Getting good crops of avocados in New Zealand is not always easy, and pollination is part of the problem. The avocado is a fruit tree introduced to New Zealand from Central America. It likes warm ...
Position: Head of research, Plant & Food Research. Field: Honey bees and pollination. For Dr Mark Goodwin, working with pollination has its challenges. Most crop plants only flower for a few ...
Next time you eat a kiwifruit, cut it in half and look at it before taking a bite. Look for the little seeds – most kiwifruit have about 1,000, so you can’t miss them. To get seeds in a ...
In this activity, students use activity cards to match seeds with the fruits from which they grow. They learn that a seed will produce the same type of plant and seeds. By the end of this ...
In this activity, students make small finger puppets and take on the roles of insects, birds and the wind to simulate various methods of pollination. By the end of this activity, students should ...
This comprehensive worldwide online citizen science (OCS) project collates bird species, numbers, locations and times of sightings into a large database. You can create a class as a user and, by ...
By comparing some features of fossilised plants with the same features of plants living today, scientists hope to be able to learn more about the effect of changing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in ...
iNaturalist logs hundreds of thousands of photos of flora, fauna and fungi. There are even sound recordings too. Each is described and geo located. iNaturalist is used by citizens and scientists ...
Flowers are a common sight in most New Zealand school grounds. They offer a colourful starting point to teach about plant reproduction and adaptation and offer opportunities to extend into ...
Students investigate the antibacterial properties of Mānuka honey and use their results to produce a dressing that can be used on a wound to kill any bacteria infecting it. Purpose To investigate ...
Students investigate the physical and chemical properties of various honeys to design a way to distinguish Mānuka honey from other types of honey. Purpose Students develop their knowledge of ...
Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research describes the strange system of flowering used by avocados to avoid self-pollination. It involves the flowers changing sex between one day and the ...
View Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research working with honey bees at an open hive, using smoke to calm them. Hear about some of things that Mark finds amazing and exciting about bees and ...
Watch varroa mites (white juveniles and brown adults) on honey bees and learn how they spread viruses that kill bee colonies. Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research shows hives being ...
The marine environment of the Auckland Islands in the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands group is home to a diverse range of species. Use this interactive image to learn about this diverse ...
An interactive overview of the Auckland Islands.
This timeline follows the discovery of the fungal disease myrtle rust and its spread throughout New Zealand.
