My lab is currently searching for a motivated technician/research assistant to join our NSF/DBT-funded plant minichromosome project team at UMaine. Please help spread the word! 🌱🌾🧪🧬 fa-ewca-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

There's just a few more days left to apply for a technician/research assistant position working on diploid potato breeding with my group and with the Eastern USDA ARS potato breeding program -- application will close on April 22nd 🧪 🌱 🥔 #potato2.0 tinyurl.com/sknkxzey

Lucky to have a good view of Fujisan earlier when the plane was landing in Narita Airport.

Science can be slow, but we continue make careful, incremental progress towards 🌱 🌰 restoration on many fronts -- this collaborative paper on speed breeding American chestnut is finally out this week: doi.org/10.1002/pld3...

Speed Breeding Transgenic American Chestnut Trees Toward Restoration

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was a dominant, foundational forest canopy tree in eastern North America until an imported chestnut blight (caused by Cryphonectria parasitica) rendered it fu...

doi.org

One of the things I miss most about being in the Bay Area are the prodigious amount of persimmons that are available this time of year, so it’s always so special to receive a box of these from friends to brighten up cold snowy days in the northeast 🌱 🧡 #Ebenaceae

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been in this building for almost nine years (nine!!) and have only just realized that the stained glass feature by our ‘tree of life’ chandelier in the foyer has the scientific name of potato inscribed on it 🥔 🥔 🥔 — How did I miss this?!

Happy Friday! ❤️🥔

Some of the early generation diploid potatoes from today, 2nd or 3rd year in the field and putting out some interesting colored flesh 🌈

Purple Tomato tart, Purple Tomato nachos, Purple Tomato everything!

Sun moon, ying yang #cats composed for you today by Mia and Harry.

Has anyone encountered this tomato phenotype? It seems to be quite consistent and essentially self-pruning! The shoot apical meristem terminates into a floral meristem instead of continuing to grow vines. This was a volunteer seedling from vegetable bed that I randomly transplanted into a pot.

Any stone tool researchers out there? Beach find, this piece has a sharp edge and is perfectly grooved for holding with right hand as seen here. Material is unlike any rock found in the area.

Also the #cats of #giliair is the same as cats the world over—finding the best spot for attention, showered with fresh 🌺 and still be annoyed with the hoomans.

Sunrise and sunset at Gili Air, one of the islands off the coast of Lombok. Fun fact: we crossed Wallace’s line yesterday from Bali to get here, and this island has no motorized vehicles! To get around other than being on foot, you have a choice of bicycles, electric scooters or horse-drawn carts.

Sunset scene from St Andrews, earlier this week at a potato breeding and genetics meeting at the University of St Andrews. 🥔 🧬 🌱

We all need more cats in our timeline, no?

Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) of the Great Smoky Mountain NP ~two weeks ago.

Back in the greenhouse today 🌱 🌱 and here are some good looking (and fragrant) inbred diploid potato flowers 🌸 🌸

This cat was superrr helpful at the checkout counter in ‘cat city’ in Borneo. So… is this worthy of @bodegacats.bsky.social ?

We’ve grown a lot of potato from botanical seed, but this is our first truly albino seedling. I know… I know… there are yeastie beasties on the plate but these were destined for soil, so it’s not an issue.

First frog sighting in ME of 2025 from 4 days ago, a cute spring peeper from our Maine Big Night survey. mainebignight.org

Today’s weird potato flower is one that looks like fasiflora (fa) mutants in tomato, but as usual, nothing is known about this mutation in tuber bearing Solanum. Pub with the fa mutant in tomato: www.researchgate.net/profile/Beat...

Here are some potato flowers from our crossing block this year! Getting ready to go.

One sits, one loafs. Two cats in two seemingly appropriately sized boxes for your consideration this evening.

Just so happened that I just made a batch of crispy roasted potatoes today for lunch. Potato variety used is a purple skin yellow flesh USDA ARS release called Peter Wilcox. So delish! 🥔 🌿

Sitting in a box, wishing everyone an insightful year of the snake which is supposed to bring renewal, wisdom and intelligence to us all 🙌🏽 🐍 🏮

Two sleepy cats, snow and a fire is what we needed today.

The Levesque Lab is looking for a summer REU student to work with us in Sarawak, Malaysia. I’ll post the ad on Tuesday but the in meantime feel free to share this treeshrew as a place holder :) umaine.edu/levesquelab/...

2025 mood thus far; peering out from the safety of a properly-sized box surrounded by lots of safety paper 😹

Smol, silvery Begonia piring on limestone cliffs is such fun one to find, also endemic to #Borneo like the others