce its impact. For
the study, researchers tested the working memory
of men and women aged 60 or older who had recently
been diagnosed with untreated pre-diabetes. In the
placebo-controlled study, subjects were given one gram of
turmeric with an otherwise nutritionally bland breakfast of white
bread. “We found that this modest addition to breakfast improved
working memory over six hours in older people with pre-diabetes,”
says lead researcher Mark Wahlqvist, an emeritus professor at Monash
Asia Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
(Source: sciencedaily.com)
Tennis Court Becomes Garden
At the Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles, California, an infrequently used paddle tennis court on the fifth-floor rooftop has been transformed
into a highly productive commercial garden, and executive chef Jason McClain is thrilled. His father, a retired landscape architect, flew in from
Alabama to build the garden, installing neat rows of galvanized horse troughs in which vegetables and herbs now grow. Club members walking on
the artificial turf track nearby pass tubs filled with citrus and fruit trees, and the
club’s dinner menu now includes homegrown items like broccolini, baby carrots, yuzu,
blueberries, figs, snap peas and heirloom tomatoes. The garden cost about $40,000
to build and yields as much as $150,000 worth of produce every year. “It’s just
magical. You’re in the middle of downtown
Los Angeles, and at 5 o’clock, when the
traffic’s going and you hear the obscenities,
I’m up here snipping arugula,” says Jason.
(Source: latimes.com)
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Maximum Yield USA | January 2015