{"id":1658,"date":"2008-08-07T04:47:09","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T04:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/08\/07\/my_first_nature_paper\/"},"modified":"2008-08-07T04:47:09","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T04:47:09","slug":"my_first_nature_paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/08\/07\/my_first_nature_paper\/","title":{"rendered":"My first Nature paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nature Gardening:<\/em> Brief Communications
\nThe Darwinian Approach to Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> cultivation: preliminary results<\/strong>
\nObligatory Cheesy Nature Paper Pun: No spray tom-ay-to, delay tom-ah-to
\nby
\nEnnis, MG and Ennis, CA^1^
\nBackground:<\/strong> We investigated the effects of Darwinian gardening methods on the drought resistance and fruit quality of a common Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> variety. Darwinian gardening can be defined as starting plants from seed or small plants, and letting the fittest plants survive with a minimum of investigator interference. This is the first published study to explicitly test the hypothesis that subjecting Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> to Darwinian gardening techniques would allow the plants to survive periods of drought during the brief British Columbian dry season.
\nMethods:<\/strong> Following failed experiments with Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> seeds during the last grant<\/del> growing cycle, the current study used starting material consisting of plants of approximately 4 inches in height (Home Depot, Vancouver). Plants were kept indoors under a skylight and watered intermittently. Only the fittest seedlings (those that survived random Felis catus<\/em>-induced gravity\/impact stress trials: n=2) were transplanted into a larger outdoors container and kept in the sunniest possible spot of a South-facing garden that was shaded at various times of day by trees and buildings. Concomitant with seedling purchase, control plants were started from seed in the garden. Pisum sativum<\/em> had performed well in previous Darwinian gardening trials and was chosen as a positive control. Cucumis sativus<\/em> had not previously been subjected to Darwinian gardening in this laboratory and was chosen as the most-likely-to-be-negative control.
\nWatering frequency was increased shortly after transplantation to once daily (more or less), by watering can or natural methods depending on the weather. Once the first green fruit appeared on the plants, two periods of drought stress (5 days each, two weeks apart) were induced by leaving the plants un-watered while the investigators went camping<\/del> pursued other studies. These periods were planned to coincide with the hottest and sunniest weather available to residents of Southwestern British Columbia. Daily watering was resumed upon the investigators’ return, and continued until the first ripe fruit was observed.
\nResults:<\/strong> As expected, Cucumis sativus<\/em> had not produced fruit by the time of publication (data not shown), whereas several Pisum sativum<\/em> plants survived the drought stress periods and produced good yields (Figure 1).
\n\"\"
\n*Figure 1.* Solanum lycopersicum (left) and Pisum sativum (right) plants that were previously subjected to Darwinian gardening techniques produce quality food following drought stress. There was no significant difference between the positive control food items in this pod (p=5).<\/em>
\nThe Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> plants naturally selected by subjection to gravity\/impact and Darwinian gardening stresses not only survived the two periods of drought, but produced ripe fruit (Figure 1). Fruit was semi-quantitatively assayed for tastiness and pronounced \u201cpretty good, actually\u201d and \u201care you kidding, it’s bloody delicious\u201d (n=1, assay performed simultaneously by two independent investigators). Score was found to show a positive correlation with the amount of effort expended by each investigator.
\nConclusion:<\/strong> Natural selection by neglect (“Darwinian gardening”) results in Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> plants that can tolerate periods of drought and produce bloody delicious tomatoes. Ongoing field trials will address the effects of ripe windfall fruit of the Prunus sp.<\/em> tree on Solanum lycopersicum<\/em> fruit ripening times in situ<\/em>.
\nAcknowledgments:<\/strong> We would like to thank the laboratory’s two furry technicians for their contributions to the preliminary natural selection experiments. We also thank this manuscript’s previous reviewers for their comments, which have been helpful<\/a>.
\n^1^Corresponding author. Please use comment box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nature Gardening: Brief Communications The Darwinian Approach to Solanum lycopersicum cultivation: preliminary results Obligatory Cheesy Nature Paper Pun: No spray tom-ay-to, delay tom-ah-to by Ennis, MG and Ennis, CA^1^ Background: We investigated the effects of Darwinian gardening methods on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}