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Dr. Merritt Khaipho-Burch Profile picture
Dr. Merritt Khaipho-Burch
@MerKhaiBurch
Ph.D. from @Cornell | 🇹🇭/Oglala Lakota | Quant gen of 🌽 | @UHHilo & @SDState Alum | Pro GM 🌽
Sep 20, 2023 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
My article is now out in @Nature!

It’s been ~1 year since my post about the flaws within 2 high-profile articles that claimed 33-68% increases in crop yield. Our paper describes common issues & suggests yield-testing criteria for future pubs. A thread🧵

nature.com/articles/d4158… This was one of the posts I made last year critiquing a paper published in @ScienceMagazine claiming a 41-68% increase in rice yield that had very limited plot and environmental replication (among other issues). 2/15

Mar 19, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Dr.MariaElena Zavala's talk at #MGM2023 was amazing. Dr. Zavala talked about research, mentors & work to increase the number of historically excluded folks in the academy. The Q&A session however had VERY disparaging comments about Indigenous peoples and I want to tell you why 🧵 For context, one individual (a white guy) who has been in the maize community for a very long time got up and gave a 4-5 minute comment on the VERY intimate life details of an Indigenous maize geneticist who worked in their lab 2/
Aug 19, 2022 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
ANOTHER paper in @ScienceMagazine came out claiming a 33% increase in soy yield. Since my last “yield” tweet took off - lets do it again!

From a (wanna be) plant breeder 5 years into my PhD, let me explain how this 33% increase in yield is misleading 🧵science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… In this paper, the authors introduced three photosynthesis genes related to non-photochemical quenching - an essential process of protecting plants from high light intensity☀️ by avoiding the damaging effects of reactive oxygen species on the photosynthetic apparatus🌱 2/13
Jul 29, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
A misleading paper in @ScienceMagazine just came out talking about how a single gene can increase rice yield by 41-68%. As a (wanna-be) plant breeder, I’m here to tell you why this study is misleading, and we can’t “solve” yield through single genes 🧵
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… For context, this paper overexpressed the rice gene Dehydration-Responsive Element-Binding Protein 1C (OsDREB1C). OsDREB1C is a member of the APETALA2/ethylene-responsive element binding factor (AP2/ERF) family that modulates photosynthesis and nitrogen utilization 2/