iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

We have really perfected our small plot canola trial system this year. Canola is now grown on amended soil through weedmat with Dosatron-controlled fertigation. Consistency is key when space is limited. #sclerotinia inoculations to come.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Preprint now out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Global pedigree spanning a century of canola breeding. Graph pangenome -> something unexpected: low erucic acid allele not from universal trait donor Liho. It's stuck in a widespread 17 Mb centromeric haplotype that's persisted for >100 years!

biorxiv.org

Pedigree-reconciled pan-genomics reveals megabase-scale hitchhiking after a century of canola breeding

Canola breeding has been shaped by strong selection for oil quality, yet the origins of the known oil quality alleles and genomic consequences of their selection are not fully resolved. By integrating...

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

I am beginning to think that Arsenal's likelihood of winning the premier league is governed by an asymptotic function. They can get incrementally closer by optimising some parameters but never actually win it?

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Great to see this ag innovation from RRes! Brings back memories of all the fuss caused by the GM wheat trial run there whilst I was doing my PhD. Hard to believe how much technology has advanced on so many fronts since then.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I am reading the 1984 book "In search of Schrodinger's cat" by John Gribbin for some insight into quantum mechanics. I had a weird realisation. Although we can define its behaviour with accurate mathematical abstractions, what an electron (or any particle) actually 'is' is unknowable... unlike ABBA?

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Easing back into things with a scan of the global status of commercial #sclerotinia resistance in #canola. Happy to be reminded of the pioneering work of Cibus who are tackling this complex, polygenic trait with high throughput gene editing (www.producer.com/news/company...). 2029 is not far away!

producer.com

Gene-Edited Sclerotinia Resistant Canola by 2029

Cibus is field testing gene-edited sclerotinia-resistant canola, aiming for market availability by 2029 to help growers combat yield losses.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Wow. Would be interesting to see a breakdown of what is driving this. It will be important to adhere to best practices to run programs efficiently without letting your allocated CPUs sit there twiddling their thumbs.

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Reposted by Mark Derbyshire 🎠

Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre @pawseycentre.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

📃 Australia’s @nci-australia.bsky.social and Pawsey have recorded an unprecedented demand for compute time in the 2026 NCMAS allocation scheme. More than 2.2 billion compute hours exceeded the annual NCMAS compute share on NCI's Gadi and Pawsey's Setonix by nearly 3 times. #NCRISimpact #NCMAS

pawsey.org.au

Record Demand for Australian Supercomputing Power

Australia’s national supercomputing facilities (NCI in Canberra and Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth) record unprecedented demand.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Exciting to see baby canola sprouting under our new drip irrigation system. Bulking some candidate #sclerotinia resistant lines. Tap => pressure limiter 1 => timer => backflow preventer => Venturi fertiliser injector => disc filter => pressure limiter 2 => drip line. Fertigation here we come!

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Does anyone know what this tree is? It grew to this size in our garden in about 2 years. I think it might be a native sheoak. Amazingly, it filled in the bare patch that our sprinklers don't reach in the summer. Sadly, we may have to remove it.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

First manifold assemlby, including solvent-welding PVC pipes. Live in Perth long enough and you'll end up in the Bunnings irrigation aisle scratching your head...

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Big reveal today! After uncovering the #sclerotinia in canola trial at @curtinuniversity.bsky.social for the first time in a week, we see exceptionally good and seemingly consistent infections! @theccdm.bsky.social @tobyenewman.bsky.social

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Saving the field trial version 2.0. First a severe storm, now an early heatwave. Not only are the plants not overheating under the covers, evaporative cooling seems to be keeping it a few degrees cooler than outside. So far, some nice #sclerotinia lesions under there, which is what we like to see!

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Been on a journey recently. Chasing consistent #sclerotinia across 660 randomised canola plants in a field plot led to temporary hoop-houses for uniform misting. Worked for two days then damaged by the storm. Managed to improvise a fix better than the original. Very grateful for my wonderful team.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Loving the #2025ISMPMI session on cross-kingdom movement of RNAs - so many different types of RNAs on the move. So much to learn!

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Grateful for the opportunity to discuss our research. We've come a long way toward establishing the basics for improving sclerotinia resistance in canola. Ultimately, there's still a long way to go but many opportunities on the horizon with new methods like speed breeding and genomic prediction.

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Reposted by Mark Derbyshire 🎠

Team Thomma @teamthomma.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

📣 We have a postdoc position in fungus-microbiota interactions! Apply here: jobportal.uni-koeln.de/bewerben/2197 ⁩ For more details, visit: bewerbungsmanagement.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun...

bewerbungsmanagement.uni-koeln.de

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Less practically useful than I thought it might be but turned out to be a nice read. Encouraging to see that others have their own diverse ways of dealing with their ADHD, including playing to their strengths. Upvote mental health awareness in academia, for everyone. doi.org/10.1038/d415...

doi.org

Scientists with ADHD speak up: when fire meets focus

Researchers with ADHD discuss its peaks and valleys and how they structure their work lives to succeed.

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Reposted by Mark Derbyshire 🎠

Centre for Crop and Disease Management @theccdm.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

🌿 A big week for CCDM with staff & students showcasing their research at two major conferences. 📍 #BotryScleroMoni2025 (Greece): Sharing insights on Sclerotinia stem rot and Botrytis cinerea. 📍 #APPS2025 (Sydney): Presenting work on fungicide resistance, cereal tolerance & disease control. 🌾👏

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Heading home from #Botryscleromoni 2025. All over so fast! Feeling inspired and ready to start exploring new ideas. Thanks to all involved for a fantastic conference!

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

#Botryscleromoni day 2. Another great talk by Daohong Jiang, thinking outside the box. Non-infective sclerotinia strain colonised with a mycovirus as a control for... sclerotinia. May be as effective as fungicides.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

#Botryscleromoni day 2. Wonderful inspiring talk from Xin Li. Two nuclei = one haploid genome in #Science (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). Nucleus besties stick together through thick and thin.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

In the midst of all the crazy things happening in the world, it has been nice to have a morning stroll through sunny Melbourne. Good for the soul. Feeling lucky.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

It was a pleasure presenting today. Had some really enjoyable and insightful discussions at day one of #GRDCUpdates, and saw many great talks. Looking forward to tomorrow.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Really looking forward to this event. Always great to see all the exciting grains R&D going on across the industry.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Something oddly satisfying about learning how large language models work from Google Gemini. It's also weirdly accurate on this topic. Lots of training data online and relatively simple algebra... or emergent narcissism?

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

This is an important and interesting preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2024... Any thoughts from people with neural network expertise? Papers describing these models often show plausibly that unsupervised training has learnt something about the data. Why is this no better than random for downstream tasks?

doi.org

Genomic Foundationless Models: Pretraining Does Not Promise Performance

The success of Large Language Models has inspired the development of Genomic Foundation Models (GFMs) through similar pretraining techniques. However, the relationship between pretraining performance ...

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Reposted by Mark Derbyshire 🎠

KC👨‍🔬🌾🍄🇦🇺 @karchuntan.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

🚨Out now 🚨😎 Our latest paper published in @CommsBio led by the @jameskhane.bsky.social lab @theccdm.bsky.social shown the ⚖️balancing act of RIP vs negative selection in generating genetic diversity in a major🌾wheat fungal pathogen! Find out more! 👇👇👇

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

So proud to say my uncle John Hawkins got an Order of Australia medal. Arriving as a child migrant, he became an important figure in ag, taking on the Australian Wheat Board to build a key market for growers. Full story here, requires Farm Weekly sub: www.farmweekly.com.au/story/887534...

farmweekly.com.au

John Hawkins: 'I was a boy from out the back blocks who took on the giant'

WA agricultural industry legends awarded Australia Day OAM.

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Mark Derbyshire 🎠 @mcderbyshire.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Hi. I'm on Bluesky. What do you call Bluesky posts? Bleets? This is my first bleet.

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