For 10,000 years or more, humans created new plant varieties for food by trial and error and a touch of serendipity. Then 150 years ago, a new era began. Pioneer botanists unlocked the patterns found in different types of plants and opened the door to a new branch of science - plant genetics. They discovered what controlled the random colours of snapdragon petals and the strange colours found in wild maize. This was vital information. Some botanists even gave their lives to protect their collection of seeds. American wheat farmer Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel peace prize after he bred a new strain of wheat that lifted millions of people around the world out of starvation. Today, botanists believe advances in plant genetics hold the key to feeding the world's growing population.
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The air we breathe, and all the food we eat, is created from water, sunlight, carbon dioxide and a few minerals. It sounds simple, but this process is one of the most fascinating and complicated in all of science, and without it there could be no life on earth. For centuries people believed that plants grew by eating soil. In the 17th century, pioneer botanists began to make the connection between the growth of a plant and the energy from the sun. They discovered how plants use water, sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce sugars - how, in fact, a plant grows. The process of photosynthesis is still at the heart of scientific research today, with universities across the world working hard to replicate in the lab what plants do with ruthless efficiency. Their goal is to produce a clean, limitless fuel and if they get it right it will change all our lives.
2011 • Nature
For 10,000 years or more, humans created new plant varieties for food by trial and error and a touch of serendipity. Then 150 years ago, a new era began. Pioneer botanists unlocked the patterns found in different types of plants and opened the door to a new branch of science - plant genetics. They discovered what controlled the random colours of snapdragon petals and the strange colours found in wild maize. This was vital information. Some botanists even gave their lives to protect their collection of seeds. American wheat farmer Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel peace prize after he bred a new strain of wheat that lifted millions of people around the world out of starvation. Today, botanists believe advances in plant genetics hold the key to feeding the world's growing population.
2011 • Nature
Summer has arrived in Alaska. Free of ice, rivers and streams can flow again. This sets the scene for one of the world's greatest migrations, the Alaskan salmon run.
S1E3 • Alaska: A Year in the Wild • 2017 • Nature
David Attenborough's entertaining romp through the world of monkeys has a serious side: for when we look at monkeys, we can see ourselves. From memory to morality, from 'crying wolf' to politics, monkeys are our basic blueprint. Pygmy marmosets 'farm' tree sap; bearded capuchins in Brazil develop a production line for extracting palm nuts; white-faced capuchins in Costa Rica tenderly nurse the victims of battle; and in the Ethiopian highlands, a deposed gelada baboon has got the blues. Cheating, lying and bare-faced murder are all there too. These revelations of simian science, combined with captivating photography, make this film about monkey business our business.
2008 • Nature
Sir David Attenborough uses this episode to investigate two animals who are capable of true virgin birth - the production of offspring without the need for sex.
S2E1 • Natural Curiosities • Nature
The remarkable story of 43-year-old Sudan, the very last male northern white rhino on the planet. Aged just three, Sudan was snatched from his mother's side in Central Africa. He became a prized exhibit in a zoo behind the Iron Curtain, while the rest of his kind was poached to extinction in the wild. Today, Sudan has become an unwitting celebrity and the focus of a desperate eleventh hour battle to save his sub-species. This astonishing modern-day fable is told through the international cast of characters who have been involved in Sudan's life, for better and for worse.
Natural World • 2017 • Nature
In the Pacific, the quest to multiply has spawned a stunning array of unusual behaviors and adaptations. There are forest penguins with a tenuous marriage, the secret rendezvous of great white sharks, and the tale of male pregnancy.
S1E4 • Big Pacific • 2017 • Nature
Discover how hotter weather impacts the animals, as the waterhole becomes busier in the evening cool. Nocturnal activity brings a new predator out of the shadows: hyena, creatures so elusive it’s hard to know the size of the clan.
S1E2 • Life at the Waterhole • 2021 • Nature