"Dr Helliwell has made breakthrough discoveries of plant genes responsible for hormone production in plants. Plant hormones determine plant height and lifespan, flowering and fruiting time, leaf and flower development and structural arrangement.
"Using our understanding of plant genes and the hormones they regulate we hope to breed crops that produce even better quality food," says Dr Helliwell. "
Dr. Helliwell comes from Leeds and has been working for the CSIRO and is a biotechnologist par excellence.
Dr Christopher Helliwell 2003 Science Minister's prize
Better crops in sight of Minister's prize winner
We have had fatter, plumper grapes and it's for this reason I now know all about Dr. Helliwell, the CSIRO research and the plant hormone gibberellin. We had been discussing at lunch time how the grapes had been sprayed with hormones and , as it turns out, it's a plant hormone and not what we were thinking! I mean, God gave us grapes so we could have orgies so it's BYO hormones, we don't need extra ones sprayed on the grapes. Now I've read up about it, I figure a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Mind you, someone was saying a grape growing friend of theirs has their family's non sprayed grapes kept in a separate spot of the vineyard.
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