Month: September 2014

Brazil A large second-generation biofuel production facility has been opened by GranBio in Northeastern Brazil. Using biomass from sugarcane waste, the facility can produce 82 million liters of ethanol a year. Brazil has released into the wild outside Rio de Janeiro 10,000 mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria. The bacteria helps the mosquito fight off the … Continue reading Latin America’s largest cellulosic ethanol plant built, combating the decline of monarch butterflies, and mosquitoes to fight dengue in Brazil.

Colombia Coffee scientists convened in Armenia, Colombia last week to present new genetic findings to combat leaf rust, a devastating coffee plant disease caused by a fungus. Work was presented on developing new rust-resistant coffee cultivars and characterizing the proteins the fungus secretes. Argentina Latin America’s first positron emission tomography (PET) facility has been designed … Continue reading New coffee science in Colombia, a tower to measure climate change in the Amazon, and transgenic grapes in Chile

Colombia Scientists at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture are working to develop a genetically modified cassava high in pro-vitamin A . This project and others in order to obtain fortified nutrients. Brazil A recent study indicates that if Brazil can utilize its pastures more efficiently, it can provide the food its population needs by … Continue reading Developing a new cassava in Colombia, improving pastures in Brazil, new marine species found in Argentina

Argentina A new dinosaur Dreadnoughtus schrani has been found in Patagonia. It lived 77 million years ago and was 26 meters long. Paper here. Argentine scientists have developed a tool, available online, that allows one to calculate the ecotoxicological risk of using pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides). Chile A group of Chilean students developed “Seeds,” an … Continue reading A gigantic dinosaur discovered in Argentina, contaminating wildfire in the Brazilian Amazon, and ALMA watches the collision of two galaxies