Erianthus bengalense - a species with ornamental potential

A few years back, we were experimenting with a relative of sugarcane (Saccharum) where I work, called Erianthus bengalense, the genus of which I believe in Greek, means red (eri) flower (anthus). We are no longer experimenting with Erianthus bengalense, but still have an interest in Erianthus arundinaceus, which is more robust, but, in my opinion is considerably less attractive. Unfortunately, in the USDA Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) system, all the species within the Erianthus genus got lumped under Saccharum, which is technically not accurate.

I was enamored with the beauty of the plant, so I planted a stool of it in my back yard for its ornamental effect before the field it was in got plowed. The last two years, it was beaten up pretty badly because of severe storms, but this year, it achieved its full glory. [I added a second picture taken about two weeks later; note that the white speck at the top is the moon in the background]

Garden update

Our fall garden is underway with the planting of cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, onions, and a new entry...bok choy. The bok choy grew so fast that Judy picked some stems tonight and so we will be trying it out for the first time. Judy was looking at some recipes today. I can't wait to see how the bok choy tastes, since I have never tried it before.

Just for an update on our summer garden, we planted a few slips of a very colorful variety of sweet potato, bred at LSU, called Evangeline. It has a mix of purple and green leaves. I put it in the garden in early summer after we had harvested most of the spring-planted crops, and it pretty much took over the garden with very little care. It was pretty much growing wild. To our surprise, we got a bumper crop of sweet potatoes, which is amazing considering that we only planted a few slips to begin with. Judy made some pies with the sweet potatoes; the people at work swore they had to be pumpkin pies when I let them get a taste. When it came time to establish a fall garden, we knew we were going to see unwanted sweet potato plants sprouting up like weeds, but it turns out that it wasn't too much of a problem. I guess the sweet potato is related to the morning glory which helps to explain its aggressiveness.

We had some cantaloupe and watermelon plants that hung in there longer than we expected ... another pleasant surprise. Our satsuma orchard consisting of three small trees also had an amazing number of satsumas (a type of Mandarin orange originating from China but brought here from Japan). We have been enjoying them over the past month. Today, Judy harvested two small pail fulls, which will be turned into "orange" juice. I must say that our garden and back yard have surprised us by how productive they have been over the past year.

What are the odds???

Four undefeated teams left in the NFL, and our family has a connection with each of them!




New Orleans Saints (Tom and Judy), living in Louisiana.
Denver Broncos (Lori and James), living in Colorado.
Indianapolis Colts (Julie and Matt), living in Indiana.
Minneapolis Vikings (Alan and Neal), while not living there, at least they were born in Minnesota.

New Orleans City Park

Wow, I can't believe it has been so long since I last visited my own blog site. We were at the end of the USDA fiscal year which goes from October 1 through September 31 each year, so there was the usual rush to get everything finished that needed to be finished. Then, I was obligated to be host to an Egyptian visitor who was here for two weeks. We were working on a USAID proposal for the benefit of both of our countries that has a deadline of October 20th. He has left now, and I feel relieved. Then, on top of everything else, we are in the middle of sugarcane selection which means I am in the field, helping out with selection as much as possible. This year, selection is especially difficult because the cane is down and tangled to some degree. Also, it has been very hot and muggy. On Thursday this week, I was involved in selection, and by 9:30 a.m., my clothes were soaking wet from top to bottom. My leather boots were oozing water out. By 11:00, I had to stop because of heat exhaustion. I was drinking water all along, after each row of selection, but when I went home at noon to change clothes, I weighed 9 lbs less than when I had left the house in the morning. When I got to the house to change, Judy informed me that the air conditioner had stopped working, and the service man wouldn't be able to check it out until the next day. After cleaning up at home and then going into the office to do desk work in the afternoon, when I returned home, we ended up turning on all the ceiling fans and opening up the windows. It still never got below 86 F indoors by the time we went to bed, so needless to say, Thursday was a rather unpleasant day for me all the way around.

Thankfully, the cold winds from the north finally made it down to Louisiana on Friday, and today, Saturday, it was unbelievably pleasant. It actually felt like the fall season had finally arrived. I had church meetings in New Orleans in the morning, but while driving in, I was listening to a guy by the name of Dan Gill from the LSU AgCenter, who has a weekly Saturday morning talk show about plants. He mentioned that there was a Fall Garden Show going on from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. today at the New Orleans Botanical Gardens in City Park. City Park, a 1,300 acre open space near downtown New Orleans, is to New Orleans what Central Park is to New York City. I had heard that it is a great place for families to spend the day together. I had never really gone into City Park before, and thought this would be a great time to check it out. So after the church meetings were over, I went to City Park and enjoyed the Garden Show, as well as the Botanical Garden. I drove around the park a little bit, and now realize that City Park is a wonderful place that has much more to offer than I had ever imagined. Perhaps, when Lori and James come later this year, we can go there.

Sugarcane harvesting around the corner in Louisiana

In about one week from now, southern Louisiana goes through a transformation. The roads become filled with trucks loaded with cane headed to one of the twelve or so sugarcane mills remaining in Louisiana. The mills take on the look of beehives with all the trucks arriving to drop their loads of cane. Clouds of steam are churning out of smoke stacks at each of the factories from the sugarcane bagasse being burned to power the processing of cane in order to extract the sugar from the crop.


Today, a few USDA scientists from our location, including myself, had the opportunity to go to the John Deere factory in Thibodaux. This factory manufactures cane harvesters that are sent in sugarcane-growing areas all over the world. We were looking at some of their newest, most advanced harvesters, and even got to see a very interesting-looking prototype harvester that was designed to harvest a wide range of large tropical grasses over variable row conformations. It was a fun experience. I took a couple of shots of their latest "green machines," used for harvesting sugarcane. Of course, the prototype machine is still under wraps, so I wasn't allowed to take any shots of it. John Deere bought out Cameco a few years back, but kept the Cameco yellow color for a while. Now all of their cane harvesters are John Deere green, so it is easy to tell the farmers that have newer machines from the farmers that are still relying on the older Cameco-colored machines.

The machines are designed to cut the cane, chop the stalks into short sections less than a foot long, elevate the stalks from the harvester into a wagon, and leave all of the leafy trash in the field so that the mill only has to deal with the cleaned stalk sections. Here are two videos, one showing the harvest operation, the other giving you a sense of what you would experience being in the cab while the cane was being harvested.

Judge has ruled against genetically modified sugar beets

I learned at work that Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, has ruled against GM sugar beets. His decision was based on his opinion that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on future planting of the GM beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. How widely? Over 95% of the U.S. sugar beet acreage is planted to Roundup Ready beets this year (2009). Worse than that, there is no non-RR seed available. It could take up to two years for the sugar beet industry to be in a position to completely switch back to non-RR beets. This could cripple the beet industry - an industry with a lot of powerful senators. Which states grow the most beets? Minnesota and Idaho are at the top of the list. I'm sure there will be a lot more to this story. In the mean time, rest assured that the cane sugar industry is not similarly impacted. The above picture was taken in Rupert, Idaho by Chad Chase for The New York Times, which reported the story on September 22.

I don't know where you come down on the GM issue, but here is a provocative video that ties my last two posts together, done by Penn and Teller. It's about 10 minutes long, if you have the time.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug dies

While Patrick Swayze's death got far more press, my attention was directed at the passing of a giant of a man, Norman Borlaug, one of the most influentual plant breeders who ever lived. Borlaug was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his role in helping to feed a hungry world through the development of short-stature wheat (Mexico) and rice (India) varieties, that had resulted in a dramatic yield in these two crops. He is widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution. His contributions, and the recognition he got for his work, had more to do with my decision to pursue a career in plant breeding than any other single consideration. Borlaug is credited with saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people. He worked tirelessly up to his death at age 95, promoting the causes he believed strongly in. One of the statements attributed to Borlaug that left an indelible impression on me during graduate school at the University of Minnesota (coincidentally the same school Borlaug graduated from), was when he was asked what made such a successful plant breeder, he retorted, "I let the plants talk to me." He later explained that what he meant by this was that, as a breeder, he didn't sit behind a desk, or let subordinates do the "dirty work" involved in doing selection...he was out there doing the work himself, which allowed him to develop impressions of what plant characteristics were important in improving yield. This message was especially in parts of the developing world where if you had an advanced degree, that was supposed to mean that you never had to get your hands dirty again.