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Walk into any grocery store and you'll see red ripe tomatoes, shiny round apples and perfect potatoes -- any time, any season. The search for this perfect food has led to many changes in food technology -- including genetic engineering of common food crops. Ray Mowling of Monsanto Canada says this is just the beginning, a new wave of better fruits and vegetables is just around the corner -- more resistant to pests and pesticides, and with longer shelf life. But Nettie Wiebe, President of the National Farmers Union, says farmers, scientists and consumers are wondering about the long term effects of these new bio-technologies. Bill Summers, a Project Manager in the biotechnology department of Dupont Canada, says the methods of pursuing these technologies are expanding. But Dr. Ann Clark, a crop scientist at Guelph University, is worried that bio-technology is moving too fast onto the market and she's concerned about the health of the people who engineered food.
In this week's issue of Nature Dr. John Spray, a geologist with at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, lays out evidence of five huge asteroid impact that happened at just about the same time, 214 million years ago.
Producer Neil Sandell reads listener mail on our programs on xenotransplantation and Attention Deficit Disorder
Dr. Vanessa Auld, our genetics columnist and associate professor of zoology at UBC joins us to discuss the genes for olfaction.
A moment from Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman's lecture at this year's Basterfield Lecture in Science at the University of Regina.
Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer scientist from the University of Alberta, discusses his development of a computer program to play poker.
Dr Andrew Rutenberg on rubber bands and Dr Tom Swaddle on ancient chemistry.
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