Combines Is it cornIJ

[R_O_M]

No idea what your chosen discipline is but can you break your thinking from the "America only" moldIJ If you can, have a look at what and who is going to provide the food for a 1.5 billion population China and a similarly populated India. Do this in the context that, as the recent Stockholm conference on world water supplies has indicated, there will be a depletion and failure of most of the world's major underground fresh water aquifers and immense problems in the large irrigation systems that draw their water from these aquifers, within the next 20 years! Cheers!

 

[tbran]

crop of the future is the crop of the present and past. just had a customer that had about a hundred grand of MaryJ harvested off 5 acres. As he aproached the middle of the corn field he went to his neighbor to ask what kind of giant ragweed had invaded his corn....... of course he got to keep none of the proceeds of the harvest, or none that we know of anyway....

 

[silver_tin_tank]

One for R.O.M Its not just the underground waters thats a bit thin at this time of the growing clock Have a nice one tin tank PS 20 miles south east of you AC440 RING A BEll

 

[John_W]

I thought most doctoral thesis were mainly just doing more of your major professors research. I read a story the other day that corn was the major source of America's obesity problem which I thought was quite an overstatement for anyone to seriously consider. Maybe you could work on that angle.

 

[cats_rule]

A thesis on corn as a crop of future sounds interesting. First, the comments on corn contributing to obesity is just crap. HFCS has replaced a huge percentage of sugar for sweetener in the soft drink industry. This has been debated with solid research on the side of not contributing to obesity any more than sugar would. The fact is that the consumption of soft drinks has skyrocked in the last 20 years. Why do you think Coke stock has been so good.

 

[cats_rule]

I think that corn has an incredibly bright future. Not only is the ethanol industry taking off,but products from polylactic acid is in the infancy stage and will make ethanol look like small potatoes when fully developed. The chemistry of starch is really only being developed now. This country was preocuppied with hydrocarbon chemistry after WWII and is finally pursuing organic chemistry because of economic and ecological reasons. Go for it!