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December 23, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191223122820.htm
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A new tomato ideal for urban gardens and even outer space
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Farmers could soon be growing tomatoes bunched like grapes in a storage unit, on the roof of a skyscraper, or even in space. That's if a clutch of new gene-edited crops prove as fruitful as the first batch.
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The primary goal of this new research is to engineer a wider variety of crops that can be grown in urban environments or other places not suitable for plant growth, said Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor and HHMI Investigator Zach Lippman, who leads the lab that designed the 'urban agriculture tomatoes.'These new gene-edited tomato plants look nothing like the long vines you might find growing in a backyard garden or in agricultural fields. The most notable feature is their bunched, compact fruit. They resemble a bouquet whose roses have been replaced by ripe cherry tomatoes. They also mature quickly, producing ripe fruit that's ready for harvest in under 40 days. And you can eat them."They have a great small shape and size, they taste good, but of course that all depends on personal preference," Lippman said.Most importantly, they're eco-friendly."This demonstrates how we can produce crops in new ways, without having to tear up the land as much or add excessive fertilizer that runs off into rivers and streams," Lippman said. "Here's a complementary approach to help feed people, locally and with a reduced carbon footprint."That's good news for anyone concerned about climate change. Earlier this year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that more than 500 million people are living on land already degraded by deforestation, changing weather patterns, and overuse of viable cropland. By shifting some of the burden of growing the world's crops to urban and other areas, there's hope that desperate land mismanagement will slow.Urban agricultural systems often call for compact plants that can be slotted or stacked into tight spaces, such as in tiered farming in warehouses or in converted storage containers. To make up for crop yield constrained by limited space, urban farms can operate year-round in climate-controlled conditions. That's why it's beneficial to use plants that can be grown and harvested quickly. More harvests per year results in more food, even if the space used is very small.Lippman and his colleagues created the new tomatoes by fine-tuning two genes that control the switch to reproductive growth and plant size, the SELF PRUNING (SP) and SP5G genes, which caused the plant to stop growing sooner and flower and fruit earlier. But Lippman's lab knew it could only modify the SP sister genes only so much before trading flavor or yield for even smaller plants."When you're playing with plant maturation, you're playing with the whole system, and that system includes the sugars, where they're made, which is the leaves, and how they're distributed, which is to the fruits," Lippman said.Searching for a third player, Lippman's team recently discovered the gene SIER, which controls the lengths of stems. Mutating SIER with the CRISPR gene-editing tool and combining it with the mutations in the other two flowering genes created shorter stems and extremely compact plants.Lippman is refining this technique, published in the latest issues of "I can tell you that NASA scientists have expressed some interest in our new tomatoes," he said.While the first ship to Mars probably won't have its own farm, astronauts may still get to test their green thumbs with urbanized, space-faring tomatoes.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 23, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191223122818.htm
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Overuse of herbicides costing UK economy £400 million per year
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Scientists from international conservation charity ZSL (Zoological Society of London) have for the first time put an economic figure on the herbicidal resistance of a major agricultural weed that is decimating winter-wheat farms across the UK.
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A vital ingredient in mince pies, biscuits and stuffing -- and of course a large amount fed to turkeys, the future of Christmas dinners containing wheat could be at risk, with the persistent weed making its way across British fields.Black-grass (Published in An estimated four million tonnes of pesticide are applied to crops worldwide each year. There are 253 known herbicide-resistant weeds already, and unlike the known-costs to the economy of human antibiotic resistance -- which runs into trillions of dollars -- estimates of the costs of resistance to agricultural xenobiotics (e.g. antimycotics, pesticides) are severely lacking.Over-use of herbicides can lead to poor water quality and causes loss of wild plant diversity and indirect damage to surrounding invertebrate, bird and mammal biodiversity relying on the plants.The ZSL research found the UK is losing 0.82 million tonnes in wheat yield each year (equivalent to roughly 5% of the UK's domestic wheat consumption) due to herbicide resistant black-grass. The worst-case scenario -- where all fields contained large amounts of resistant black-grass -- is estimated to result in an annual cost of £1 billion, with a wheat yield loss of 3.4 million tonnes per year.Lead author and postdoctoral researcher at ZSL's Institute of Zoology, Dr Alexa Varah said: "This study represents the first national-scale estimate of the economic costs and yield losses due to herbicide resistance, and the figure is shockingly higher than I think most would imagine."We need to reduce pesticide use nationwide, which might mean introducing statutory limits on pesticide use, or support to farmers to encourage reduced use and adoption of alternative management strategies. Allocating public money for independent farm advisory services and research and development could help too."Management industry recommendations have so far advised using a mixture of herbicides, designed to prevent the evolution of 'specialist' resistance, however alarmingly recent research has revealed that this method actually alters the type of resistance to a more generalist resistance, giving resistance to chemicals the plants have never been exposed to.Glyphosate is now one of the few herbicides that black-grass has not evolved resistance to, with farmers now reliant on repeated applications to control the weed. However, evidence from a recent study shows that resistance to glyphosate is now evolving in the field too.Dr Varah added; "Farmers need to be able to adapt their management to implement more truly integrated pest management strategies -- such as much more diverse crop rotations and strict field hygiene measures."Currently resistance management is the responsibility of individual practitioners, but this isn't a sustainable approach. It should be regulated through a national approach, linking the economic, agricultural, environmental and health aspects of this issue in a National Action Plan -- that also targets glyphosate resistance."Understanding the economic and potential food security issues is a vital step, before looking at biodiversity, carbon emissions and water quality impacts in greater detail. We hope to use this method to aid the development of future models to help us understand how British farmers battling black-grass could do it in a way that is more beneficial to biodiversity like insects, mammals, wild plants and threatened farmland bird species like skylarks, lapwing and tree sparrows -- unearthing how their numbers are linked to changes in farming practices."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 19, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191219142844.htm
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Conservation's hidden costs take bite out of benefits
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Returning croplands to forests is a sustainability gold standard to mitigate climate change impacts and promote conservation. That is, new research shows, unless you're a poor farmer.
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"Those sweeping conservation efforts in returning cropland to vegetated land might have done so with an until-now hidden consequence: it increased the wildlife damage to remaining cropland and thus caused unintended cost that whittled away at the program's compensation for farmers," said Hongbo Yang, lead author in a recent paper in the Yang, who recently earned a PhD at from Michigan State University (MSU) and is currently a research associate at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and his colleagues analyzed the reforestation achieved via programs that encourage, and compensate, farmers to convert their cropland to forests via China's enormous Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP).The research found that even as newly regrown forests are sucking up greenhouse gases, they're also sheltering critters bent on destroying crops. And while farmers were compensated, they ultimately took a financial beating. Not only did they find that converting a portion of their fields brought wildlife that much closer to their remaining crops, but they were also now farming smaller areas and thus recognizing lower yields.Bottom line: The costs of conservation were being borne by poor people and those impacts have been slow to be revealed."Conservation policies only can endure, and be declared successful, when both nature and humans thrive," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, senior author and Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability at MSU'S Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. "Many of these trade-offs and inequities are difficult to spot unless you take a very broad, deep look at the situation, yet these balances are crucial to success."As a first attempt to quantify this previously hidden cost, the authors estimated the impact of converting cropland to forest under the GTGP, which is one of the world's largest conservation programs, on crop raiding in a demonstration site.They found that GTGP afforestation was responsible for 64% of the crop damage by wildlife on remaining cropland, and that cost was worth 27% of GTGP's total payment to local farmers. That loss was not anticipated as the policy was designed and was in addition to the known loss of income from farming smaller plots, Yang said."The ignorance of this hidden cost might leave local communities under-compensated under the program and exacerbate poverty," Yang said. "Such problems may ultimately compromise the sustainability of conservation. As losses due to human-wildlife conflicts increase, farmers may increasingly resent conservation efforts."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 19, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191219122521.htm
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Domestic animals link virus spread among humans and wildlife
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Our domesticated animals -- both pets and livestock -- hold the key to the spread of viruses among humans and wildlife according to new research involving Swansea University.
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However, the study has revealed the patterns of how viruses are shared between humans and wildlife species differs between the two major groups of RNA and DNA viruses.Dr Konstans Wells, who leads the Biodiversity and Health Ecology research group at Swansea University, said:"Bats are commonly recognised as host of viruses that may eventually spillover into humans with devastating health effects, but the role of other mammalian groups and especially domestic species for the spread of virus are much less clear.""Many of the current and future viral threads are linked to viruses that circulate in different animal species, connecting humans and mammal species into a huge network of who shares viruses with whom."Dr Wells and his colleagues traced the associations between 1,785 virus species and 725 mammalian host species from around the globe, according to published scientific evidence.The researchers used computer models to identify which mammalian species are the most central links in the networks of how humans and mammals are associated with the same virus species, representing possible pathways of virus spread and spillover. They then computed whether some virus species are less specialised than others, enabling them to spread among a more diverse range of host species and posing higher risk for future disease emergence.The findings provide strong evidence that beside humans, domestic animals comprise the central links in networks of mammalian host-virus interactions, because they share viruses with many other species and provide the pathways for future virus spread. They also carry the largest proportions of viruses known to be shared by humans and animals.At the same time, the study found patterns of DNA and RNA virus sharing among different mammalian groups to be rather different. The research suggests that bats and carnivores are most influential in spreading RNA viruses but play only a minor role in spreading DNA viruses among humans and mammalian species. Ungulates (hooved mammals), are of central importance for the spread of both RNA and DNA viruses.DNA and RNA refer to deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid, respectively, the two crucial genetic structures encoding all living organisms. RNA viruses that cause diseases in humans and originate from animals include flu viruses, Ebola virus and the SARS virus.Dr Wells added: "We found RNA viruses to have high potential to shift across mammalian species with very different life histories and habitats, enabling them to be shared by more host species. This means also more risk for humans in terms of unpredictable emergence of novel infectious diseases."He said domesticated animals include species from different taxonomic and functional groups of animals and are not particularly distinguished from wildlife, pointing to the fact that frequent virus acquisition and dissemination is the most plausible explanation of why humans and domestic animals intensively share viruses with many wildlife species."It's a matter of contact and interaction across borders," he said. "Among the myriad of viruses and other pathogens present in different mammals across the globe, many of those that can jump and exploit novel host species benefit from humans and their companion animals leaving wildlife no longer alone -- pathogens that benefit from increasing and novel contact opportunities among host species are the winners of intensifying land use and globalization."This research follows on from a previous study released earlier this year, which highlighted the need for a better understanding of the way harmful parasites can spread between animals and humans.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 19, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191219074744.htm
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Mowing urban lawns less intensely increases biodiversity, saves money and reduces pests
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The researchers combined data across North America and Europe using a meta-analysis, a way of aggregating results from multiple studies to increase statistical strength. They found strong evidence that increased mowing intensity of urban lawns -- which included parks, roundabouts and road verges -- had negative ecological effects, particularly on invertebrate and plant diversity. Pest species, on the other hand, benefitted from intense lawn management.
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"Even a modest reduction in lawn mowing frequency can bring a host of environmental benefits: increased pollinators, increased plant diversity and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, a longer, healthier lawn makes it more resistant to pests, weeds, and drought events." said Dr Chris Watson, lead author of the study.The issue with regular lawn mowing is that it favours grasses, which grow from that base of the plant, and low growing species like dandelion and clover. Other species that have their growing tips or flowering stems regularly removed by mowing can't compete. Allowing plant diversity in urban lawns to increase has the knock-on effect of increasing the diversity of other organisms such as pollinators and herbivores.The effect of intense lawn mowing on pest species was the least studied aspect of the research the authors looked at, featuring in seven datasets across three studies in Eastern Canada. However, in all of these studies they found that intensive lawn mowing resulted in an increase in the abundance of weeds and lawn pests."These findings support a lot of research done by the turfgrass industry that shows that the more disturbance a lawn gets, the higher the likelihood of pest and weed invasion." said Dr Chris Watson.Common ragweed, which featured prominently in the studies, is one of the most allergenic plant species found in North America and Europe. Previous studies have estimated the cost of ragweed-based allergies to be CAD$155 million per year in Quebec and €133 million a year in Austria and Bavaria. Having a more rapid reproduction than other species, ragweed is able to colonise disturbances caused by intense mowing.Chris Watson explained that "Certain lawn invaders, such as ragweed, can be decreased simply through reducing lawn mowing frequency. This will decrease the pollen load in the air and reduce the severity of hayfever symptoms, number of people affected, and medical costs."To understand the economic costs of intensely mowed lawns the researchers used a case study of the city of Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada. By using data on mowing contractor costs they estimated a 36% reduction of public maintenance costs when mowing frequency was reduced from 15 to 10 times per year in high use lawn areas and 3 times to once a year in low use areas."If citizens would like to see urban greenspace improvement, they have the ability to influence how governments go about this -- especially if it does not cost more money!" said Dr Chris Watson. "Likewise, complaints about long, messy lawns could quickly reduce the appetite of local government to trial these approaches -- so it's important to have some community information and education as well. We need to shake the outdated social stigma that comes from having a lawn a few centimetres longer than your neighbour's"The potential for long grass to harbour ticks and rodents is a common concern. However, Dr Chris Watson said there is little evidence to support this. "The presence of ticks are more strongly related to host populations, like deer, than type of vegetation. With respect to small mammals, some species prefer longer grass' whereas others do not. The next phase of our research aims to explore these negative perceptions in more detail."For their meta-analysis the researchers identified studies in an urban setting that measured mowing intensity (either height or frequency) as an experimental factor. On top of the 14 studies they identified, which took place between 2004 and 2019, they also included three previously unpublished studies from their research group. A separate case study was used to estimate the economic costs of high intensity lawn management.On the reasons for conducting a meta-analysis, Chris Watson explained that: "Often, ecological studies are done over only one or two years and can be heavily influenced by the weather conditions during the period of study. A meta-analysis looks beyond individual years or locations to provide a broad overview of a research subject."The number of data sources from previous studies available to the authors ultimately limited the analysis. "In this case, all studies came from North America and Europe so there is a big opportunity in seeing if the trends we found are confirmed elsewhere. Likewise, all the studies were used to explore pest species were from Eastern Canada, so it is important to do more research in other places before applying these results generally." said Dr Chris Watson.When looking at the economic impacts of intense lawn management the authors were only able to incorporate contractor costs which included worker's salaries, equipment operation and fuel. They were unable to include the costs of pesticides and fertiliser or factor in indirect economic benefits from improved ecosystem services like pollination.The researchers are now looking expand the research and begin applying the findings to improve lawns. "We plan to conduct some larger trials in partnership with the City of Trois-Rivieres that expand the suite of pests and weeks that mowing may impact. At the same time we would like to investigate some of the negative perceptions of less-managed lawns and start working on some community outreach to promote low-intensity mowing for healthy lawns." said Dr Chris Watson.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153552.htm
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Star fruit could be the new 'star' of Florida agriculture
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It's not just oranges that grow in Florida. Carambola, or star fruit as most in the United States call it, is gaining popularity. One researcher from Florida International University is researching how cover crops can help the sustainability of star fruit farms.
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"Tropical fruit production has become a prominent practice in Miami-Dade County," says Ariel Freidenreich. "For this reason, it is vital that sustainable farming practices are applied to these systems to ensure healthy soils and economically viable fruit production.""Star fruit are a great snack while working in the sun because they are juicy and sweet," says Freidenreich. "The Arkin variety is the most popular and widely planted in south Florida. Some growers are now expanding to sweeter and juicier varieties from Hawaii and other areas. They go great with salads and are used for juicing. There is even a winery that makes a delicious star fruit wine (tangy and not too sweet). While these fruits are not very popular in American culture, they are popular in Asian and Hispanic cultures, which are very prominent in south Florida."Besides being tasty, there's another reason for finding a variety of crops that grow well in Florida."Increasing the diversity of crops that are grown in various areas is important for several reasons," says Freidenreich. "First, crops like oranges are under pressure from a disease called citrus greening. It's a blight disease that causes trees go into decline and die within three years. The disease destroys the production, appearance, and economic value of citrus trees and their fruit, and there is no cure. Similarly, laurel wilt has been greatly impacting the avocado industry in south Florida. Different crops are being planted to replace avocado groves."Establishing crops like star fruit will help diversify the biological system of a farm. It also diversifies the income stream for growers. Just like a well-balanced retirement portfolio, balancing the mix of crops on a farm can reduce overall risk. This is good for the environment and the sustainability of our food sources.Freidenreich's research with carambola includes cover crops. Cover crops are grown, not to be harvested, but to assist with soil health. Two cover crops the team studied are sunn hemp and velvet bean. Both are in the legume family and can take nitrogen from the air and metabolize it into a plant nutrient."We established cover crops within this young carambola stand to enhance overall soil quality," says Freidenreich. "We grew sunn hemp and velvet bean between trees. We cut them and incorporated them into the soil as green manure for two summer growing seasons. This helps ensure healthy tree development without the addition of synthetic inputs."The research is taking place on a certified organic farm, and these practices are being developed to help farmers transitioning to organic production or those interested in sustainable practices.Cover cropping should improve the soil organic matter. "The soil [at the research site] is rock-plowed limestone with little natural organic matter content," says Freidenreich. "These soils have a basic pH, so improving organic matter content is necessary to help lower pH. This, in turn, should inspire healthy crop growth."Improving soil organic matter "should have positive effects on soil nutrient availability," says Freidenreich. "It should also improve soil structure and microbial interaction. We expect fruit yield improvement over time. South Florida has a subtropical climate, so hot and humid weather inspires quick turn over for organic matter degradation. Continually adding these treatments should have positive benefits season to season. The cover crops can be great for weed suppression in the growing season and after termination."Future research means Freidenreich might get to snack on more star fruit while in the field. "Star fruit are very wind sensitive. They can defoliate with strong gusts. Sunn hemp has the potential to act as a windbreak for starfruit trees. Additionally, star fruit is truly tropical and can be sensitive to cool temperatures in the winter months in subtropical south Florida. Cover crop mulches might insulate the roots of carambola trees."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153546.htm
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The delicate water lily: A rose by another name?
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A new study published in
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Known the world over, water lilies are beloved features in ponds and a frequent subject in art from paintings to sculptures. Some religions consider them symbolic of life.Those beliefs may not be too far from the mark. The study's authors analyzed the genes of Nymphaeales, the order of flowering water plants that includes water lilies, and their results point to Nymphaeales as one of two sister lineages to all other flowering plants, possibly due to a whole genome duplication event some 147 -- 185 million years ago. The other lineage is Amborellales, an order of flowering shrubs that includes only one species, Flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 64 orders, 416 families, approximately 13,000 known genera and 300,000 known species.The international coalition of researchers that collaborated on the study includes Feng Chen, a professor of plant sciences in the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, his colleague Xinlu Chen and doctoral student Chi Zhang from the same department, and doctoral student Qidong Jia of the Genome Science and Technology Graduate program at UT. Feng Chen is an adjunct member of the faculty for that program. Coauthors also include another scientist named Chen -- Fei Chen -- who is from Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU), China, to which UTIA's Chen is also an adjunct faculty through the Center of Agricultural Plant Biology established by UT and NAU in 2017. "This paper demonstrates the importance of multidisciplinary collaborations," says UTIA's Chen. He is among the six supervising collaborators for the entire project.The UT group contributed to the analysis of the genetic basis of floral scent biosynthesis in water lilies. "Floral scent for attracting pollinators is critical for both the diversity of plants and plant-based agricultural production," says Chen. According to the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, three-fourths of the world's flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animal pollinators, including insects, to reproduce. Many of those pollinators rely on floral scent to help them locate a plant's flowers. "The flowers of The study explains that among the genes retained from the Nymphaeales' whole-genome duplication event are homologues of genes that regulate flowering transition and flower development in all flowering plants. Specifically, the UTIA group studied "Water lilies have evolved attractive floral scents and colors, which are features shared with core angiosperms," said Chen. "The chemical compounds and biosynthetic genes we analyzed -- those that produce the floral scents -- suggest that the scents of water lilies have evolved in parallel to those in core angiosperms. Because of its unique phylogenetic position, the innovations in scent biosynthesis and other traits revealed from the
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153533.htm
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Grain traits traced to 'dark matter' of rice genome
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Domesticated rice has fatter seed grains with higher starch content than its wild rice relatives -- the result of many generations of preferential seed sorting and sowing. But even though rice was the first crop to be fully sequenced, scientists have only documented a few of the genetic changes that made rice into a staple food for more than half the world's population.
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New research now finds that a sizeable amount of domestication-related changes in rice reflects selection on traits that are determined by a portion of the genome that does not transcribe proteins.Xiaoming Zheng, a biologist with the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is the first author of newly published paper in Noncoding RNAs are suspected to play very important roles in regulating growth and development, but they're only beginning to be characterized."Despite almost 20 years of genomics and genome-enabled studies of crop domestication, we still know remarkably little about the genetic basis of most domestication traits in most crop species," said Olsen, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University."Early studies tended to go for 'low-hanging fruit' -- simple traits that were controlled by just one or two genes with easily identifiable mutations," Olsen said. "Far more difficult is figuring out the more subtle developmental changes that were critical for a lot of the changes during crop domestication."This study offers a step in that direction, by examining one regulatory mechanism that has been critical for modulating domestication-associated changes in rice grain development."A large proportion of the DNA in the chromosomes of many plants and animals comprises genes that do not encode instructions for making proteins -- up to 98% of the genome for any given species. But this genetic information is poorly understood. Some scientists have called this stuff the 'dark matter' of the genome, or even dismissed it as 'junk DNA' -- but it appears to have played an outsized role in rice development.In this study, researchers found that key changes that occurred during rice domestication more than 9,000 years ago could be tied back to molecules called long-noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), a class of RNA molecules with a length of more than 200 nucleotides.About 36 percent of the genetic information recorded in the rice genome can be tracked back to noncoding regions, but more than 50 percent of the diversity of traits important to agriculture is linked to these same areas, the researchers found."For the first time, the lncRNAs in noncoding region of cultivated rice and wild rice was deeply annotated and described," Zheng said."Our transgenic experiments and population genetic analysis convincingly demonstrate that selection on lncRNAs contributed to changes in domesticated rice grain quality by altering the expression of genes that function in starch synthesis and grain pigmentation," she said.Working with several hundred rice samples and more than 260 Gbs of sequence, the researchers employed sensitive detection techniques to quantify and robustly track lncRNA transcription in rice. The new study validates some previously identified lncRNAs and also provides new information on previously undescribed molecules.This new study adds fuel to speculation by some researchers that most adaptive differences between groups of plants or animals are due to changes in gene regulation, and not protein evolution."Based on our findings, we propose that selection on lncRNAs could prove to be a broader mechanism by which genome-wide patterns of gene expression can evolve in many species," Zheng said.This rice study also opens eyes and possibly new doors for producing new crops and grains through precision breeding.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153433.htm
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Comparing heirloom and modern wheat effects on gut health
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Amid concerns about gluten sensitivity, increasing numbers of people are avoiding wheat. Most have not been diagnosed with a wheat-related medical condition, yet they seem to feel better when they don't eat gluten-containing foods. A possible explanation is that modern varieties of wheat are responsible. But now, researchers reporting in ACS'
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When people with celiac disease or other forms of gluten sensitivity eat wheat, they experience gastrointestinal distress and inflammation. However, little is known about whether eating wheat could cause gastrointestinal problems in healthy people. Some have speculated that selective breeding of wheat might have altered the grain in a way that negatively affects gut health. From the late 1800s to 1940s, a variety known as "Turkey" was the major wheat grown in the U.S. Then, selective breading created new types with higher yields and resistance to pests and pathogens. The "Gallagher" variety, introduced in 2012, is now one of the most widely grown bread wheats in the U.S. Great Plains region. Brett Carver, Brenda Smith and colleagues wondered whether eating the modern Gallagher variety would increase gastrointestinal problems in healthy mice relative to a blend of two heirloom wheats, Turkey and "Kharkof."To simulate a Western-type diet, which has itself been linked to chronic inflammation and disease, the researchers fed mice chow that was high in sugar and fat. Then, they added either heirloom or modern wheat to the food, at a level that resembled normal-to-high human consumption. Signs of gut inflammation were similar between mice fed the heirloom and modern varieties, although heirloom wheat slightly reduced levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-17. However, modern Gallagher wheat improved the structure of villi -- fingerlike projections that absorb nutrients -- in a specific region of the small intestine compared with heirloom wheat. These findings indicate that a modern wheat variety did not compromise gut barrier function or contribute to inflammation in healthy mice compared with its heirloom predecessors, the researchers say.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153417.htm
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Fossils of the future to mostly consist of humans, domestic animals
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As the number and technology of humans has grown, their impact on the natural world now equals or exceeds those of natural processes, according to scientists.
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Many researchers formally name this period of human-dominance of natural systems as the Anthropocene era, but there is a heated debate over whether this naming should take place and when the period began.In a co-authored paper published online in the journal He and Karen Koy of Missouri Western State University report that the number of humans and their animals greatly exceeds that of wild animals.As an example, in the state of Michigan alone, humans and their animals compose about 96% of the total mass of animals. There are as many chickens as people in the state, and the same should be true in many places in the United States and the world, they say."The chance of a wild animal becoming part of the fossil record has become very small," said Plotnick, UIC professor of earth and environmental sciences and the paper's lead author. "Instead, the future mammal record will be mostly cows, pigs, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, etc., and people themselves."While humans bury most of their dead in cemeteries and have for centuries, their activities have markedly changed how and where animals are buried.These impacts include alterations in the distribution and properties of natural sites of preservation, associated with shifts in land use and climate change; the production of novel sites for preservation, such as landfills and cemeteries; and changes in the breakdown of animal and human carcasses.Additionally, the use of large agricultural equipment and increased domestic animal density due to intensive animal farming likely increases the rate of and changes the kind of damage to bones, according to the paleontologists."Fossil mammals occur in caves, ancient lakebeds and river channels, and are usually only teeth and isolated bones," he said. "Animals that die on farms or in mass deaths due to disease often end up as complete corpses in trenches or landfills, far from water."Consequently, the fossils from the world today will be unique in the Earth's history and unmistakable to paleontologists 100,000 years from now, according to the researchers."In the far future, the fossil record of today will have a huge number of complete hominid skeletons, all lined up in rows," Plotnick said.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153545.htm
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Stand out from the herd: How cows communicate through their lives
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Farmers might finally be able to answer the question: How now brown cow?
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Research at the University of Sydney has shown that cows maintain individual voices in a variety of emotional situations.Cows 'talk' to one another and retain individual identity through their lowing.Studying a herd of 18 Holstein-Friesian heifers over five months, PhD student Alexandra Green from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences determined that the cows gave individual voice cues in a variety of positive and negative situations. This helps them to maintain contact with the herd and express excitement, arousal, engagement or distress.The study recorded 333 samples of cow vocalisations and analysed them using acoustic analyses programs with assistance from colleagues in France and Italy. The paper was published this month in The conclusion of the research is that farmers should integrate knowledge of individual cow voices into their daily farming practices."We found that cattle vocal individuality is relatively stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts," Ms Green said.Positive contexts were during oestrus and anticipation of feeding. Negative contexts were when cows were denied feed access and during physical and visual isolation from the rest of the herd."We hope that through gaining knowledge of these vocalisations, farmers will be able to tune into the emotional state of their cattle, improving animal welfare," Ms Green said.She said that by understanding these vocal characteristics, farmers will be able to recognise individual animals in the herd that might require individual attention."Ali's research is truly inspired. It is like she is building a Google translate for cows," said Associate Professor Cameron Clark, Ms Green's academic supervisor.It was previously known that cattle mothers and offspring could communicate by maintaining individuality in their lowing. Ms Green's research confirms that cows maintain this individual voicing through their lives and across a herd."Cows are gregarious, social animals. In one sense it isn't surprising they assert their individual identity throughout their life and not just during mother-calf imprinting," Ms Green said. "But this is the first time we have been able to analyse voice to have conclusive evidence of this trait."Ms Green travelled to Saint-Etienne, France, to work with some of the best bioacousticians in the world, including co-authors Professor David Reby and Dr Livio Favaro, to analyse the vocal traits of the cattle.The study will be incorporated into her doctorate, which investigates cattle vocal communication and use in welfare assessment on dairy farms.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 17, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191217123950.htm
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Plant-eating insects disrupt ecosystems and contribute to climate change
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A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that plant-eating insects affect forest ecosystems considerably more than previously thought. Among other things, the insects are a factor in the leaching of nutrients from soil and increased emissions of carbon dioxide. The researchers also establish that the temperature may rise as a result of an increase in the amount of plant-eating insects in some regions.
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Using extensive meta-analysis, a research team at Lund University has for the first time examined how plant-eating insects affect soil processes in forest ecosystems globally. The study, which is published in "The number of plant-eating insects may increase due to climate change, especially in cold areas where a lot of carbon is sequestered in the ground. This will affect the forest ecosystems and lead to an increased release of greenhouse gases and a potential rise in temperature," says Dan Metcalfe, physical geography researcher at Lund University.In the new study, researchers have established that insects and large mammals affect soil processes in a similar way, even though they have very different population patterns and feeding habits."Insects are more specialised in terms of food sources and can also increase their population by 50 to 100 times from one season to another. This means that plant-eating insects can sometimes disrupt forest ecosystems much more than plant-eating mammals," says Dan Metcalfe.Tropical and northern forests account for 80 per cent of the world's total forested land area, but are very underrepresented in research literature. The researchers hope that the new results will be of practical use by being incorporated in climate models."Understanding how ecosystems work is crucial for being able to predict and combat climate change. Mammals are decreasing, whereas there is a lot to indicate that the number of insects will increase in some regions in a warmer world," concludes Dan Metcalfe.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 17, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191217091419.htm
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Agricultural parasite avoids evolutionary arms race, shuts down genes of host plants
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A parasitic plant has found a way to circumvent an evolutionary arms race with the host plants from which it steals nutrients, allowing the parasite to thrive on a variety of agriculturally important plants. The parasite dodder, an agricultural pest found on every continent, sends genetic material into its host to shut down host defense genes.
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According to a new study by researchers at Penn State, dodder targets host genes that are evolutionarily conserved and sends many slightly different versions of its genetic weaponry to ensure effectiveness. This strategy, described in a paper appearing online in the journal Instead of making its own energy through photosynthesis, dodder wraps itself around a host plant, using special structures to siphon off water and nutrients. Dodder can parasitize a variety of species, including some of agricultural importance like tomatoes, and its dense vine-like structure can interfere with harvesting machinery. The research team, led by Penn State Professor of Biology Michael Axtell, previously determined that dodder sends microRNAs -- short segments of nucleic acids whose sequence matches a segment of a host gene -- into its host. Binding to the host's protein-coding messenger RNAs prevents host proteins from being made."If this process were detrimental to the host plant, we would expect the targeted host genes to change over time, due to natural selection or even due to chance," said Axtell. "This kind of process often leads to what we call an evolutionary arms race, where host and parasite alternate changing the sequence of their genes slightly in order to up the ante. We wanted to know if this was actually the case."The research team identified microRNAs implicated in this cross-species gene regulation within four different species of dodder. Surprisingly, microRNAs were often unique from species to species, and even from plant to plant. The team grouped microRNAs that share some sequence similarity into about 18 "superfamilies" of three to five microRNAs each.The researchers then investigated the targets of these superfamilies across a range of host species, and found that targeted genes are highly conserved, meaning that they are generally very similar between species and do not change much over time. This is often the case in genes that code for important proteins, because any evolutionary changes to these genes could disrupt their function."The targeted amino acids are the most conserved amino acids within the protein chain," said Nathan Johnson, graduate student in plant biology at Penn State and first author of the paper "So we assume that sequence can't change due to natural selection or else the protein breaks. Because the host can't change its sequence without a negative effect on its own function, the parasite completely avoids an arms race on the genetic level."The researchers found that, where there was variation within a microRNA superfamily, it matched up perfectly with variation in the host's target genes. Amino acids within a protein are coded by a set of three nucleic acids, the third of which can often be changed without affecting the resulting amino acid. Where variations were seen in the host sequence -- and the corresponding microRNAs -- they generally occurred in this third position."It seems that dodder creates several iterations of its microRNA in order to account for the natural variation within the host's targeted genes," said Johnson. "This shotgun strategy likely also helps the parasite be successful against a wide variety of host species."Next the researchers hope to explore the evolutionary origins of these microRNAs, as well as the cellular and molecular mechanisms of their delivery from parasite to host."The microRNAs in these superfamiles have undergone natural selection to target these conserved sites," said Axtell. "We're looking at the knives that are already sharpened, but what are their origins? There have been studies of cross-species gene regulation by small RNAs in the past, but this is the first evidence that these processes have been subject to natural selection."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 20, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191220074250.htm
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Children allergic to cow's milk smaller and lighter
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Children who are allergic to cow's milk are smaller and weigh less than peers who have allergies to peanuts or tree nuts, and these findings persist into early adolescence. The results from the longitudinal study -- believed to be the first to characterize growth patterns from early childhood to adolescence in children with persistent food allergies -- was published online in
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"Published data about growth trajectories for kids with ongoing food allergies is scarce," says Karen A. Robbins, M.D., lead study author and an allergist in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Children's National Hospital when the study was conducted. "It remains unclear how these growth trends ultimately influence how tall these children will become and how much they'll weigh as adults. However, our findings align with recent research that suggests young adults with persistent cow's milk allergy may not reach their full growth potential," Dr. Robbins says.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 13 U.S. children has a food allergy with milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, wheat, soy, peanuts and tree nuts accounting for the most serious allergic reactions. Because there is no cure and such allergies can be life-threatening, most people eliminate one or more major allergen from their diets.The multi-institutional research team reviewed the charts of pediatric patients diagnosed with persistent immunoglobulin E-mediated allergy to cow's milk, peanuts or tree nuts based on their clinical symptoms, food-specific immunoglobulin levels, skin prick tests and food challenges. To be included in the study, the children had to have at least one clinical visit during three defined time frames from the time they were age 2 to age 12. During those visits, their height and weight had to be measured with complete data from their visit available to the research team. The children allergic to cow's milk had to eliminate it completely from their diets, even extensively heated milk.From November 1994 to March 2015, 191 children were enrolled in the study, 111 with cow's milk allergies and 80 with nut allergies. All told, they had 1,186 clinical visits between the ages of 2 to 12. Sixty-one percent of children with cow's milk allergies were boys, while 51.3% of children with peanut/tree nut allergies were boys.In addition to children allergic to cow's milk being shorter, the height discrepancy was more pronounced by ages 5 to 8 and ages 9 to 12. And, for the 53 teens who had clinical data gathered after age 13, differences in their weight and height were even more notable."As these children often have multiple food allergies and other conditions, such as asthma, there are likely factors besides simply avoiding cow's milk that may contribute to these findings. These children also tend to restrict foods beyond cow's milk," she adds.The way such food allergies are handled continues to evolve with more previously allergic children now introducing cow's milk via baked goods, a wider selection of allergen-free foods being available, and an improving understanding of the nutritional concerns related to food allergy.Dr. Robbins cautions that while most children outgrow cow's milk allergies in early childhood, children who do not may be at risk for growth discrepancies. Future research should focus on improving understanding of this phenomenon.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 16, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216131956.htm
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New methods promise to speed up development of new plant varieties
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A University of Minnesota research team recently developed new methods that will make it significantly faster to produce gene-edited plants. They hope to alleviate a long-standing bottleneck in gene editing and, in the process, make it easier and faster to develop and test new crop varieties with two new approaches described in a paper recently published in
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Despite dramatic advances in scientists' ability to edit plant genomes using gene-editing tools such as CRISPR and TALENs, researchers were stuck using an antiquated approach -- tissue culture. It has been in use for decades and is costly, labor intensive and requires precise work in a sterile environment. Researchers use tissue culture to deliver genes and gene editing reagents, or chemicals that drive the reaction, to plants."A handful of years ago the National Academy of Sciences convened a meeting of plant scientists, calling on the community to solve the tissue culture bottleneck and help realize the potential of gene editing in plants," said Dan Voytas, professor in Genetics, Cell Biology and Development in the College of Biological Sciences and senior author on the paper. "We have advanced genome editing technology but we needed a novel way to efficiently deliver gene editing reagents to plants. The methods in this paper present a whole new way of doing business."The new methods will:To eliminate the arduous work that goes into gene-editing through tissue culture, co-first authors Ryan Nasti and Michael Maher developed new methods that leverage important plant growth regulators responsible for plant development.Using growth regulators and gene editing reagents, researchers trigger seedlings to develop new shoots that contain edited genes. Researchers collect seeds from these gene-edited shoots and continue experiments. No cell cultures needed.The approaches differ in how the growth regulators are applied and at what scale. The approach developed by Nasti allows small-scale rapid testing -- with results in weeks instead of months or years -- of different combinations of growth regulators. "This approach allows for rapid testing so that researchers can optimize combinations of growth regulators and increase their efficacy," he said.Maher used the same basic principles to make the process more accessible by eliminating the need for a sterile lab environment. "With this method, you don't need sterile technique. You could do this in your garage," he said. He added that this technique opens up the possibility that smaller research groups with less resources can gene edit plants and test how well they do."Nasti and Maher have democratized plant gene editing. It will no longer take months in a sterile lab with dozens of people in tissue culture hoods," Voytas said.The researchers used a tobacco species as their model, but have already demonstrated the method works in grape, tomato and potato plants. They believe the findings will likely transfer across many species. Plant geneticists and agricultural biotechnologists aim to ensure stable food sources for a growing global population in a warming climate, where pest outbreaks and extreme weather events are commonplace. These new methods will allow them to work more efficiently.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211145656.htm
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Focus on food security and sustainability
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The number of malnourished people is increasing worldwide. More than two billion people suffer from a lack of micronutrients. Infant mortality rates are unacceptably high. Against this background, there is a need for the global pooling of research efforts, more research funding and an international body for food security and agriculture that prepares policy decisions. This is what Prof. Joachim von Braun from the University of Bonn, Dr. Robin Fears from the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) and Prof. Volker ter Meulen, President of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) call for in the journal
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The researchers argue that lack of healthy food and poorly managed agricultural systems on the one hand, and excessive consumption and food waste on the other, damage the planet and pose "an unprecedented threat to global food security." World leaders had started to recognize the challenges.Academies of science, medicine and technology have recently joined forces to form the global network InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). An IAP project is working towards connecting the interfaces of food, food security and global environmental health. The organization brings together networks of experts from Africa, Asia, America and Europe to analyze food systems with a view to global environmental change.The authors highlight the urgent need for investment in research infrastructure to provide reliable data on population health, nutrition, agricultural practices, climate change, ecosystems, sustainability and human behavior. The political decision-makers must increase funding for agricultural and nutrition research.Although a large body of scientific knowledge on nutrition and hunger is already available, increased international cooperation is required to close knowledge gaps. This also involves social science issues, for example how to transform the behavior of consumers and farmers and how to introduce previously neglected agricultural crops. The implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) also requires the coherent consideration of research results.The authors propose an international food security and agriculture body focused on preparing policy decisions. "Such a body would have the support of the large scientific community associated with it and could address the most pressing nutritional and agricultural issues," write the researchers. The tasks range from the question of how to balance nutritional and environmental goals to the analysis of how to motivate consumers to eat healthily and sustainably.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211145634.htm
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Azteca ant colonies move the same way leopards' spots form
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What could Azteca ants in coffee farms in Mexico have in common with leopards' spots and zebras' stripes?
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After two decades of analyzing the rise, spread and collapse of Azteca ant colonies in a coffee farm in Mexico, University of Michigan researchers have proven that the ant distributions follow a pattern named after chemist Alan Turing, who first described it in 1952, that is said to explain leopards' spots and other patterns in nature."The same equations that Turing used for chemistry, we can use in ecology," said John Vandermeer, a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and first author of a study in the December issue of The finding, he says, helps shed light on the complex agroecological system of coffee farms and how the "control from above" (focused on pests) model is also more complicated than a predator-prey relationship. The system includes a complex community of predators, parasites and diseases that interact with each other in complicated ways that eventually generate a self-organized system that exerts effective control over the herbivore."This is an important finding because it shows how organisms in nature are embedded within a complex web of interactions and, therefore, the simplistic pest management approach of 'one pest, one natural enemy' may not be the most appropriate one for pest management," said co-author Ivette Perfecto, the George W. Pack Professor of Ecology, Natural Resources and Environment at U-M's School for the Environment and Sustainability."Rather, a complex systems approach that accounts for nonlinearities and networks of interactions is what is needed."Turing explained the creation of nonrandom patterns in chemistry by observing chemical reactions and how they are destabilized. A chemical reaction is stabilized by the balance of an activation and repression process. Then there's diffusion: a drop of ink in water eventually diffuses and can't be separated from the water. But, Turing observed, if the repression force diffused at a greater rate than the activation force, a nonrandom pattern would develop."Turing figured that if you took this reaction process, you can put together two forces that are stabilizing themselves and you put them together and that destabilizes the whole system, forming patterns," Vandermeer said. "Something very similar happens in ecological systems: the predator is eating the prey and the prey's population goes down, and then the predators' population goes down, that's a regulating thing. When you have diffusion -- in biology we call it migration -- the predator moves in space and the prey moves, too."Vandermeer and Perfecto looked at data they collected in an organic coffee farm in Chiapas, Mexico, mapping the distribution of shade trees containing nests of Azteca sericeasur ants. While there are between 7,000 to 11,000 shade trees in the plot depending on the year, only about 700 have Aztecas on them. Each nest has anywhere between 10 to 20 queens.Phorid flies find these clusters, parasitizing the ants by planting an egg on the ant's head. Larvae will develop until the ant's head falls off and a new fly emerges, repeating the cycle. As the local population of ant nests builds up, spatial clusters are formed and become larger, and so does the population of phorid flies, which will in turn act as a repressor in the system, resulting in the patchy distributions of ants similar to the leopard's patches."Turing was talking about his chemicals and we're talking about ants and flies," Vandermeer said. "We predicted that our ants and our flies should form these little clusters and we found that they do."In their study, the researchers explored the complex relationships between predators, prey and their environment, including the green coffee scale, a relatively benign coffee pest that rarely reaches pest status; the Azya orbigera, a predatory beetle that feasts on the scale; and the Azteca ant, which protects the scale from the beetle.Under protection from the ants, the scales effectively have a refuge from the beetle predators and they increase dramatically in numbers. With such high local population density, a fungal disease takes over and the scale insects decline rapidly. Thus the combination of a predator, a refuge in the clusters of ant nests and a fungal disease keeps the scale insects under control.And then there's the coffee rust, which has decimated coffee farms across Latin America but remains fairly controlled in Puerto Rico. The rust is spread by spores in the wind, but the same fungus that causes the disease in the scale insects, is also an antagonist of the rust, complicating the situation considerably.The researchers warn about the temptation of providing simple answers to farmers seeking solutions to perceived problems in their farms -- for example, by getting rid of the shade trees that house the ants."If we get rid of the shade trees, then the ants would go away. If the ants go away, there's no place to have a refuge for the scale insects to escape the predator. So the beetle would eat all of the scale insects and then itself die of starvation," Vandermeer said. "And when the next season arrives, the scale insects would come back without any predators to stop them. So if you get rid of the shade trees you get rid of the control."The same can be said when it comes to rust, he says. Coffee rust spreads by spores that are taken by the wind and a canopy of shade trees above the coffee acts as a windbreak."So if you take the shade trees out of the system, you get the wind in the system, and with the wind brings the spores," Vandermeer said. "Since it's a complex system, it requires a more holistic approach to understand and manage, and there's more potential for surprise."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211115633.htm
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Study sheds light on 'overlooked' bee species
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The UK's first citizen science project focusing on solitary, ground-nesting bees has revealed that they nest in a far broader range of habitats than previously thought.
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There are approximately 250 species of solitary bee in the UK, but far less is known about these important pollinators compared to honeybees or bumblebees.Although some previous studies have examined their foraging activities, there has been little research into their nesting behaviour as their nests can be difficult to find. This is why academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) called on the public to help.Dr Stephanie Maher (now based at Trinity College Dublin) and Dr Thomas Ings of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) led the solitary bee citizen science project and the results, which could help shape how land is managed to better protect ground-nesting bees, have been published in the journal The project asked the public to report active nesting sites of four different species that nest close together in aggregations: the tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva), the ashy mining bee (Andrena cineraria), the yellow legged furrow bee (Halictus rubicundus), and the ivy bee (Colletes hederae).In total, almost 400 submissions were made to the site during 2017 and from the verifiable recordings it was found that the solitary bees studied were able to nest across a broad range of habits, although distinct preferences were found between species.The recordings found that 82% of tawny mining bee nests were on flat ground and 68% were in at least partial shade. Meanwhile 74% of ivy bee nests were fully exposed to sunlight, and they were equally at home on flat or sloped ground.Senior author of the study Dr Thomas Ings, Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said: "By enlisting the general public we have been able to increase awareness of solitary bees and at the same time collect valuable information on nest site characteristics."We have found that the species in our study have the capacity to tolerate a range of environmental conditions, although each species was more frequently associated with a particular set of site characteristics. For example, the tawny mining bee was associated with flat ground in shady sites, while the ivy bee was most commonly found nesting in unshaded sites."This information on nesting behaviour is highly valuable because it puts us in a better position to provide advice to land owners on how to manage their land sympathetically in order to protect these important, ground-nesting solitary bees."Understanding solitary bee nesting requirements and how to sympathetically manage land for them is especially important in light of the severe declines solitary bees and other pollinating insects have suffered in the UK over recent decades."While there is a lot of excellent work being done on increasing the availability of floral resources for solitary bees, we also need to ensure that suitable nesting resources are available in both urban and rural landscapes."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211082707.htm
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Plant researchers examine bread aroma: Modern and old wheat varieties taste equally good
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The scientists compared taste and aroma of different breads baked in close cooperation with an artisan baker and a miller using flour from old as well as modern wheat varieties. In the journal
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Wheat is one of the world's most important agricultural crops. In recent decades, new varieties have been cultivated. Not only are they considerably higher yielding than the older varieties but also less susceptible to pests and changing climatic conditions. In addition to that, their baking characteristics have also been improved.In the past, the aroma (i.e. smell and taste) of bread baked from wheat flour was never important and therefore not considered during breeding, cultivation, nor was it a decisive factor in trade. One of the reasons for that is that analysing the aroma of different breads is time consuming. A comprehensive study has now examined the aroma potential of various old (i.e. released before 2000) and modern wheat varieties using molecular biology methods to predict the aroma.The study shows how science can successfully be part of and contribute to the value chain: Several institutes at HHU and the University of Hohenheim worked on this research project alongside researchers from Zurich University of Applied Sciences, the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm as well as the Beck bakery in Römerstein, Stelzenmühle mill in Bad Wurzach and the District Agricultural Office (Kreislandwirtschaftsamt) in Münsingen.To be able to compare the different aromas of a total of 40 varieties of wheat, the research team produced doughs from each variety, always using the same recipe, which were then baked. To determine whether potential differences in aroma are attributable to the respective wheat variety or to the location where that particular type of wheat was grown, two breads were baked from each variety: one with wheat grown in Gatersleben and one with wheat grown in Stuttgart-Hohenheim.The doughs and breads were first compared based on external parameters (dough elasticity, bread size). Test persons next assessed the smell and taste of the breads following a pre-determined procedure. First the testers described in general terms how aromatic -- or bland -- the bread tasted. In a second step, a detailed assessment was made using the so-called 'Wäderswiler Aromarad'.Differences in aroma depend on wheat variety and cultivation location"I am often told that modern varieties produce blander breads than older varieties," explains Extraordinary Professor Dr Friedrich Longin from the University of Hohenheim. "We were able to prove that this is not the case. Some of both the old and the modern varieties produced very tasty breads. It is fascinating how the breads differ in taste and aroma depending on the wheat variety we used."Master baker Heiner Beck from Römerstein baked and tasted all of the breads: "I have made and tasted a lot of breads from different wheat varieties in my time. But I'm surprised by how the breads from the different wheat varieties differ in terms of shape, aroma and even colour."Another noteworthy finding is that the soil in which the wheat was grown has almost as much influence on the baking result and the taste of the bread as the wheat variety used. This reflects varying soil properties as well as different nutritional and mineral contents of the soils, all of which influence the composition of the wheat grains.Molecular biological methods make it possible to predict bread quality"A key aspect of our study is that we have found methods based on molecular markers and the metabolite profiles of the flours which can be used to predict the quality of bread," highlights Professor Dr Benjamin Stich from the Institute of Quantitative Genetics and Genomics of Plants at HHU. Together with the MPI, the HHU researchers determined the metabolic products found in the flour and carried out the statistical analysis to predict the bread characteristics.This new method brings with it a decisive advantage for plant breeding: In order to breed a new wheat variety to be eventually put on the market, very large numbers of plants -- several thousand per year -- are regularly produced, all of which must be analysed to determine their properties. "It would be much too expensive and time consuming to make breads from all of those plants and to taste them all," explains Stich. With the new method, however, the grower can very quickly distinguish the plants that produce better-quality breads. This way, the number of plants to be included in a final baking test can be reduced considerably.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211100313.htm
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Trashed farmland could be a conservation treasure
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Low-productivity agricultural land could be transformed into millions of hectares of conservation reserve across the world, according to University of Queensland-led research.
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The research team proposed a new way of understanding the conservation value of "uncontested lands" -- areas where agricultural productivity is low.Dr Zunyi Xie, from UQ's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said uncontested lands could be low-hanging fruit for expanding the world's conservation areas."These spaces could offer great opportunities, and it's time we recognise what that could mean and where it might be," Dr Xie said."Global agricultural area has actually declined over the past two decades due to socio-political trends, market changes and environmental degradation."Restoring degraded lands that are no longer contested for agricultural use, due to low productivity or inappropriate farming practices, may present a major conservation opportunity if balanced with local community and indigenous groups' needs."UQ's Associate Professor Eve McDonald-Madden said this approach could be cheaper and quicker than others."Quite rightly, most conservation endeavours focus on protecting the best places for biodiversity," she said."Yet these areas are often in high demand for other uses, such as agricultural production or resource extraction."The contested nature of these places makes land acquisition for protecting species expensive and a lengthy process."While those battles for high-value biodiversity areas continue, as they should, let's take advantage of the vast areas of underutilised agricultural land across the globe."Those areas that don't play a key role in food security or economic well-being and once revived can bring conservation gains."The team has been working on mapping and quantifying opportunities for protecting these lands, believing they could help nations reach their United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commitments."This research will support effective prioritisation of conservation restoration to support biodiversity and in an attempt to tackle climate change," Dr Xie said."It also provides a critical evidence base, helping broaden the options available to those making decisions about what land to preserve by highlighting areas that may otherwise be overlooked.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211100300.htm
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Sorghum study illuminates relationship between humans, crops and the environment in domestication
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A new study that examines the genetics behind the bitter taste of some sorghum plants and one of Africa's most reviled bird species illustrates how human genetics, crops and the environment influence one another in the process of plant domestication.
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The study untangles these factors to create a more complete look at crop domestication than is possible in other major crops, said Xianran Li, an adjunct associate professor in the Iowa State University Department of Agronomy and corresponding author of the paper. The study, published recently in the scientific journal "It's a systematic view that gives us a full picture of domestication," he said. "Looking at just one component only tells us part of the story."Sorghum is a cereal crop first domesticated in Africa that remains a staple food throughout the continent. The researchers noted that sorghum varieties with high levels of tannins commonly grow in eastern and southern Africa, while western African farmers tend to prefer varieties with low tannin content. In contrast, domestication processes in other continents removed condensed tannins from most other cereal crops, such as wheat, rice and corn, due to the bitter taste they produce.But farmers in south and east Africa grow many cultivars that retained tannin, which would seem to be a puzzling decision considering the taste and unfavorable nutritional values. Li said the condensed tannins were likely retained as a defense mechanism from the red-billed quelea, a bird species sometimes referred to as a "feathered locust" that can cause up to $50 million in economic losses in Africa every year from eating crops. Li and his co-authors found the distribution of sorghum cultivars with tannin correspond to areas with red-billed quelea populations.They also consulted publicly accessible genotype information on human populations in Africa and found an associated distribution of the taste receptor TAS2R among Africans in regions that commonly grow sorghum with tannin. Taste receptors are molecules that facilitate the sensation of certain tastes, and the patterns in the distribution of TAS2R could make people living in those regions of Africa less susceptible to the bitter taste caused by tannin.Li called this unique interaction among sorghum tannin, human taste receptors and herbivorous birds a unique triangle that offers unique insight into crop domestication. And, because condensed tannins were bred out of other cereal crops, this kind of research is possible only with sorghum, he said."Our investigation uncovered coevolution among humans, plants and environments linked by condensed tannins, the first example of domestication triangle," Li said. "The concept of a domestication triangle has been proposed previously and generally accepted. Discovering a concrete case, particularly with some molecular evidence, is very exciting. We think this study could help uncover future cases."To arrive at their conclusions, the research team grew sorghum varieties with and without tannin and analyzed publicly available datasets on human genetics and wild bird populations in Africa to untangle how these factors interact with one another to influence the domestication of sorghum in Africa. The experiments involving sorghum grown in Iowa found sparrows would feed on the seeds of plants without tannin but left alone the cultivars that contained tannin, reinforcing the concept that herbivore threats to sorghum crops prefer non-tannin varieties."The whole discovery was driven by curiosity, after we observed the unexpected sparrow damage in our sorghum field," said Jianming Yu, professor of agronomy and Pioneer Distinguished Chair in Maize Breeding. "We really had no clue that our gene cloning project to find the pair of interacting genes underlying sorghum tannins would lead to this discovery."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191211082700.htm
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Invest in pollinator monitoring for long-term gain
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New research shows that for every £1 invested in pollinator monitoring schemes, at least £1.50 can be saved, from otherwise costly independent research projects.
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A research team from the University of Reading and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology is studying how to improve pollinator monitoring in the UK in a cost-effective manner. The preliminary results are presented today at the British Ecological Society's annual meeting in Belfast.Dr. Tom Breeze, researcher at the University of Reading, who will be presenting the research, said "The study shows that scientifically robust pollinator monitoring schemes, regardless of their size or structure, are cost-effective and add tremendous value to food security and wider scientific research."Despite the urgent need, monitoring insect pollinators (especially wild bees and hoverflies) has often been considered too expensive to implement at a national scale. This research examines hidden benefits of monitoring schemes. By pooling data and expertise from a wide range of resources, the costs of schemes have been estimated to be between £5,600 for a small volunteer-led scheme collecting basic data and £2.8 million per year for professional monitoring of both pollinating insects and pollination to the UK's crops.This research combined a series of methods to examine potentially hidden benefits of monitoring schemes, in monetary terms. The authors used a type of statistical method called power analysis to assess how many sites should be sampled to be able to detect a 30% change in insect populations over 10 years, assuming each site was visited by surveyors four times per year. A 30% change was used as a conservative estimate for how pollinator populations may be projected to decrease over the next 10 years, at a rate of 3% per year.Bioeconomic models were used to estimate the impact of pollinator losses on the yields of insect pollinated crops grown in the UK. These include apples, berries, beans, oilseed rape and tomatoes. The monetary value of the scheme to scientists was estimated by asking leading pollinator researchers across Europe how they would design networks to answer eight research questions about wild pollinators.The study concluded that these hypothetical monitoring schemes would be cheaper to implement than multiple research projects because administrative and management costs are lower, due to a single centralised network, rather than several, devolved smaller projects.Dr. Breeze highlights the importance of pollinators in the UK landscape, "Pollinators are vital for our food security but are under threat from landscape and climate changes. Monitoring pollinator populations is vital to understanding the status and trends of these animals and identifying areas where we need to take dedicated action."It is hoped that this will "protect pollination services to crops and add value as scientific infrastructure," said Dr. Breeze, from the University of Reading.However, these estimates of the economic benefits of pollination only directly apply to farmers. It is anticipated that, through keeping prices low, they will indirectly provide further value to supermarkets and consumers.Issues with relying on citizen science monitoring networks are that most volunteers have little experience and may struggle to distinguish between many species in the field. As a result, a network of fully trained professionals could supply higher resolution data.However, in the UK, there is a strong culture of existing volunteer insect recorders which can be capitalised upon, such as the new Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (PoMS), the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society, the Dipterists Forum and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.Dr. Breeze suggested that "A scheme that combines existing pollinator monitoring efforts with additional professional research efforts should be explored as a way to deliver the best of both worlds."One limitation of the study is that the power analysis cannot distinguish between the relative research quality of different networks. It is assumed that fully professional schemes would add more consistent value to science. Alternatively, volunteer-focussed schemes allow opportunities for public engagement with conservation as well as influencing attitudes to nature and may also provide high quality research.Dr. Breeze highlighted that governments should consider pollinator monitoring as an excellent investment from both a food security and scientific perspective.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 9, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191209112147.htm
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Large atmospheric waves in the jet stream present risk to global food production
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In a new study published today in
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Lead author, Dr Kai Kornhuber from the University of Oxford's Department of Physics and Colombia University's Earth Institute, said: "Co-occurring heatwaves will become more severe in the coming decades if greenhouse gases are not mitigated. In an interconnected world, this can lead to food price spikes and have impacts on food availability even in remote regions not directly affected by heatwaves."We found a 20-fold increase in the risk of simultaneous heatwaves in major crop producing regions when these global scale wind patterns are in place. Until now this was an underexplored vulnerability in the food system. We have found that during these events there actually is a global structure in the otherwise quite chaotic circulation. The bell can ring in multiple regions at once and the impacts of those specific interconnections were not quantified previously."Western North America, Western Europe and the Caspian Sea region are particularly susceptible to these atmospheric patterns that get heat and drought locked into one place simultaneously where they then affect crops production yields.Dr Dim Coumou, co-author from the Institute for Environmental Studies at VU Amsterdam, said: "Normally low harvests in one region are expected to be balanced out by good harvests elsewhere but these waves can cause reduced harvests in several important breadbaskets simultaneously, creating risks for global food production."Dr Elisabeth Vogel, co-author from Melbourne University, said: "During years in which two or more summer weeks featured the amplified wave pattern, cereal crop production was reduced by more than 10% in individual regions, and by 4% when averaged across all crop regions affected by the pattern."Dr Radley Horton, co-author from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Colombia University, said: "If climate models are unable to reproduce these wave patterns, risk managers such as reinsurers and food security experts may face a blind spot when assessing how simultaneous heat waves and their impacts could change in a warming climate."The scientists conclude that a thorough understanding of what drives this jet stream behaviour could ultimately improve seasonal predictions of agricultural production at the global scale and inform risk assessments of harvest failures across multiple food-producing regions.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 6, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191206132228.htm
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Reduced soil tilling helps both soils and yields
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Agriculture degrades over 24 million acres of fertile soil every year, raising concerns about meeting the rising global demand for food. But a simple farming practice born from the 1930's Dust Bowl could provide a solution, according to new Stanford research. The study, published Dec. 6 in
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"Reduced tillage is a win-win for agriculture across the Corn Belt," said study lead author Jillian Deines, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment. "Worries that it can hurt crop yields have prevented some farmers from switching practices, but we found it typically leads to increased yields."The U.S. -- the largest producer of corn and soybeans worldwide -- grows a majority of these two crops in the Midwest. Farmers plucked about 367 million metric tons of corn and 108 million metric tons of soybeans from American soil this past growing season, providing key food, oil, feedstock, ethanol and export value.Farmers generally till the soil prior to planting corn or soybeans -- a practice known to control weeds, mix nutrients, break up compacted dirt and ultimately increase food production over the short term. However, over time this method degrades soil. A 2015 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations found that in the past 40 years the world has lost a third of food-producing land to diminished soil. The demise of once fertile land poses a serious challenge for food production, especially with mounting pressures on agriculture to feed a growing global population.In contrast, reduced tillage -- also known as conservation tillage -- promotes healthier soil management, reduces erosion and runoff and improves water retention and drainage. It involves leaving the previous year's crop residue (such as corn stalks) on the ground when planting the next crop, with little or no mechanical tillage. The practice is used globally on over 370 million acres, mostly in South America, Oceania and North America. However, many farmers fear the method could reduce yields and profits. Past studies of yield effects have been limited to local experiments, often at research stations, that don't fully reflect production-scale practices.The Stanford team turned to machine learning and satellite datasets to address this knowledge gap. First, they identified areas of reduced and conventional tilling from previously published data outlining annual U.S. practices for 2005 to 2016. Using satellite-based crop yield models -- which take into account variables such as climate and crop life-cycles -- they also reviewed corn and soybean yields during this time. To quantify the impact of reduced tillage on crop yields, the researchers trained a computer model to compare changes in yields based on tillage practice. They also recorded elements such as soil type and weather to help determine which conditions had a larger influence on harvests.The researchers calculated corn yields improved an average of 3.3 percent and soybeans by 0.74 percent across fields managed with long-term conservation tillage practices in the nine states sampled. Yields from the additional tonnage rank in the top 15 worldwide for both crops. For corn, this totals approximately 11 million additional metric tons matching the 2018 country output of South Africa, Indonesia, Russia or Nigeria. For soybeans, the added 800,000 metric tons ranks in between Indonesia and South Africa's country totals.Some areas experienced up to an 8.1 percent increase for corn and 5.8 percent for soybeans. In other fields, negative yields of 1.3 percent for corn and 4.7 for soybeans occurred. Water within the soil and seasonal temperatures were the most influential factors in yield differences, especially in drier, warmer regions. Wet conditions were also found favorable to crops except during the early season where water-logged soils benefit from conventional tillage that in turn dries and aerates."Figuring out when and where reduced tillage works best could help maximize the benefits of the technology and guide farmers into the future," said study senior author David Lobell, a professor of Earth system science in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment.It takes time to see the benefits from reduced tillage, as it works best under continuous implementation. According to the researchers' calculations, corn farmers won't see the full benefits for the first 11 years, and soybeans take twice as long for full yields to materialize. However, the approach also results in lower costs due to reduced need for labor, fuel and farming equipment while also sustaining fertile lands for continuous food production. The study does show a small positive gain even during the first year of implementation, with higher gains accruing over time as soil health improves. According to a 2017 Agricultural Censuses report, farmers appear to be getting on board with the long-term investment and close to 35 percent of cropland in the U.S. is now managed with reduced tillage."One of the big challenges in agriculture is achieving the best crop yields today without comprising future production. This research demonstrates that reduced tillage can be a solution for long-term crop productivity," Deines said.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 6, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191206100139.htm
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How do you cultivate a healthy plant microbiome?
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Scientists are homing in on what a healthy human microbiome looks like, mapping the normal bacteria that live in and on the healthy human body. But what about a healthy plant microbiome?
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Is there even such a thing as a healthy plant microbiome in today's agricultural fields, with acres of identical plants assaulted by pesticides and herbicides and hyped up on fertilizer?A new study by University of California, Berkeley, microbial ecologists used experimental evolution to help identify the core microbiome of commercial tomatoes. They selected for those microbial taxa that best survived on the plants and then showed that these "domesticated" microbial communities are able to effectively fend off random microbes that land on the plants. In other words, these selected communities look like a stable, healthy plant microbiome, akin to what a robust tomato plant might pass to its offspring.The results are good news for growers who hope that manipulating the plant microbiome, perhaps with probiotics, will make for healthier fields that need less fertilizer and less or no pesticides to produce good yields."I see the implications of this work not just being about probiotics, but also about guiding agricultural practice," said study leader Britt Koskella, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology. "When planting fields, we should be thinking about how what we do -- whether it is age structuring of crops or monocropping versus crop rotations, what is in the soil or what is living nearby -- can impact the acquisition and health of the plant microbiome. We should be manipulating the growing conditions in a way that microbial transmission is more akin to what would happen naturally."Koskella, lead author Norma Morella, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and their colleagues reported their findings online this week in the journal Koskella studies the microbial ecology of plants and how it affects plant health, much like biologists study the human microbiome's role in health. Focusing on agricultural crops, she has some of the same concerns as biologists who worry about the transmission of a healthy human microbiome -- skin, gut and more -- from mother to baby.When seedlings are first put into fields, for example, there are often no nearby adult plants from which they can acquire leaf and stem microbes. In the absence of maternal transmission, Koskella wondered, how do these plants acquire their microbiomes, and are these microbiomes ideal for the growing plants?And, if the microbiomes are not well adapted -- for example, not resistant to disease-carrying microbes -- can they be improved?These questions are becoming increasingly important as growers and industry alike try to improve crop yield and sustainability by surrounding seeds with desirable microbes, engineering soil microbial communities or spraying desired microbes on growing plants.Increasing evidence also shows that microbiomes can affect yield, tolerance to drought and even the flowering time of plants. Can microbiomes be enhanced to achieve this, and will enhanced microbiomes survive long enough to help the plants?The new study is encouraging."We already know that, in theory, you can select for microbes that perform particular functions: increased yield, drought tolerance or disease resistance, for example," Koskella said. "We are showing here that you can, in principle, create a microbial community that has the function you are interested in, but also is uninvadable, because it is really well-adapted to that plant."The researchers' experiments, conducted in greenhouses on UC Berkeley's Oxford Tract, involved taking five types of tomatoes and spraying four successive generations of plants with the microbiomes of the previous generation. The first generation was sprayed with a broad mix of microbes found on a variety of tomatoes in an outdoor field at UC Davis.Nurturing the microbial community of each type of tomato through successive generations allowed it to adapt to each strain, ideally weeding out the maladapted microbes and allowing the well-adapted ones to flourish.By sequencing the 16S ribosomal subunits of the tomatoes' microbial communities after each generation -- a technique that allows identification of different bacterial taxa -- they were able to show that, by the fourth generation, only 25% of the original microbial taxa remained."So, 75 percent of the original bacteria that we spray on go virtually extinct during the experiment," Koskella said. "That is really interesting in itself, because it suggests that a lot of the microbes out there aren't well adapted, they are kind of there by chance. The wind blew them there, rain splashed them there, but they are not thriving, they are likely not adapted to that particular environment."The remaining 25%, which were very similar across all independent selection lines and across the five tomato strains, looked very much like a "core" microbiome: the key microbes necessary for a healthy plant.When Morella sprayed tomato plants with a microbial mixture -- half from the partially adapted microbiome of the first generation, half from the more mature fourth generation microbiome -- the fourth generation microbes took over, suggesting that they were much better adapted to the tomato."I think this work on the tomato supports the idea that leaf bacteria are probably very distinctive and have traits that are required for them to grow well on those plants, and that just the fact that you can find things there may mean that they are there only transiently and probably in the process of dying," said co-author Steven Lindow, a UC Berkeley professor of plant and microbial biology who has been investigating plant-pathogen interactions for nearly 50 years. "This is very consistent with what we had found before, that good plant colonists can grow on many plants and, in so doing, usurp the ability of anybody else to also grow there. The prophylactic effect is definitely very strong and real and very important in keeping other plant colonists away.""What you want to ask, really, is, 'Who wins when you put them head to head? The selected microbiome or the unselected microbiome?'" Koskella said. "That, to me, is my favorite part of the whole experiment and was the 'aha! moment': Selection works, you really can select for a microbiome that it is well adapted and not invadable, at least under the conditions we used for selection."Koskella's group is now running further experiments to determine whether the selected microbiome actually improves plant health, resilience and productivity, and whether probiotic microbes can be integrated successfully into the core microbiome for lasting crop benefits.The work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DEB 1754494). Other paper co-authors are Francis Cheng-Hsuan Weng of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, Pierre Joubert of UC Berkeley and Jessica Metcalf of Princeton University.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 5, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191205130558.htm
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How flowers adapt to their pollinators
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Flowering plants are characterized by an astonishing diversity of flowers of different shapes and sizes. This diversity has arisen in adaptation to selection imposed by different pollinators including among others bees, flies, butterflies, hummingbirds, bats or rodents. Although several studies have documented that pollinators can impose strong selection pressures on flowers, our understanding of how flowers diversify remains fragmentary. For example, does the entire flower adapt to a pollinator, or do only some flower parts evolve to fit a pollinator while other flower parts may remain unchanged?
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In a recent study, scientists around Agnes Dellinger from the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research from the University of Vienna investigated flowers of 30 species of a tropical plant group (Merianieae) from the Andes. "Each of these plant species has adapted to pollination by either bees, birds, bats or rodents," says Dellinger. Using High-Resolution X-ray computed tomography, the research team produced 3D-models of these flowers and used geometric-morphometric methods to analyse differences in flower shape among species with different pollinators.The researchers could show that flower shapes have evolved in adaptation to the distinct pollinators, but that flower shape evolution was not homogeneous across the flower. In particular, the showy sterile organs of flowers (petals) adapted to the different pollinators more quickly than the rest of the flower: the reproductive organs have evolved more slowly. "This study is among the first to analyse the entire 3-dimensional flower shape, and it will be exciting to see whether similar evolutionary floral modularity exists in other plant groups," concludes Dellinger.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 5, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191205113138.htm
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First 'lab in a field' experiment reveals a sunnier side of climate change
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Pioneering experiments using heated field plots to test the responses of crops to temperature have revealed an unexpected plus side of climate change for farmers.
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The field trial experiment -- the first of its kind -- was set up to investigate the link between warmer Octobers in the United Kingdom and higher yields of oilseed rape.The crop, planted in autumn and harvested early the following summer, is particularly sensitive to temperature at certain times of the year with annual yields varying by up to 30 percent as a result. It is known that warmer temperatures in October are correlated with higher oilseed rape yields, but the reason for this trend was unclear.The results of this study by the John Innes Centre reveal that the temperature in October is surprisingly important for the timing of flowering, and that warmer Octobers result in a delay to flowering the following spring.Professor Steve Penfield an author of the study says, "We found that oilseed rape plants stop growing when they go through the floral transition at the end of October, and that warmer temperatures at this time of year enable the plant to grow for longer, giving more potential for higher yields."The good news for growers of oilseed rape is that Met Office data shows cold Octobers are now much less frequent than they were in the past."By establishing the link between autumn temperatures and yield, our study highlights an example of climate change being potentially useful to farmers. Cold Octobers have a negative effect on yield if you are growing oilseed rape, and these are now rarer," says Professor Penfield.Temperature is critical for oilseed rape lifecycle because it determines at what point the plant goes through the transition from vegetative state to flowering, with delays in flowering being associated with higher yields.This process called vernalisation is well understood in the lab as a requirement of a prolonged exposure to cold temperature. But an increasing body of research suggests vernalisation might work differently under more variable conditions experienced by a plant in the field.In this study the team used soil surface warming cables to raise the temperature of field plots by between 4 and 8 degrees Celsius, simulating warmer October temperatures. Two varieties of oilseed rape with differing vernalisation requirements were trialled.Lab tests on dissected plants showed that warming in October conditions delayed floral transition by between 3 and 4 weeks for both varieties. Genetic tests showed genes associated with vernalisation in cold conditions were also highly expressed in the warm conditions.The study shows that vernalisation in oilseed rape takes place predominantly during October during which time the mean temperature is between 10-12 degrees Celsius.The technology used in the study has been used before in natural grasslands to simulate winter warming but the trials conducted by the John Innes Centre research team are the first time it's been used on a crop in the field."This study was only possible because were able to create the lab into a field to simulate how climate change is affecting UK agriculture," says Professor Penfield. "It's important to be able to do this because yield is highly weather dependent in oilseed rape and it is very likely that climate change will have big consequences for the way we can use crops and the type of variety that we need to deploy."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 4, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191204170400.htm
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Less rice, more nutritious crops will enhance India's food supply
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India can sustainably enhance its food supply if its farmers plant less rice and more nutritious and environmentally-friendly crops, including finger millet, pearl millet, and sorghum, according to a new study from the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.
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The study, published in the "To make agriculture more sustainable, it's important that we think beyond just increasing food supply and also find solutions that can benefit nutrition, farmers, and the environment. This study shows that there are real opportunities to do just that," says Kyle Davis, an environmental data scientist at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University and lead author of the study.With nearly 200 million undernourished people in India as well as widespread groundwater depletion and the need to adapt to climate change, increasing the supply of nutri-cereals may be an important part of solving India's food shortage, Davis says.Historical practices, especially the Green Revolution, have promoted the use of high-yielding seed varieties, irrigation, fertilizers, and machinery and emphasized maximizing food calorie production often at the expense of nutritional and environmental considerations. But Davis assessed India's crops according to multiple indices. He and fellow researchers evaluated alternative production decisions across multiple objectives using India's rice-dominated monsoon grain production as a case study.The team performed a series of optimizations to either maximize the production of important dietary nutrients (i.e., protein and iron), minimize greenhouse gas emissions and resource use (i.e., water and energy), or maximize resilience to climate extremes. They found that planting more coarse cereals such as millets and sorghum could improve India's national food supply in myriad ways. On average, it would increase protein by 1 to 5 percent; increase iron supply by 5 to 49 percent; increase climate resilience (1 to 13 percent fewer calories lost during a drought), and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2 to 13 percent. The diversification of crops would also decrease the demand for irrigation water by 3 to 21 percent and reduce energy use by 2 to 12 percent while maintaining calorie production and using the same amount of cropland.These findings show the many potential benefits of increasing millet and sorghum production in India, particularly in regions where rice yields are currently low, Davis says. "This work provides strong evidence that agriculture can be a powerful tool in helping to solve many of our planet's most important challenges, including malnutrition, climate change, and water scarcity."The Indian Government is also promoting the increased production and consumption of nutri-cereals, which will be important for farmers' livelihoods and the increased cultural acceptability of these grains.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 4, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191204152827.htm
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Warmer temperatures will increase arsenic levels in rice
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People around the world consume rice in their daily diets. But in addition to its nutrient and caloric content, rice can contain small amounts of arsenic, which in large doses is a toxin linked to multiple health conditions and dietary-related cancers.
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Now researchers at the University of Washington have found that warmer temperatures, at levels expected under most climate change projections, can lead to higher concentrations of arsenic in rice grains. The team will present these findings Dec. 10 at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco."We know that more arsenic is released from soil at higher temperatures. Here we saw this response to temperature in the soil impact the arsenic content of rice grain," said senior author Rebecca Neumann, a UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "We were working with soil that had relatively low arsenic levels, but the warmer temperatures still led to increased arsenic concentrations in the grains at ranges where we begin to have health concerns. If these results are representative of what we might expect for field-grown rice, then climate change could exacerbate the problem of arsenic-contaminated rice."Arsenic occurs naturally in the soil, though its concentration is higher in areas that have historically used arsenic-based herbicides or where irrigation water contains arsenic. When farmers grow crops like rice under flooded conditions, arsenic is drawn out of the soil and into the water."In general, the plant is like a big tube or a straw as it draws water up from its roots to its leaves. And rice naturally takes up arsenic because the arsenic mimics other molecules that these plants preferentially draw out of the soil," said lead author Yasmine Farhat, a UW doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. "It's a perfect storm for concentrating arsenic."To determine whether rice would draw up more arsenic under warmer conditions, the team collected soil from a paddy field in Davis, California. Back in Seattle, the researchers grew rice in this soil in temperature-controlled growth chambers.They compared arsenic uptake under four different temperature conditions. Some plants were grown under normal conditions for that part of California: 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 C) on average during the day. Others were grown at incrementally warmer temperatures reflecting different potential levels of warming for that region by the end of this century: 82 F (28 C), 87 F (30.5 C), and 91 F (33 C). Night time temperatures were 3.6 F (2 C) cooler than daytime for all plants.As the temperature increased, the team saw increased uptake of arsenic to every part of the plant the researchers looked at -- including the rice grains."For the stem and the leaves, it's a clear step up in arsenic concentration as we increase the temperature," Farhat said. "For the grains, the highest temperature made the plants so stressed out that they didn't produce any grains. But these other two forecasts of increasing temperature show a similar increase of arsenic in the rice grains. Arsenic concentrations in the grain more than tripled between the low- and high-temperature treatments."Arsenic is a toxin for rice plants too, and they have mechanisms to protect themselves against higher levels of it. One method includes turning on a protein that sequesters arsenic in specific cells and tissues of plant. But when the researchers measured expression levels of this protein in their plants at higher temperatures, they saw no difference compared to the plants grown at today's relatively low temperatures."Maybe the arsenic concentration was so low in our soil that the plant wasn't 'aware' it needed to turn on its defense mechanism," Farhat said. "We haven't been as concerned about these low-arsenic systems, but our data suggest that as temperatures start to warm, even rice grown in soil with low arsenic could be at risk for having higher levels of arsenic in the grains."Some forms of arsenic are more toxic than others. The team is now collaborating with researchers at UW Tacoma to develop a method that would allow them to see what forms of arsenic are in the different parts of the plant. That way, they can get a better picture of any potential health risks to people."Arsenic in all forms is bad for us, and it's bad for the plants as well," Farhat said. "Increasing arsenic can decrease crop yield. That can be economically bad for rice farmers. I want people to remember even if they are not eating a lot of rice, a lot of people are heavily relying on this crop. When we're thinking and planning for the future, we need to remember that rice touches a lot of people and we should work together on that."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 4, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191204100537.htm
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As a way to fight climate change, not all soils are created equal
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As the planet warms due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a solution for drawing down that carbon -- or at least a major part of it -- lies silently below us.
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Soil organic matter -- made of decomposing plant, animal and microbial tissue -- is what distinguishes healthy, vibrant soil from just plain dirt. Making up about 3% of productive agricultural soils, soil organic matter is an effective "carbon sink" that can store, in the ground, the carbon dioxide plants pull from the atmosphere. Along with reducing fossil fuel emissions, employing soils as vast carbon sinks is considered a key strategy in combating climate change.Accruing soil organic matter effectively and sustainably requires a deeper understanding of its formation, persistence and function. And according to Colorado State University scientists, not all soil organic matter is created equal.A set of studies led by CSU soil scientist Francesca Cotrufo offers a newly nuanced understanding of different soil organic matter components that can be increased through varied management strategies. Publishing in Global Change Biology, Cotrufo and co-authors Jocelyn Lavallee and Jennifer Soong establish a framework for classifying soil organic matter into two broad categories that are fundamentally different in origin and makeup. In a related study in Only by recognizing the diversity of soil organic matter can science, government and agriculture move forward with carbon sequestration to help reverse the tide of climate change while increasing the health of our soils, the scientists say."Because of thousands of years of historical land use and conventional agriculture, we have contributed to consuming soil organic matter and emitting carbon from the soil into the atmosphere," says Cotrufo, a professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and senior scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. "Now, we have the opportunity to put it back."That opportunity, Cotrufo and colleagues say, comes with thinking of soil organic matter as having two major components.The first is called "particulate organic matter," made up of lightweight, partly decomposed plants and fungi residues that are short-lived and not well protected.The second is "mineral-associated organic matter," largely made of byproducts of the decomposition of microbes that chemically bind to minerals in the soil. This type of matter is more resilient and able to persist in the ground for centuries.Insights around the formation of these different classes of soil sprouted from previous work Cotrufo published in 2013, establishing a "microbial-efficiency mineral-stabilization framework" that transformed the way scientists understand how organic matter persists in soils. Cotrufo and colleagues proposed that microbial decomposition of plant matter can act as a stabilizer for soil organic matter; it was previously thought that preserving carbon in soil would require halting decomposition.Cotrufo calls particulate organic matter the "checking account" of soils. It turns over continuously and supports nutrient cycling but requires regular deposits to stay vital. Mineral-associated organic matter, then, is the "savings account": it gets a smaller fraction of deposits but is inherently more stable.Conventional agriculture, Cotrufo says, has caused us to exhaust our checking account and start living off our savings. This happens because of farms selecting few crops with minimal root production, harvesting much of the above-ground biomass, and maintaining few and chemically homogenous plant inputs into the soils.By taking cues from nature and understanding how natural prairies and forests manage their soil checking and savings accounts, more forward-thinking strategies are possible for upending farming and land use to be more sustainable, Cotrufo says. To regenerate healthy soil that can capture excess carbon, both types of soil pools must be augmented, she adds.Writing in Cotrufo will continue researching how particulate and mineral-associated soil organic matter are distributed, with plans to incorporate U.S. land surveys into her datasets. Cotrufo was also recently named the Nutrien Distinguished Scholar of Agricultural Sciences at CSU, a one-year award of $12,000 reserved for distinguished faculty who are making significant impacts in their fields.Cotrufo recently gave a talk on soil as "humanity's capital" at The Land Institute, where she provided insight into her early stake in soil science, and how the field has evolved over her career.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
December 2, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191202124628.htm
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Tiny woodlands are more important than previously thought
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Small woodlands in farmland have more benefits for humans per area, compared to large forests according to a new study. The small woodlands, sometimes even smaller than a football field, can easily go unnoticed in agricultural landscapes. Yet, these small forest remnants can store more carbon in the topsoil layer, are more suitable for hunting activities and host fewer ticks than large forests.
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"The value of these tiny forests has never been unraveled before, although the occurrence of small woodlands in agricultural landscapes has increased due to forest fragmentation," says Alicia Valdés, one of the authors of the study.The reason why these tiny woodlands may provide us with more services is because they naturally have more edges exposed to the influence of the surrounding environment."For example, there is more food supply for roe deer, such as blueberries and seedlings of birch and oak, because edges receive more sunlight and nutrients from the surrounding farmlands. This in turn, is predicted to attract more roe deer that can be hunted by humans," says Alicia Valdés.These tiny forests can also store more carbon per area in the topsoil layer than older big woodlands, because they have an increased soil biological activity, which makes them faster at absorbing organic matter. Potentially these can act as better carbon sinks and help counterbalance the effects of global warming.Another benefit of the tiny forests is that they represent a lower risk of contracting a tick borne disease. This is because less tick larvae can survive in the dry and hot environments characterizing woodland edges."This is just a prediction of all the potential benefits. How people would use these is something that needs to be looked into," says Alicia Valdés.Now that the authors found out that the smaller woodlands are of greater value than previously thought, they argue that more conservation efforts are needed to maintain their important role and value in agricultural landscapes."Preserving the large forests is important because of their higher biodiversity, but conserving smaller woodlands, especially the older ones, will help to increase human well being in agricultural landscapes. These small woodlands need specific policy instruments ensuring their future conservation," says Alicia Valdés.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 28, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191128084604.htm
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New vaccine will stop the spread of bovine TB
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Scientists at the University of Surrey have developed a novel vaccine and complementary skin test to protect cattle against bovine tuberculosis (bovine TB).
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Publishing their findings in the journal Bovine TB is an infectious disease in cattle affecting their lungs, and those that test positive for the disease are culled. The BCG vaccine, which is currently used to protect humans against TB and is effective in cattle, is incompatible with the PPD test. Cattle that are vaccinated with the BCG vaccine, which contains a harmless strain of the bovine TB pathogen Vaccinating cows with BCG is therefore banned in most countries in the world, enabling vets to continue to use the PPD skin test to diagnose the disease in cattle.During this innovative study, researchers sought to make a new BCG vaccine strain that lacks some of the proteins that are shared with the pathogen These dispensable genes encoding immunogenic proteins were then deleted from the BCG chromosome to make a BCG-minus strain. The deleted immunogenic proteins were then used to develop a new synthetic skin test that, like PPD, will be positive for animals that have been exposed to TB but, unlike PPD, will be negative for animals that have been vaccinated with the BCG-minus strain.The protective efficiency of the new strain was tested in guinea pigs. It was found that TB-infected guinea pigs tested positive for the disease using the synthetic skin test whilst guinea pigs vaccinated with the BCG-minus strain did not. So, unlike PPD, the new skin test also works in animals that are protected from TB by BCG-minus vaccination. This potentially allows farmers and veterinarians to protect their animals with the new BCG vaccine, whilst still maintaining a diagnostic test that will detect TB.Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, said: "In order to control the spread of bovine TB, effective vaccination and accurate early diagnosis of the disease are critical. This new vaccine provides protection against bovine TB and will help in the fight against this deadly disease which infects over 50 million cattle worldwide and is economically devastating to farmers."The next stage of our work will be to demonstrate that both synthetic skin test and BCG-minus vaccine works in cattle herds. If they do, then it will be possible to vaccinate cattle against TB yet retain the value of skin test for diagnosis.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 27, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191127121340.htm
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Neonicotinoids and bees: Despite EU moratorium, insecticides still detectable
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Since 2013, a European Union (EU) moratorium has restricted the application of three neonicotinoids to crops that attract bees because of the harmful effects they are deemed to have on these insects. Yet researchers from the CNRS, INRA, and the Institut de l'Abeille (ITSAP) have just demonstrated that residues of these insecticides -- and especially of imidacloprid -- can still be detected in rape nectar from 48% of the plots of studied fields, their concentrations varying greatly over the years. An assessment of the risk posed to bees, based on health agency models and parameters, has revealed that for two out of five years, at least 12% of the fields were sufficiently contaminated to kill 50% of the bees and bumblebees foraging on them. The researchers' findings are published in
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The role of neonicotinoids in the decline of bees led to a 2013 EU moratorium limiting the use of three insecticides -- clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam -- on crops attracting pollinating bees. In September 2018, this was followed by a total ban on their application to any outdoor crop in France. Yet neonicotinoids are frequently detected on wildflowers[1] and untreated crops,[2] suggesting their dispersion within the environment after agricultural use.To investigate this further, researchers from the Chizé Centre for Biological Studies (CNRS / La Rochelle University); INRA units Abeilles, Paysages, Interactions et Systèmes de Culture (APIS) and Abeilles et Environnement (AE); and ITSAP looked for and quantified neonicotinoid residues in nectar from 291 plots (536 samples) of winter rape for the five years following adoption of the moratorium, from 2014 to 2018.Their first observation was that the three neonicotinoids in question could be found in the samples. Imidacloprid in particular was detected each year, in 43% of the analysed samples (corresponding to 48% of the fields), with no downward trend over the years but great variation between them. In 2016, over 90% of the sampled plots tested positive, versus 5% in 2015. Residue levels depend on the type of soil and are higher when there is more precipitation, but they do not appear to be directly linked to the spatial or temporal proximity of potentially treated crops. Though 92% of the positive samples only contained 0.1 to 1 ng/mL of imidacloprid, maximum concentrations in some cases exceeded those reported for treated plots, reaching as high as 70 ng/mL.Using this data, mortality assessments based on health agency models and parameters suggest a non-negligible risk for pollinating bees. For domestic bees, risk peaked in 2014 and 2016, when around 50% of the pollinators were likely to die from imidacloprid in 12% of the plots studied. In those years, 10% to 20% of the plots exhibited a level of contamination associated with the same risk of death for bumblebees and solitary bees. These findings indicate that persistent use of neonicotinoids with certain crops in open fields threatens bees and pollinators frequenting other, untreated crops. They confirm that imidacloprid residues remain in the environment, and spread, even turning up in rape nectar, even though neonicotinoids have not been applied to rape crops since 2013. They also justify the reinforcement of pesticide controls by the total ban on the use of neonicotinoids for any outdoor crop in France, adopted in September 2018.This study relied on access to the Zone Atelier Plaine & Val de Sèvre, a unique CNRS site in west central France (Deux-Sèvres, Nouvelle-Aquitaine).1. Botías C, David A, Horwood J, Abdul-Sada A, Nicholls E, Hill E, Goulson D. Neonicotinoid residues in wildflowers, a potential route of chronic exposure for bees. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2015;49(21):12731-12740. doi:10.1021/acs.est.5b03459.2. Henry M, Cerrutti N, Aupinel P, Decourtye A, Gayrard M, Odoux JF, Pissard A, Rüger C, Bretagnolle V. Reconciling laboratory and field assessments of neonicotinoid toxicity to honeybees. Proc. Biol. Sci. 2015;282(1819). doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.2110.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 27, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191127090151.htm
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On balance, some neonicotinoid pesticides could benefit some bees
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The story of neonicotinoids is growing more nuanced. Europe has banned outdoor use of three of these insecticides to protect bee populations. Two other neonicotinoids are still permitted, but little is known about their impact on bees. New research reported in ACS'
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Neonicotinoids are widely used to defend crops from insects that can destroy them. Some of these crops benefit from pollination, but pesticide treatment can expose bees and other beneficial insects to residues in pollen and nectar. The exposure can kill bees or impair them -- for example, by diminishing their foraging abilities -- contributing to declines in bee populations. This outcome led to the ban of three high-risk neonicotinoid insecticides in Europe. Maj Rundlöf and Ola Lundin wanted to know if bees and the flowering crops they use for food would be better off with or without the use of one of the less-harmful neonicotinoids.In a field study, the researchers found that applying the neonicotinoid thiacloprid on red clover had no observable negative effects on bumblebees. The thiacloprid treatment effectively controlled pests and increased bumblebee crop visitation. However, if this neonicotinoid weren't available, farmers might replace red clover with other nonflowering crops less sensitive to pest infestations, the researchers reasoned. So the team also examined bee performance in landscapes lacking red clover. They found that bumblebee colonies near thiacloprid-treated red clover fields grew heavier (with more larvae, bees and food stores in them) compared to colonies in landscapes without red clover. According to the researchers, the study indicates that certain neonicotinoid insecticides still permitted in the European Union might benefit bumblebees by presenting a low risk to the bees while protecting flowering crops as an important food source. The researchers also say that neonicotinoid insecticides should not be considered as a homogeneous group when conducting risk assessments.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 25, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191125153009.htm
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A little prairie can rescue honey bees from famine on the farm
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Scientists placed honey bee hives next to soybean fields in Iowa and tracked how the bees fared over the growing season. To the researchers' surprise, the bees did well for much of the summer. The colonies thrived and gained weight, building up their honey stores. But in August, the trend reversed. By mid-October, most of the honey was gone and the overwintering brood was malnourished, the team discovered.
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"We saw a feast-or-famine kind of dynamic happening, where in the middle of the summer they were doing great. In fact, the hives in highly agricultural areas outcompeted hives in areas with less soybean production," said Amy Toth, a professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Iowa State University who led the research with ISU entomology professor Matthew O'Neal and University of Illinois entomology professor Adam Dolezal."But then they all just crashed and burned at the end of the year," Toth said.In further experiments, the researchers were able to "rescue" some of the afflicted hives by moving them to reconstructed prairie sites with many late-flowering prairie plants. Those hives rebounded to healthy levels and were better prepared for winter.The findings, published in the "There's been a lot of interest in how bees respond to agriculture," he said. "There's been work on pesticides and predictions that the highly monocultured agricultural landscapes have lost a lot of floral resources."Some studies have found, however, that honey bees do better in agricultural areas than in other landscapes, Dolezal said."One hypothesis about that is that bees near agricultural zones have more access to flowering crops and weeds like clover than those near forests, which can have fewer floral resources," he said.The new research seems to support this idea. To see what plants the bees relied on, the team took samples of pollen spilled by foraging bees on their way back into the hive."Over the entire year, more than 60% of their pollen collection was from clover," Dolezal said. The study did not determine which plants supplied the nectar, however."This experiment was designed to establish how commercial farmland surrounding a honey bee colony supports its growth and survival," O'Neal said. "More than 80% of Iowa is dedicated to agriculture. And while the two most important crops do not require bee pollination, corn can provide pollen and soybeans produce a lot of flowers, which can be a source of nectar for honey bees. The weight gain of a hive is due to honey, which comes from nectar."O'Neal was surprised how often honey bees found clover in landscapes devoted to almost nothing but corn and soybean."Most of the field edges are mowed and can contain clover," he said. "This little bit of land could be offering a significant source of food."Soybean and clover bloom until late July in central Iowa, where the study was conducted. In early August, that food supply dwindles to nothing, however.The weight of the study hives next to soybean fields dropped, on average, more than 50% between early August and mid-October, the researchers found. The bees were eating through their winter stores before the onset of cold weather.To survive the upcoming winter, honey bees must gather enough nectar and pollen from surrounding areas to tide them over. The nectar is used to make honey -- an essential food for overwintering bees -- and the pollen provides other nutrients like proteins and lipids.As winter approaches, the last generations of bee larvae normally experience unique physiological changes that better prepare them for the harsh season."The winter bees have higher fat stores and their aging is slowed so they can get through the winter," Dolezal said. "But we found that the winter bees near soybean fields did not have the same level of fat stores."The bees moved to prairie sites in August developed higher fat stores, however."This suggests that the rebound the hives experienced when we put them in the prairie also trickled down to the individual bees," Toth said. "Their nutritional health had also improved by being in that prairie habitat."The researchers do not recommend that beekeepers move their hives to prairies. Remnant prairies are rare and too small for many hives, the researchers said. Overstocking with honey bees could negatively affect native bees. Instead, the team is testing an intervention that installs 5- to 8-acre strips of reconstructed prairie within or alongside agricultural fields.These strips reduce erosion, prevent the flow of nutrients from farm fields into waterways and, perhaps, will also feed the bees at a crucial time of their life cycle, the team said.The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the United Soybean Board Soybean Checkoff program supported this research.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 25, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191125153004.htm
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Coated seeds may enable agriculture on marginal lands
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Providing seeds with a protective coating that also supplies essential nutrients to the germinating plant could make it possible to grow crops in otherwise unproductive soils, according to new research at MIT.
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A team of engineers has coated seeds with silk that has been treated with a kind of bacteria that naturally produce a nitrogen fertilizer, to help the germinating plants develop. Tests have shown that these seeds can grow successfully in soils that are too salty to allow untreated seeds to develop normally. The researchers hope this process, which can be applied inexpensively and without the need for specialized equipment, could open up areas of land to farming that are now considered unsuitable for agriculture.The findings are being published this week in the journal The work grew out of Marelli's previous research on using silk coatings as a way to extend the shelf life of seeds used as food crops. "When I was doing some research on that, I stumbled on biofertilizers that can be used to increase the amount of nutrients in the soil," he says. These fertilizers use microbes that live symbiotically with certain plants and convert nitrogen from the air into a form that can be readily taken up by the plants.Not only does this provide a natural fertilizer to the plant crops, but it avoids problems associated with other fertilizing approaches, he says: "One of the big problems with nitrogen fertilizers is they have a big environmental impact, because they are very energetically demanding to produce." These artificial fertilizers may also have a negative impact on soil quality, according to Marelli.Although these nitrogen-fixing bacteria occur naturally in soils around the world, with different local varieties found in different regions, they are very hard to preserve outside of their natural soil environment. But silk can preserve biological material, so Marelli and his team decided to try it out on these nitrogen-fixing bacteria, known as rhizobacteria."We came up with the idea to use them in our seed coating, and once the seed was in the soil, they would resuscitate," he says. Preliminary tests did not turn out well, however; the bacteria weren't preserved as well as expected.That's when Zvinavashe came up with the idea of adding a particular nutrient to the mix, a kind of sugar known as trehalose, which some organisms use to survive under low-water conditions. The silk, bacteria, and trehalose were all suspended in water, and the researchers simply soaked the seeds in the solution for a few seconds to produce an even coating. Then the seeds were tested at both MIT and a research facility operated by the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, Morocco. "It showed the technique works very well," Zvinavashe says.The resulting plants, helped by ongoing fertilizer production by the bacteria, developed in better health than those from untreated seeds and grew successfully in soil from fields that are presently not productive for agriculture, Marelli says.In practice, such coatings could be applied to the seeds by either dipping or spray coating, the researchers say. Either process can be done at ordinary ambient temperature and pressure. "The process is fast, easy, and it might be scalable" to allow for larger farms and unskilled growers to make use of it, Zvinavashe says. "The seeds can be simply dip-coated for a few seconds," producing a coating that is just a few micrometers thick.The ordinary silk they use "is water soluble, so as soon as it's exposed to the soil, the bacteria are released," Marelli says. But the coating nevertheless provides enough protection and nutrients to allow the seeds to germinate in soil with a salinity level that would ordinarily prevent their normal growth. "We do see plants that grow in soil where otherwise nothing grows," he says.These rhizobacteria normally provide fertilizer to legume crops such as common beans and chickpeas, and those have been the focus of the research so far, but it may be possible to adapt them to work with other kinds of crops as well, and that is part of the team's ongoing research. "There is a big push to extend the use of rhizobacteria to nonlegume crops," he says. One way to accomplish that might be to modify the DNA of the bacteria, plants, or both, he says, but that may not be necessary."Our approach is almost agnostic to the kind of plant and bacteria," he says, and it may be feasible "to stabilize, encapsulate and deliver [the bacteria] to the soil, so it becomes more benign for germination" of other kinds of plants as well.Even if limited to legume crops, the method could still make a significant difference to regions with large areas of saline soil. "Based on the excitement we saw with our collaboration in Morocco," Marelli says, "this could be very impactful."As a next step, the researchers are working on developing new coatings that could not only protect seeds from saline soil, but also make them more resistant to drought, using coatings that absorb water from the soil. Meanwhile, next year they will begin test plantings out in open experimental fields in Morocco; their previous plantings have been done indoors under more controlled conditions.The research was partly supported by the Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique-MIT Research Program, the Office of Naval Research, and the Office of the Dean for Graduate Fellowship and Research.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 25, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191125145549.htm
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Drought impact study shows new issues for plants and carbon dioxide
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Extreme drought's impact on plants will become more dominant under future climate change, as noted in a paper out today in the journal
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"Even though plants can, in many cases, benefit from increased levels of carbon dioxide that are predicted for the future atmosphere, the impact of severe drought on destroying these plants will be extreme, especially in the Amazon, South Africa, Mediterranean, Australia, and southwest USA," said lead study author Chonggang Xu of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Future drought events are typically associated with low humidity, low precipitation, high temperature, and changes in carbon released from fire disturbances.The frequency of extreme droughts (defined by low plant-accessible soil water) per year is predicted to increase by a factor of ~3.8 under a high greenhouse-gas emission scenario and by a factor of ~3.1 under an intermediate greenhouse-gas emission scenario during 2075-2099, compared to the historical period of 1850-1999.Drought is already the most widespread factor affecting plant production via direct physiological impacts such as water limitation and heat stress. But indirectly it also can have devastating effect, through increased frequency and intensity of disturbances such as fire and insect outbreaks that release large amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere.Plants fix carbon dioxide into an ecosystem through photosynthesis, and this process plays a key role in the net carbon balance of the terrestrial biosphere that contributed to its regulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide. And even though higher carbon dioxide concentrations in future decades can help increase plant production, the combination of low soil water availability, heat stress, and disturbances associated with droughts could negate the benefits of such fertilization."Future plant production under elevated carbon dioxide levels remains highly uncertain despite our knowledge on carbon dioxide fertilization effects on plant productivity," Xu said.The research team analyzed the outputs from 13 Earth System Models (ESMs) and the results show that due to a dramatic increase in the frequency of extreme droughts, the magnitude of globally-averaged reductions in plant production will be nearly tripled by the last quarter of this century relative to that of the study's historical period (1850-1999).For plants living through mild or moderate droughts, the situation is not as dire. The problem is that more of the droughts that come will be the extreme ones. "Our analysis indicates a high risk of increasing impacts of extreme droughts on the global carbon cycle with atmospheric warming," Xu said, "At the same time though, this drought risk will be potentially mitigated by positive anomalies of plant production associated with favorable environmental conditions."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 25, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191125100347.htm
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A new world map rates food sustainability for countries across the globe
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Increased awareness of how human diets acerbate climate change -- while failing to properly nourish more than 800 million people -- makes a better understanding of food systems a global priority. Global initiatives now call for us to transform our diets -- for our health and the health of the planet -- to help make food systems "sustainable." But researchers at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and colleagues argue that social and economic variables also need to be included if we are to understand exactly how sustainable our food systems are.
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The researchers scoured almost two decades of scientific literature related to food systems. They settled on 20 indicators that are available to 97 countries from low-, middle- and high-income regions, and built a global map to rate the sustainability of food systems across the globe. The indicator can be used to track changes in sustainability over time and has the potential to guide policy and action as climate change, rising populations, and increased demand for food place unprecedented pressure on global food systems."Addressing the question of the (un)sustainability of our food systems is critical as the world is bracing for hard-choice challenges and potentially massive tradeoffs around issues related to food quality and food security in the coming decades," wrote the authors in the journal Food systems -- which refer to the whole web of food production and consumption, from pre-production to food waste -- are still a relatively new area of research. There is still little uniformity in terms of indicators used by researchers, governments and international development organizations. This research also aimed to seek standardized terms and methods to help further food systems research.The study's authors sorted the 20 indicators into four dimensions: environment, economic, social, and food and nutrition. The indicators cover a broad range of factors including greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, size of the female labor force, fair trade, food price volatility, and food loss and waste."This is the first attempt to empirically measure and characterize the sustainability of the food systems worldwide considering not only the dimension food security and nutrition, or environment, but also economic, and social dimensions," said Camila Bonilla, a co-author at the University of California, Davis."The food system is probably the largest employer in the world, so the sustainability of food systems is also about the economic and social contributions of those hundreds of thousands of people and enterprises that are involved in some aspect of the system -- from production all the way to food retail and distribution and consumption," said Christophe Béné, the study's lead author and senior policy expert at CIAT's Decision and Policy Analysis (DAPA) research area. "It means that the economic and social dimensions of food system sustainability cannot be ignored."The map identifies some important knowledge gaps."Our research highlights how little is currently known about food systems," said Béné. "The reason is that national statistical systems, in both high- and lower-income countries, are collecting only a small portion of the information that is needed to build a comprehensive picture of the whole system."In the 83 documents used in their literature review, the researchers found 192 different indicators, many of which have some level of overlap but not all of which were directly comparable across countries."This research represents a critical step forward in understanding the relationship between the structure and function of food systems and their sustainability," said Steven Prager, a co-author senior scientist at CIAT who works on integrated modeling. "The global food system is really a set of interconnected subsystems and this work offers one of the most systematic attempts to date to unpack food system dynamics, from farm to fork to policy."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 21, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121163337.htm
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Pollinator friendliness can extend beyond early spring
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A study out of the University of Arkansas investigated whether bulbs can flower and persist in warm-season lawns while providing nutrition for pollinating insects.
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Michelle Wisdom, Michael Richardson, Douglas Karcher, Donald Steinkraus, and Garry McDonald sought to determine the parameters by which bulbs can survive and be serviceable beyond their peak seasons.Their findings are illustrated in the article "Flowering Persistence and Pollinator Attraction of Early-Spring Bulbs in Warm-season Lawns" as published in Early-spring flowering bulbs can increase biodiversity while adding color to lawns and other grassy areas. Flowering bulbs are known to naturalize in grassy areas such as meadows and pastures, but they must be vigorous enough to compete with the grass, and grass systems must be managed in a way to not damage the bulbs. It can be a delicate balance.Thirty early-spring flowering bulbs were established in bermudagrass and buffalograss lawns in late August. Those bulbs were then assessed over three growing seasons for flowering characteristics, persistence, and their ability to attract pollinating insects.A growing degree-day model was also developed to predict peak flowering times. Numerous bulb entries produced abundant flowers in both bermudagrass and buffalograss lawns in the first year after planting, but persistence and flower production were reduced in both the second and third years of the trial.Among the useful results from this study was to discover a possible method for slowing the phenomenon of pollinator decline. Pollinator decline has been widely documented in recent years and has been associated with habitat and biodiversity loss, wide-spread planting of monocultures, pesticide usage, pollinator pests and diseases, and climate change.Pollinator health is enhanced when diverse floral resources are available throughout the seasons when pollinators are active. "Establishing a season-long succession of flowers is critical in providing forage for pollinating insects throughout the growing season, which coincides with their life cycles" says Wisdom. "We observed pollinator activity on species of Crocus and Muscari (grape hyacinth) from January-March, providing honey bees with pollen and nectar during normal times of severe food shortage.'' Significant expanses of managed turfgrass, such as roadsides, cemeteries, and lawns, represent land areas that might be designed and managed to support pollinating insects.Some flowering bulbs, such as crocus and grape hyacinth, have been documented to provide forage resources for honey bees in early spring, but information on pollinator preference over a wide range of bulbs is limited.Native bees and other pollinators are typically not active during late winter months, but honey bees will forage on mild winter days, although they may be limited by temperature to short-distance flights.Five bulbs persisted for multiple years in both turfgrass species and continued to produce flowers, including crocus, spring snowflake, daffodil, Narcissus 'Rip Van Winkle', and Narcissus 'Tete-a-Tete'. Several bulbs, primarily crocuses and grape hyacinth, were also observed to attract pollinating insects, principally honey bees.The researchers demonstrated that some early-spring bulbs can persist in competitive warm-season lawns, providing pollinator forage, but species and cultivar selection is critical for long-term success. Wisdom says, "As not all flowers provide nutrition to pollinating insects, make certain to incorporate proven forage sources into the landscape."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 21, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121141341.htm
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Nature's secret recipe for making leaves
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The secret recipe nature uses to make the diverse leaf shapes we see everywhere around us has been revealed in research.
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The discovery comes in a study of the carnivorous plant The team from the John Innes Centre has been investigating the aquatic plants as a model to understand the general principles by which plants produce their leaves.In this study they discovered that simple shifts in gene activity in the leaf bud provide a flexible mechanism for how leaves of all shapes and sizes are made."We've discovered a general principle by which leaves from flat sheets to needle-like and curved shapes are formed," says Professor Enrico Coen of the John Innes Centre."We found that the complex leaf shapes of carnivorous plants evolved from species with flat leaves through simple shifts in gene activity in the leaf bud. What surprised us is that how such a simple mechanism could underlie such a wide diversity of leaf shapes."Previous research by Professor Coen's lab had identified a polarity field -- a kind of inbuilt cellular compass -- which orients growth and shaping of the leaf from a sheet of cells.Here, in a study which appears in the journal Each The study presents a model in which such shifts in gene activity establish a polarity field which orients tissue growth. Together it offers a simple mechanistic explanation of diverse leaf forms and accounts for how cup shaped leaves evolved from flat leaves.Most leaves are flat to harvest light for photosynthesis. So why study these strange cup-shaped exceptions to the rule when you are looking to find the general principles of leaf making?"If you want to understand why water boils at 100°C, look for situations in which it doesn't, like the top of Mount Everest where it boils at 70°C. From that we learn the general principle that boiling point depends on air pressure. Similarly, if you want to understand why most leaves are flat, you might study exceptions, like the leaves of some carnivorous plants which form pitchers to trap prey," explains Professor Coen.Leaf flatness is important for how plants harvest light, providing energy and food that sustains life on the planet. By understanding the principles of leaf formation scientists and plant breeders may be able to develop more sustainable crops.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 21, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121123149.htm
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Using controlled environment food production to solve food shortages
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A review of the literature led by researchers from the University of Florida attempts to provide clarification and analysis on various aspects of what a controlled environment system entails and the extent to which differing food production approaches can be applied to the many current and hopeful endeavors of Urban Agriculture.
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Before land and labor shortages prompted by the Industrial Revolution forced food production to move away from cities, agriculture was central to urban environments and their planning. Now, certain shifts in consumption habits and preferences are allowing urban agriculture to make a comeback to address sustainability issues in our food system and promote social and environmental cohesion by reducing dependence of fossil fuels and increasing food security.Celina Gómez and her fellow researchers delved into the likelihood that controlled environments will revolutionize urban food systems and exactly what techniques can be employed for them to do so. Their full analysis is detailed in their article "Controlled Environment Food Production for Urban Agriculture" published in The push for more effective urban agriculture is as much a desire as it is a need. There has been a calculable increased market demand for locally grown produce that has helped generate interest in the application of techniques developed for the controlled environment agriculture industry. These systems and methods have the potential to contribute to year-round crop production and to decrease food costs within an urban setting.Controlled environments provide advantages to predict plant responses and increase production efficiency, optimize plant yield, and improve plant quality. Among the topics described by the researchers, soilless culture systems allow plants to grow in nonconventional spaces. Light-emitting diodes help reduce energy consumption and improve product quality. Greenhouses built on vacant rooftops of city buildings can capitalize on sunlight to produce plants in close proximity to consumers. Plus, these greenhouse systems can be customized to fit unique needs requiring special construction materials, including photovoltaic systems and rainwater harvesting strategies, increasing their potential to expand sustainability. Controlled environments provide many opportunities to help expand and maximize urban agriculture.For urban farmers to benefit from controlled environment agriculture, analysis will need consideration of local demand and supply of food, location, population density, facility design, and crops produced. Preliminary research suggests that sustainability for these urban farms hinges on capital investment and operating costs, production volume, product quality and consistency, and local market trends.Indoor urban farms demonstrate more challenges, due in part to their heavy reliance on electricity. However, these added challenges are not insurmountable, and in considering the factors of food-safety issues and environmental or seasonal limitations, they may easily be deemed worth it.Says Gómez, "Establishing scalable approaches that support urban agriculture has significant potential to reduce food and nutritional insecurity in urban and peri-urban spaces. More importantly, well-designed business plans can help boost local economies by creating job opportunities and may help contribute to support community-based education programs."The researchers have offered a detailed examination of multiple facets of the controlled environment: carbon dioxide enrichment, humidity control, water and soil cycling and the environmental footprint, food safety, economic factors, electric lighting, and quite a bit more.The applicability of controlled environment agriculture within urban settings as a solution to current challenges in our food-supply chain will be context-dependent. They offer different guarantees to the farmer as advantages over traditional field-based production systems. Although large-scale outdoor farms will continue to be instrumental in being able to deliver fresh produce to the areas needing it, urban farms will increase in importance as populations move into cities and the demand for local food increases.Adds Gómez, "Consumers today have tremendous opportunities to get involved with many aspects of the food production process, and controlled environments will play a central role as cities continue to be transformed by fostering urban agriculture."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 21, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121075433.htm
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How to fight illegal cocoa farms in Ivory Coast
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The world's love for chocolate has helped decimate protected forests in western Africa as some residents have turned protected areas into illegal cocoa farms and hunting grounds.
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But an international group of researchers has found that simply patrolling the grounds of two forest reserves in Ivory Coast has helped reduce illegal activity by well more than half between 2012 and 2016.The researchers themselves were among those who conducted the foot patrols, said W. Scott McGraw, professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University and co-author of a recent paper in McGraw said that on patrols he participated in, farmers tending illegal cocoa crops were often surprised that anyone approached them and told them to stop their activities."They just weren't used to encountering anyone who put up any kind of resistance. We told them they weren't allowed to be growing cocoa there and they would respond that 'no one has ever told us we couldn't,'" he said."It was just so blatant."McGraw conducted the study with Sery Gonedelé Bi, Eloi Anderson Bitty and Alphonse Yao of the University Félix Houphouët Boigny in Ivory Coast.Forest loss is a major problem in Ivory Coast. Between 2000 and 2015, the country lost about 17 percent of its forest cover, driven by an annual deforestation rate -- 2.69 percent -- that was among the highest in the world, according to Global Forest Watch.Much of that forest was cleared for cocoa farms to meet the growing demand for chocolate worldwide. The destruction of the forests -- as well as the illegal poaching found in this study -- threaten several critically endangered primates that live in these reserves, McGraw said. A previous study by McGraw and his colleagues documented the threat to primates.The researchers conducted this study in the Dassioko Sud and Port Gauthier forest reserves along the Atlantic coast.Regular patrols were carried out three to four times a month in both reserves between July 2012 and June 2016. Each team usually consisted of six to eight people, including the researchers, law enforcement officials (occasionally) and community members recruited from neighboring towns and paid with funds from several conservation organizations.The patrol teams would normally go out for seven hours at a time, taking random routes so as to not be predictable. They noted the time and direction of all gun shots, collected discarded gun cartridges, and counted and dismantled all snares used to capture monkeys and other game.They recorded the size and location of all logging and farming operations and destroyed all plantation crops, most of which were new cocoa seedlings.When the patrols included law enforcement personnel, they would arrest poachers, as well as loggers and illegal farmers.McGraw said he was never on one of the rare patrols that encountered a poacher with a gun, although his co-authors were."I was told those were the most tense situations. That is not a standoff that I would want to be a part of," he said.Altogether, during the four years of the study, the patrol teams apprehended six poachers, heard 302 gunshots, deactivated 1,048 snares and destroyed 515 hectares of cocoa farms.But the good news is that the number of these illegal activities dropped dramatically over the years they patrolled. For example, the researchers documented about 140 signs of illegal activity (such as shotgun shells, snares or cocoa plantings) at Port Gauthier Forest Reserve in August 2012. In June 2016, there were fewer than 20. Similar reductions in illegal activities were recorded in Dassioko Sud Forest Reserve.The patrol activities weren't responsible for all the decline, McGraw said. For example, a portion of the poaching decline could have been related to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, which reduced demand for bushmeat.But much of the decline in illegal activities in the reserves occurred before 2014, he noted.Regular patrols in the two reserves have not continued since 2016, McGraw said. Surveys since then suggest that the gains made by the patrols are holding and illegal activities have not returned to their previous highs."That said, I think it is important that there is a renewed effort to patrol these reserves. We need something sustained," he said."We need Ivorian officials to take a stronger stand against illegal activities in the country's protected areas."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 20, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120175613.htm
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The cause of chewy chicken meat
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University of Delaware researchers have discovered that lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme crucial for fat metabolism, may be contributing to wooden breast syndrome in broiler chickens.
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Wooden breast syndrome can affect broiler chickens, making the meat hard and chewy. It is a costly problem that can render the birds unmarketable, causing significant economic losses for growers, who sometimes see the disease in up to half their flocks.The UD research team, led by Behnam Abasht, associate professor of animal and food sciences in UD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, have identified gene expression irregularities at the onset of wooden breast syndrome that suggest the disease is a metabolic disorder characterized by abnormal fat accumulation in the breast muscle tissue.The research team reported their results on Wednesday, Nov. 20 in the journal The findings could help drive short-term solutions to help growers manage the condition in chickens at the production level through feed additives or supplements, or to reduce the number of birds that develop the condition."The industry desperately needs a solution right now. Conservative estimates project that wooden breast syndrome is costing the U.S. agricultural community $200 million dollars per year, but this number may be much higher," said Abasht.The United States leads production of broiler chickens worldwide. Delaware has more than 700 producers who raise commercial broiler chickens and over 1,000 small backyard poultry owners. Wooden breast syndrome is a concern around the world, too, as global consumption of chicken has risen in recent years as a leading source of dietary protein.The research also could inform human health research related to metabolic syndromes, such as diabetes and atherosclerosis, which is associated with fatty deposits in the arteries.Abasht has been studying wooden breast syndrome in broiler chickens for nearly a decade. In previous work, his research team analyzed the genes involved in the disease and identified biomarkers for the disorder. They also characterized the unique biochemistry of the hardened breast tissue in chickens with the disease.In their current work, the UD research team noticed that the expression of lipoprotein lipase was higher in chickens affected with wooden breast syndrome, leading more fat to accumulate in the chicken's pectoral (or breast) muscles. Lipoprotein lipase serves as a "metabolic gatekeeper" that determines how much fat is allowed inside a given tissue.This was curious because breast muscle fibers in chicken typically rely on sugar (glucose) molecules for fuel, not fat molecules.The research team used RNA sequencing to determine which genes were being expressed in modern fast-growing broiler chickens and slower-growing legacy chickens. They then employed a new technology, called RNA in situ hybridization, to pinpoint exactly where this gene expression occurred inside the muscle.The researchers found genetic evidence of lipoprotein lipase being expressed in endothelial cells in chickens, which was previously unknown. Present in all blood vessels, endothelial cells serve as a barrier between the blood and the surrounding tissue.Abasht hypothesized that when more fat is oxidized for energy in the breast tissue of chickens, it may be causing the excessive release of free radical molecules that would modify (damage) fats and proteins in the muscle, prompting the chicken's immune system to kick in to clear up the problem."We observed that if a particular vein was attacked by immune cells, the same vein typically also expressed higher levels of lipoprotein lipase," said Abasht.The researchers went a step further and compared this data with the gene expression signals found in two commercial broiler chicken lines, at three weeks of age and again at market age. In their analysis, the researchers found signals consistent with the fact that young chickens may be showing the same changes as market-age broiler chickens with wooden breast syndrome, even before the disease shows up.The findings could provide potential markers to identify chickens that will develop the disease.In recently published research in Genes, the researchers also reported finding common features between wooden breast syndrome in chickens and diabetes complications in humans, specifically diabetic cardiomyopathy, a chronic disease characterized by molecular and structural changes in the heart muscle.Abasht's research team is currently combing available literature for treating diabetes to see if there are ways to apply similar approaches to help broiler chickens avoid -- or cope -- with wooden breast syndrome, through diet, supplements or medication.If they can find common solutions, Abasht said, a far-reaching goal of the work might be to use chickens as a model to study possible treatments for diabetes in humans."Our main focus was to address this problem from an agricultural perspective, but our findings open new horizons for future research that could benefit both agriculture and human health. This is a very interesting prospect for us," said Abasht.Longer term, Juniper Lake, a UD doctoral student in Abasht's lab, said that having a deeper understanding of the genetic causes behind the disease could lead to solutions for agricultural producers to selectively breed out the traits that cause wooden breast disease, which has a relatively high heritability."There's a lot to be gained from basic research of wooden breast, even if the main goal is to mitigate economic losses in the poultry industry," said Lake.With the Thanksgiving holiday just around the corner, it is important to note that wooden breast disease is currently only found in broiler chickens. It is not known to affect turkeys.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 20, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120175611.htm
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Clay as a feed supplement in dairy cattle has multiple benefits
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Dairy producers frequently add clay as a feed supplement to reduce the symptoms of aflatoxin and subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA) in lactating cows. In a new study from the University of Illinois, researchers show that clay can also improve the degradability of feedstuffs.
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"Farmers are giving this clay, but they want to know if the corn silage or hay the cow is eating is affected. We found that yes, the clay is changing the way the cow degrades feedstuffs," says Phil Cardoso, associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Illinois and co-author of the Cardoso and his team tested the degradability of six feedstuffs -- dried alfalfa hay, grass hay, wet brewer's grains, ground corn, corn silage, and soybean meal -- along with no added clay, 1%, or 2% of dietary dry matter.The researchers placed the feedstuffs into mesh bags and inserted them directly into the rumen through a cannula or fistula, a surgically installed portal that allows the contents of the rumen to be sampled for research purposes. The bags were then drawn out at multiple time intervals (two hours to four days) and analyzed."There were some differences in how the feedstuffs degraded over time. When clay was added to grass hay at 2% of dietary dry matter, the digestibility and usage of the fat in that material was maximized. It's better. And we didn't see a decline in degradability of the other feedstuffs, either," Cardoso says. "Overall, to maximize the benefits of clay, we'd recommend adding it at 1 to 2% of dietary dry matter."Cardoso's previous research has shown that multiple types of clay are effective in handling aflatoxin, a toxic substance produced by fungal contaminants on feed. When the toxin is bound up by the clay, it is simply excreted from the cow's body, rather than being absorbed in the bloodstream. And a 2018 study by Cardoso's team showed that aluminosilicate clay improved cows' immune function and reduced liver inflammation during an aflatoxin challenge.Cardoso says, "From all of our work on this, I can tell producers whenever they are facing the risk of aflatoxin, they should consider using clay without worrying about it binding other minerals or hindering forage digestibility. Rather, we've shown digestibility could increase. Of course, it's important to ensure the specific clay product has been tested."Clay's benefits don't stop there. Because the material attracts and binds positively charged ions, clay can make the rumen less acidic. This is important particularly given the popularity of increasing grain concentrates in TMR feed, which can lead to SARA. In a 2016 study from Cardoso's group, cows challenged with excess wheat in a TMR diet produced more and higher-quality milk and had higher rumen pH when fed bentonite clay at 2% of dietary dry matter."Basically, clay has all these benefits: It reduces aflatoxin toxicity, works as a pH buffer, and also improves the degradability of some feedstuffs," Cardoso says. "Producers should know this."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 20, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120141829.htm
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When grown right, palm oil can be sustainable
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Scientists from EPFL and WSL have been studying soils in oil palm cultivation for years, in an effort to develop more sustainable methods for growing this crop. Palm oil production has been criticized by environmentalists because of its large carbon footprint and negative impact on biodiversity. For instance, in Indonesia and Malaysia -- the world's two biggest producers -- it has directly or indirectly caused large-scale deforestation, thereby reducing biodiversity and releasing significant amounts of CO
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But the findings of a new study by EPFL and WSL -- appearing today in "Our study is the first to look at the carbon footprint of palm oil production over the long term -- that is, across two plantation cycles, since oil palm trees are replaced every 25-30 years," says Juan Carlos Quezada, a PhD student at EPFL's Ecological Systems Laboratory (ECOS) and the study's lead author. "It's also the first to explore how converting pastures into oil palm farms affects soil quality and fertility over the long term, looking at all soil layers, not just the surface."In tropical climates, pastures -- especially those that have been neglected and degraded -- commonly consist of large grassy areas with a few small trees scattered around. Planting dense populations of oil palm trees -- which can reach 15 meters in height -- on these pastures can increase the carbon capture rate per unit of surface area, thanks to the palm trees' roots, trunks and leaves, as well as the vegetation around them.Under typical farming methods, oil palm trees are cut down every 25-30 years and replaced with young trees to start a new plantation cycle. As the roots and other parts of the old trees decompose, they nourish the soil and partially offset the carbon initially lost in the upper soil layer when the pastureland was converted. As a result, over the long term cultivation period, the amount of carbon stored in the ecosystem remains unchanged compared to the initial level before land conversion took place."We should bear in mind that palm oil in and of itself is not harmful -- neither to our health, when eaten in moderation, nor to the economy. And we're not talking just about multinationals -- the incomes of hundreds of small farmers in Colombia and other countries depend on it," says Alexandre Buttler, head of ECOS and a co-author of the study. "The problem lies with the negative carbon impact and loss of biodiversity caused by deforestation. But the main palm oil producing countries have large abandoned pastures that could be converted favorably, thus limiting the massive carbon loss resulting from deforestation."This study was conducted as part of the Oil Palm Adaptive Landscapes (OPAL) project, a cross-disciplinary initiative funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and led by ETH Zurich. OPAL brings together project partners from Switzerland, Indonesia, Colombia and Cameroon. Local universities, research institutes and the WWF in the latter three countries have a stake in the project, raising awareness about this issue among their local communities in order to promote the development of sustainable alternatives.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 20, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120131323.htm
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Yeasts in nectar can stimulate the growth of bee colonies
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Researchers from KU Leuven have found that the presence of yeasts can alter the chemical composition and thus the nutritional value of nectar for pollinators such as bees. Moreover, the study found that yeasts can even boost bee health and colony fitness. "Research into the role of microbes in our ecosystem is of vital importance to safeguard bees."
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It is not widely known that pollen and floral nectar contain yeasts. Even on one flower, the types and amount of yeasts that occur can widely vary. These variations lead to vast differences in the nutritional value of the nectar of each flower, specifically when it comes to the sugars and amino acids present. Yeasts eat the sugars in the nectar that is supposed to supply nutrients to the bees.To find out whether the presence of yeasts impacts bees, a team led by María I. Pozo from the KU Leuven Biology Department added five different yeast species to nectar. They then investigated how the yeast affected the chemical composition of the nectar and how, in turn, this has an impact on the bees. The researchers used colonies of the buff-tailed bumblebee or Bombus Terrestris. They investigated the development of the colonies and various other indicators of well-being, such as the bees' size and weight, their mortality rate, weight loss during hibernation, their mating success, and resistance to infections.In addition, the attractiveness of nectar with yeasts was investigated by using an artificial flower field. Half of the flowers contained a different type of sugary solution with yeasts, while the other half contained only the sugar water. The researchers computed how often the bees visited each flower type and how much time the bees spent with the flowers.The results show that even though yeasts significantly alter the composition of nectar, this does not have an impact on the foraging behaviour of the bees, nor on how much of the nectar they consumed. "We had expected the opposite, so this was quite surprising," says María I. Pozo. "The bees seem to be able to digest the yeast cells, which contain more concentrated nutrients than the nectar itself."Some yeasts even had a positive effect on the growth of the bee colonies, as fewer bee larvae died in the colonies that received the yeast supplement. These colonies also produced a larger amount of worker bees, which result in more vigorous colonies."Nectar is the perfect food for bees, and nectar containing yeasts can stimulate bee populations. However, the presence of yeasts and other microbes can be drastically disrupted by human activities, like the use of fungicides," Pozo continues. "Since bees are globally in decline, it is important to know if and how yeasts influence their wellbeing as a species. In general, more research is needed into the role of microbes as hidden players in our ecosystem. The disruption of microbial diversity is a serious threat to wildlife populations across the world."Now, Pozo and her colleagues are investigating how bees and other pollinators use antimicrobial chemicals present in plants as self-medication to battle infections. Infections form one of the major threats for bees, next to insecticides, destruction of their habitat and nesting sites, and low-quality diets due to reduced floral diversity.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 20, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120131311.htm
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Bursting the bubble: Revealing tasty genetic secrets of gigantic single-celled creatures
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Okinawan cuisine is known for its many delicacies -- from squid ink soup to rafute pork belly. But one of the most famous delicacies served in restaurants across Okinawa is a type of seaweed, which is renowned for its pleasing texture and taste. Instead of leaves, this seaweed has bundles of little green bubbles that burst in the mouth, releasing the salty-sweet flavor of the ocean.
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The unique shape of this bubbly algae gives it the name "umi-budo" or "sea grapes." Umi-budo is a staple crop in Okinawa which is cultivated for market by the fishery industry. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) recently unveiled key information about gene expression in sea grapes, which could help shed light on the evolution of sea grape morphology and help Okinawan farmers improve cultivation of umi-budo."Sea grapes are composed of two main structures -- the fronds and stolons, which are similar to plant leaves and stems. The shape of umi-budo is very interesting because the whole seaweed, which can grow fronds of up to 30cm in length, is composed of just one single cell with multiple nuclei," said Dr Asuka Arimoto, first author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar previously working in the OIST Marine Genomics Unit, which is led by Professor Noriyuki Satoh. "Our research showed that despite being one cell with no physical barriers, there were differences in gene expression between the fronds and stolons, which was very unexpected." The team believes that investigation into these differences can illuminate the function and development of the fronds and stolons.The study, which was recently published in the journal One major advantage of this study was the ability to utilize past research from the OIST Marine Genomics Unit, which had not only previously decoded the genome of sea grapes but had also compared the sea grape genes with other land plants."Having genomic information to base our gene expression analysis on was incredibly useful, as it allowed us to more easily identify which genes were more highly expressed, and to characterize genes by their function," said Arimoto.The team found that genes involved in metabolic functions such as respiration and photosynthesis were more highly expressed in the fronds, whereas genes related to DNA replication and protein synthesis were more highly expressed in the stolons. These results showed that sea grape fronds have a similar function to the leaves of land plants.The researchers also delved further into a group of genes that regulate plant hormone pathways, which was shown in the previous study to be expanded in sea grapes compared to land plants. The results showed that a larger variety of plant hormone genes were expressed in the fronds, compared to the stolons."The plant hormone pathways help control the development of sea grapes and keep conditions within the seaweed stable," said Arimoto. "What is extraordinary is that despite land plants and green seaweed diverging a billion years ago, we have found that they have independently evolved similar mechanisms for regulation and development." Arimoto therefore thinks that exploring the biology of unconventional unicellular organisms, such as sea grapes, could also help scientists uncover the common principles of development and evolution among various plant and algal species.As well as shedding light on algae and land plant evolution, Arimoto believes that this information could lead to better methods of increasing frond growth, allowing Okinawan farmers to cultivate a more productive crop. "The fronds are the edible part of sea grapes, but it can be difficult for Okinawan farmers to cultivate sea grapes with fronds that have many bubbles without advanced scientific techniques," said Arimoto.The Marine Genomics Unit also hopes that in the future, their science can help Okinawan farmers to cultivate umi-budo with greater tolerance to drought, high temperature or more extreme salinity. One of the plant hormone pathways -- known as the abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathway -- plays a role in allowing the seaweed to cope with environmental stress. Further research into this pathway could help farmers in Okinawa and other regions to deal with the rapidly changing climate.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 19, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119105522.htm
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Unlocking the secrets of badger dispersal to minimize the spread of bovine TB
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Zoology researchers from Trinity College Dublin, working with the Department of Agriculture, Food and The Marine (DAFM) and the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), have unlocked the secrets of dispersing badgers.
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Their research has major implications for implementing vaccination programmes to limit the spread of bovine tuberculosis (TB).The findings come at an opportune time, as DAFM has commenced rolling out a national programme to vaccinate badgers in its efforts to eradicate TB.Badgers are a protected species and are one of Ireland's most iconic wild creatures, but they can harbour TB and inadvertently transfer it to cattle. Infected cattle must be culled, which results in the loss of millions of euro each year in the agricultural sector, which can devastate individual farmers and their families.Vaccinating badgers against TB provides an excellent option to mitigating these risks, but to do that effectively, it is imperative to understand how badgers move around in the wild and to target those most likely to spread disease. Badgers are social animals, living together in a shared territory. Dispersal is when a badger "moves house" e.g. it goes from living with one social group to living with an entirely different social group in a new location.In the research, just published in leading international journal Aoibheann Gaughran, Postdoctoral Researcher in Trinity's School of Natural Sciences, was the lead author on the paper. She said:"We found that only 17% of the badgers we tracked dispersed, so it's fair to say most badgers don't leave home -- they remain living in the territory where they are born. However, some of those that did move away went on unexpectedly long and complex journeys.""By using GPS satellite trackers to take a uniquely personal look at the nightly comings and goings of 80 of these badgers in the wild, we discovered that some -- particularly the females -- could cover over 100km while wandering around large areas looking for their new home. Our record-holder was a female that settled down only 1.5km away from where she was born, but travelled 308km back and forth before she joined her new social group. Male badgers, on the other hand, liked to stay close to their Mammy, and typically just moved next door.""Dispersal begins when badgers are aged one year or older, but by vaccinating them as cubs we can avoid the disease-spreading implications of this behaviour."The zoologists hope that by better understanding when and how badgers move between territories, they will be able to pinpoint where the greater risks for TB transmission lie, which would be extremely valuable information from a disease control perspective.Nicola Marples, Professor of Zoology at Trinity, said:"This research on badger movement should help to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of the impending badger vaccination programme, which is great news. From both conservation and disease-control perspectives, a well-designed vaccination programme should provide a win-win situation."The research was part of a collaboration between the Department of Food, Agriculture and the Marine, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Trinity zoologists, and was funded by DAFM.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 19, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119105459.htm
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Beyond the green revolution
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There has been a substantial increase in food production over the last 50 years, but it has been accompanied by a narrowing in the diversity of cultivated crops. New research shows that diversifying crop production can make food supply more nutritious, reduce resource demand and greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance climate resilience without reducing calorie production or requiring more land.
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The Green Revolution -- or Third Agricultural Revolution -- entailed a set of research technology transfer initiatives introduced between 1950 and the late 1960s. This markedly increased agricultural production across the globe, and particularly in the developing world, and promoted the use of high-yielding seed varieties, irrigation, fertilizers, and machinery, while emphasizing maximizing food calorie production, often at the expense of nutritional and environmental considerations. Since then, the diversity of cultivated crops has narrowed considerably, with many producers opting to shift away from more nutritious cereals to high-yielding crops like rice. This has in turn led to a triple burden of malnutrition, in which one in nine people in the world are undernourished, one in eight adults are obese, and one in five people are affected by some kind of micronutrient deficiency. According to the authors of a new study, strategies to enhance the sustainability of food systems require the quantification and assessment of tradeoffs and benefits across multiple dimensions.In their paper published in the Using a series of optimizations to maximize nutrient production (i.e., protein and iron), minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use (i.e., water and energy), or maximize resilience to climate extremes, the researchers found that diversifying crop production in India would make the nation's food supply more nutritious, while reducing irrigation demand, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The authors specifically recommend replacing some of the rice crops that is currently being cultivated in the country with nutritious coarse cereals like millets and sorghum, and argue that such diversification would also enhance the country's climate resilience without reducing calorie production or requiring more land. Researchers from IIASA contributed the design of the optimization model and the energy and GHG intensity assessments."To make agriculture more sustainable, it's important that we think beyond just increasing food supply and also find solutions that can benefit nutrition, farmers, and the environment. This study shows that there are real opportunities to do just that. India can sustainably enhance its food supply if farmers plant less rice and more nutritious and environmentally friendly crops such as finger millet, pearl millet, and sorghum," explains study lead author Kyle Davis, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, New York.The authors found that planting more coarse cereals could on average increase available protein by 1% to 5%; increase iron supply by between 5% and 49%; increase climate resilience (1% to 13% fewer calories would be lost during times of drought); and reduce GHG emissions by 2% to 13%. The diversification of crops would also decrease the demand for irrigation water by 3% to 21% and reduce energy use by 2% to 12%, while maintaining calorie production and using the same amount of cropland."One key insight from this study was that despite coarse grains having lower yields on average, there are enough regions where this is not the case. A non-trivial shift away from rice can therefore occur without reducing overall production," says study coauthor Narasimha Rao, a researcher in the IIASA Energy Program, who is also on the faculty of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.The authors point out that the Indian Government is currently promoting the increased production and consumption of these nutri-cereals -- efforts that they say will be important to protect farmers' livelihoods and increase the cultural acceptability of these grains. With nearly 200 million undernourished people in India, alongside widespread groundwater depletion and the need to adapt to climate change, increasing the supply of nutri-cereals may be an important part of improving the country's food security.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191118152401.htm
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A century later, plant biodiversity struggles in wake of agricultural abandonment
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Decades after farmland was abandoned, plant biodiversity and productivity struggle to recover, according to new University of Minnesota research.
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Published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers examined 37 years of data tied to plant biodiversity (i.e., number of different species) and plant productivity (i.e., biomass or amount of plants) related to 21 grasslands and savannas in Minnesota. Most of these fields had been ploughed and abandoned for agricultural use between one and 91 years prior.Researchers then compared the plots to nearby land that has not been significantly impacted by human activity.The study found that:"When taken at a global scale, fossil records indicate plant species are going extinct at rates hundreds of times faster than the natural extinction rate," said Forest Isbell, assistant professor in the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) and co-author on this study. "At this localized level, we're seeing how human activity can impact the loss of species."Researchers suggest that the slow and incomplete recovery of species on abandoned farmland in Minnesota is likely happening in ecosystems around the world where land has been cleared for agriculture, logging or other human activities."The amount of land being used for agricultural purposes has slowly been decreasing, leaving some 11 million square miles of old fields and recovering forests across our planet," said Adam Clark, study co-author and CBS graduate who is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. "In these spaces, active restoration efforts may often be needed to restore biodiversity and prevent the extinction of species."Restoration tactics can include using prescribed burns, dispersing seeds, using haying to remove nutrients added through fertilization and reintroducing others in the food chain (e.g., herbivores, predators) pushed out of the area."This is an unprecedented opportunity for us -- humans as species -- to restore ecosystems and help mitigate the threat extinctions could have on our planet and our own well-being," said Isbell, an expert in biodiversity, as well as ecosystem functioning, stability and services.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191118140339.htm
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Researchers clear the path for 'designer' plants
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A team of researchers at the University of Georgia has found a way to identify gene regulatory elements that could help produce "designer" plants and lead to improvements in food crops at a critical time. They published their findings in two separate papers in
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With the world population projected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050, world food production will need to rise by 70% and food production in the developing world will need to double, according to estimates from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Improvements in crop plants could play a key role in that effort.The team, led by Bob Schmitz, demonstrated an ability to identify cis-regulatory elements, or CREs, in 13 plant species, including maize, rice, green beans and barley.Cis-regulatory elements are regions of noncoding DNA that regulate neighboring genes. If a gene and its CRE can be identified, they can be treated as a modular unit, sometimes called a biobrick. Targeting CREs for editing offers a more refined tool than editing genes, according to Schmitz, associate professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences."Gene editing can be like a hammer. If you target the gene, you pretty much break it," he said. "Targeting CREs, which are involved in controlling gene expression -- how a particular characteristic appears -- allows you to turn gene expression up or down, similar to a dial. It gives us a tool to create a whole range of variation in expression of a gene."Controlling a gene for leaf architecture, for example, might allow a plant breeder to choose the angle at which a leaf grows from a plant, which can play a significant role in the plant's light absorption and growth. Targeting the gene itself would provide two options: "on," where the leaf might grow at a 90-degree angle, and "off," where the leaf might grow straight down. But targeting the CRE instead of the gene would allow the grower to target a range of possibilities in between -- a 10-degree angle, a 25-degree angle, a 45-degree angle, etc.Once biobricks have been created and screened for the desired output, they could be used to produce "designer" plants that possess desirable characteristics -- for example, salt-tolerant plants that can grow in a landscape with high salinity. The ability to design plants to grow in less-than-ideal landscapes will become more and more important as food growers strive to produce more in an environment facing increasing challenges, like drought and flooding.Based on their success, the research team recently received a $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the role of CREs in legumes, including peanuts and soybeans.Underlying the grant proposal and the papers are technological breakthroughs developed by Zefu Lu, Bill Ricci and Lexiang Ji."Zefu took a high-throughput method for identifying specific elements that was developed for animal cells and found a way to apply it to plant cells. It took a long time to address the significant barrier of plant organellar genomes, but now we're able to do what the animal field has been doing for a few years," Schmitz said."When people try to find trait/disease associations, they look for mutations in genes, but the work in animals has shown that these non-gene regions also possess mutations that affect the way in which a gene is expressed. The regions we're identifying with this method are revealing regulatory information for gene expression control, which traditionally has been challenging to detect compared to genes."One of Ricci's contributions was developing a technique that shows the link between CREs and the gene they control."Typically CREs are located right next to the gene they control, but in plants with larger genomes -- soybeans, maize -- it's become clear that these controlling elements can appear very far away," Schmitz said. "In two-dimensional space something may appear far away, over many thousands of base pairs, but Bill's method shows that in three dimensions, it's actually positioned right next to the gene."This work -- the first time it has been applied to plants -- provided the foundation for the two papers published in "This is a group effort," he said. "Zefu, Bill and Lexiang were major drivers of this research.""Widespread Long-range Cis-Regulatory Elements in the Maize Genome" provides genetic, epigenomic and functional molecular evidence supporting the widespread existence of long-distance loci that act as long-range CREs influencing if and how a gene in the maize genome is expressed.In "The prevalence, evolution and chromatin signatures of plant regulatory elements," the researchers identified thousands of CREs and revealed that long-distance CREs are prevalent in plants, especially in species with large and complex genomes. Additional results suggest that CREs function with distinct chromatin pathways to regulate gene expression.The team's work will be shared via publicly available epigenome browsers that were developed by Brigitte Hofmeister, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Schmitz Lab."Our studies are genome wide, and we do a lot of technique and technology development, but it's not useful if people can't access it," Schmitz said. "We provide epigenome browsers that allow people studying leaf architecture, for example, to access information on the specific genes or traits they're interested in."Industry is also interested in CREs, according to Schmitz. Their editing pipeline is well established for genes, and the next obvious target for editing is CREs once they are located."It's not just academia using this for basic science," he said. "The applications of this approach to identify CREs will become commonplace in industry to improve crop performance."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 15, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191115101056.htm
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How nematodes outsmart the defenses of pests
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The western corn rootworm causes economic losses of over 2 billion US dollars in maize cultivation and is thus a serious agricultural pest. Originally from America, the western corn rootworm is currently invading Europe, including Switzerland.
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In an earlier study, Christelle Robert and Matthias Erb from the Institute of plant sciences (IPS) at the University of Bern elucidated one of the strategies that underlies the success of the western corn rootworm. Maize plants store certain defense substances, so-called benzoxazinoids, in their roots. These substances are harmful to many pests. However, the western corn rootworm has developed a strategy to detoxify these substances. The larvae of the corn rootworm thus become resistant against the plant's own defense. Even worse -- the larvae store the benzoxazinoids in their bodies and in turn, use them for self-defense against their own enemies, including parasitic roundworms (entomopathogenic nematodes). The fact that the western corn rootworm has found a defense strategy against nematodes is of particular importance, as the nematodes are used as biological control agents against this pest."Considerable successes have already been achieved in the field using nematodes; efficiency-increasing measures could further boost this approach," explains Matthias Erb, Professor for Biotic Interactions at the IPS. "Against this background, we asked ourselves the question: If pests such as the western corn rootworm can become immune against plant defense substances, could beneficial organisms such as entomopathogenic nematodes do the same?"The researchers compared nematodes from areas in which the western corn rootworm is present with nematodes from areas where it is absent. "We found that nematodes from infested areas are resistant against benzoxazinoids, unlike nematodes from other areas," says Xi Zhang, who worked on the project as a PhD student. In the lab, the researchers were able to observe that nematodes which were exposed to the the western corn rootworm became resistant to plant defense substances within just a few generations. "The speed of this adaptation surprised us," says Zhang.The results of the study, which was published in the journal In the next stage, researchers are targeting the symbiotic bacteria of the nematodes to make them resistant against benzoxazinoids, and to test the improved biological control agents in the field. "This is a next step to bring our research closer to agricultural application," says Machado.In the research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the researchers relied on a combined approach of behavioral ecology, analytical chemistry and plant genetics. The findings illustrate the importance of plant defense compounds such as benzoxazinoids for the evolution and dynamics of food chains. "The arms race between plants and herbivores is often viewed as a motor of the chemical and biological diversity of these two groups," says study co-author Christelle Robert. "Our study indicates that plant defense compounds may influence the evolution of entire food chains."As part of the interfaculty research cooperation "One Health" at the University of Bern (see box), the researchers have recently started to investigate how benzoxazinoids affect the health of animals and humans. "The integration of our findings into the central agricultural food chain is a fascinating expansion of our work with a lot of potential," says Matthias Erb.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 14, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191114115928.htm
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Genes borrowed from bacteria allowed plants to move to land
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Natural genetic engineering allowed plants to move from water to land, according to a new study by an international group of scientists from Canada, China, France, Germany, and Russia.
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"This is one of the most important events in the evolution of life on this planet -- without which we as a species would not exist," said Gane Ka-Shu Wong, co-investigator and professor in the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta. "The movement of life from water to land -- called terrestrialization -- began with plants and was followed by animals and then, of course, humans. This study establishes how that first step took place."The movement of plants from water to land was made possible when genes from soil bacteria were transferred to algae through a process called horizontal gene transfer. Unlike vertical gene transfer, such as the transfer of DNA from parent to child, horizontal gene transfer occurs between different species."For hundreds of millions of years, green algae lived in freshwater environments that periodically fell dry, such as small puddles, river beds, and trickling rocks," explained Michael Melkonian, professor in the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. "These algae mingled with and received key genes from soil bacteria that helped them and their descendants to cope with the harsh terrestrial environment and eventually evolve into the land plant flora that we see today."The study is part of an international project focused on sequencing the genomes of more than 10,000 plant species. The discovery was made in the process of sequencing two particular algae, one of them a new species ("The approach that we used, phylogenomics, is a powerful method to pinpoint the underlying molecular mechanism of evolutionary novelty," said Shifeng Cheng, first author and principal investigator from Agricultural Genome Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 13, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113153104.htm
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Ancient Egyptians gathered birds from the wild for sacrifice and mummification
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In ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study released November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal
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Egyptian catacombs are famously filled with the mummified bodies of Sacred Ibises. Between around 664BC and 250AD, it was common practice for the birds to be sacrificed, or much more rarely worshipped in ritual service to the god Thoth, and subsequently mummified. In ancient sites across Egypt, these mummified birds are stacked floor to ceiling along kilometers of catacombs, totaling many millions of birds. But how the Egyptians got access to so many birds has been a mystery; some ancient texts indicate that long-term farming and domestication may have been employed.In this study, Wasef and colleagues collected DNA from 40 mummified Sacred Ibis specimens from six Egyptian catacombs dating to around 2500 years ago and 26 modern specimens from across Africa. 14 of the mummies and all of the modern specimens yielded complete mitochondrial genome sequences. These data allowed the researchers to compare genetic diversity between wild populations and the sacrificed collections.If the birds were being domesticated and farmed, the expected result would be low genetic diversity due to interbreeding of restricted populations, but in contrast, this study found that the genetic diversity of mummified Ibises within and between catacombs was similar to that of modern wild populations. This suggests that the birds were not the result of centralized farming, but instead short-term taming. The authors suggest the birds were likely tended in their natural habitats or perhaps farmed only in the times of year they were needed for sacrifice.The authors add: "We report the first complete ancient genomes of the Egyptian Sacred Ibis mummies, showing that priests sustained short-term taming of the wild Sacred Ibis in local lakes or wetlands contrary to centralised industrial scale farming of sacrificial birds."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 13, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113153102.htm
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Experts unlock key to photosynthesis, a find that could help us meet food security demands
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Scientists have solved the structure of one of the key components of photosynthesis, a discovery that could lead to photosynthesis being 'redesigned' to achieve higher yields and meet urgent food security needs.
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The study, led by the University of Sheffield and published today in the journal Photosynthesis is the foundation of life on Earth providing the food, oxygen and energy that sustains the biosphere and human civilisation.Using a high-resolution structural model, the team found that the protein complex provides the electrical connection between the two light-powered chlorophyll-proteins (Photosystems I and II) found in the plant cell chloroplast that convert sunlight into chemical energy.Lorna Malone, the first author of the study and a PhD student in the University of Sheffield's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, said: "Our study provides important new insights into how cytochrome b6f utilises the electrical current passing through it to power up a 'proton battery'. This stored energy can then be then used to make ATP, the energy currency of living cells. Ultimately this reaction provides the energy that plants need to turn carbon dioxide into the carbohydrates and biomass that sustain the global food chain."The high-resolution structural model, determined using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, reveals new details of the additional role of cytochrome b6f as a sensor to tune photosynthetic efficiency in response to ever-changing environmental conditions. This response mechanism protects the plant from damage during exposure to harsh conditions such as drought or excess light.Dr Matt Johnson, reader in Biochemistry at the University of Sheffield and one of the supervisors of the study added: "Cytochrome b6f is the beating heart of photosynthesis which plays a crucial role in regulating photosynthetic efficiency."Previous studies have shown that by manipulating the levels of this complex we can grow bigger and better plants. With the new insights we have obtained from our structure we can hope to rationally redesign photosynthesis in crop plants to achieve the higher yields we urgently need to sustain a projected global population of 9-10 billion by 2050."The research was conducted in collaboration with the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds.Researchers now aim to establish how cytochrome b6f is controlled by a myriad of regulatory proteins and how these regulators affect the function of this complex.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 13, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113101851.htm
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Body language key to zoo animal welfare
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Watching the behaviour and body language of zoo animals could be the key to understanding and improving their welfare, new research suggests.
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Traditionally, zoos have focussed on more straightforward measures such as whether animals are eating, sleeping and breeding.The new review, by the University of Exeter and the University of Winchester, says zoos have made vast improvements in recent years, but closer observation of animal behaviour -- a method called Qualitative Behavioural Assessment, developed in livestock farming -- could reveal even more about their psychological state.An animal's posture, facial movements and activity levels are among the things that might reveal whether it is excited, calm, interested, nervous, relaxed, etc."Zookeepers are dedicated and knowledgeable about their animals, and they will often recognise the psychological state of an animal by its behaviour and body language," said Dr Paul Rose, of the University of Exeter."What we are suggesting is a more consistent version of this, carried out over time."Certain behaviours will indicate certain moods in a particular species, and we should build our knowledge of this for different species that live in zoos."For example, lions have a wide range of facial expressions, and research on these expressions could help zoos understand the animals' state of mind."This information could then be used to improve welfare by adjusting enclosures, diets, feeding times or any number of other aspects of the way animals are kept."Dr Rose conducts much of his research at WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre, and is currently examining how the swans there might reveal their psychological state via their behavioural expression."We're looking at how much time they spend investigating and exploring their habitat, which could show that they're feeling emotions like being bold or confident or interested," he said."When they're apprehensive or unsure, they appear to move less and be more vigilant, and keep their feathers compressed close to their bodies."The study evaluates existing research on Qualitative Behavioural Assessment, much of it from farming, and suggests research opportunities and practices that could be adopted by zoos."Animal welfare in zoos has improved dramatically in the last 10 or 20 years, and this method gives zoos another way to recognise and promote positive welfare," Dr Rose said.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 13, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113101842.htm
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System by which plants have formed secondary buds since ancient times illuminated
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A collaborative research group has succeeded in identifying an important transcription factor, GCAM1, which allows liverwort plants to asexually reproduce through creating clonal progenies (vegetative reproduction). Furthermore, this transcription factor was revealed to have the same origin as those which regulate secondary bud formation in angiosperms. That this transcription factor was found in liverwort suggests that it was an important ancient development in the common ancestor of land plants at least 430 million years ago.
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It is hoped that these discoveries will lead to the development of technologies to increase the cultivation rate of a variety of plants in agriculture and horticulture.The group consisted of researcher Yukiko Yasui (now an assistant professor at Kyoto University) and Associate Professor Kimitsune Ishizaki from Kobe University's Graduate School of Science, in addition to members from Kyoto, Shinshu and Kindai Universities, and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIZ).These research results were published in the American scientific journal Meristems are pools of undifferentiated, or unspecialized cells located in areas of plants where growth can occur- usually at the tips of the plant. These meristem allow for new shoots and flowers to grow, in addition to enabling many varieties of plants to reproduce asexually by creating clones of themselves. This process is called vegetative reproduction. The clonal progenies formed via vegetative reproduction have the same genetic makeup as the parent plant. Vegetative reproduction occurs in different areas depending on the variety of plant, for example, stems (potato, strawberry), roots (sweet potato) or even leaves (kalanchoe). It can also be induced using a number of techniques, such as cuttings and grafting, and is commonly utilized to produce plants in both agriculture and horticulture. However, many aspects of the mechanism behind this reproduction system remain unknown.Vegetative reproduction in liverwort takes place inside gemma cups, which form on the surface of the body of the plant. A research group consisting of some of the same members recently illuminated the mechanism by which gemmae develop within the gemma cup. However, it was still unclear what mechanism allowed gemma cups to form in the first place.This research group sought to illuminate which genes play a large role in gemma cup formation via comprehensive analysis of gene expression. Through this analysis they found one transcription factor, which they called Gemma cup-associated MYB1 (GCAM1). They discovered that removing this GCAM1 gene from the plant prevented gemma cups from forming . However the removal of this gene didn't affect other aspects of the plant's growth apart from the gemma cups, leading them to conclude that the GCAM1 proteins that encode the GCAM1 gene are vital for triggering the formation of gemma cups.Next, they illuminated the function of the GCAM1 proteins with the aim of controlling gemma cup formation. To do this, they created an overexpression of GCAM1 proteins inside the liverwort plant. When GCAM1's protein function is overexpressed, the plant is unable to grow and there is an increase in undifferentiated cells with stem cell properties. Based on this result, it is thought that GCAM1 is responsible for suppressing cell differentiation in the meristem regions, which under normal conditions would allow for gemma cup and gemmae formation.GCAM1 is an R2R3-MYB transcription factor gene. The same subfamily of genes in Angiosperms is known to have an axillary bud forming function (RAXs in Arabidopsis thaliana and Blind in tomato plants). To investigate this evolutionary relationship, an experiment was carried out using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.It has been previously discovered that mutant Arabidopsis thaliana plants without the RAXs gene develop few axillary buds compared to the wild-type (control) plant. However, this research group found that introducing the GCAM1 gene into this mutant caused the number of axillary buds to increase. Liverwort's GCAM1 gene displayed the same function in Arabidopsis thaliana, indicating that the RAXs gene and the GCAM1 gene are orthologs. Orthologs are genes in different species that evolved from a common ancestral gene and thus retain the same function.It was revealed that liverwort's GCAM1 gene and the genes that are responsible for axillary bud formation in angiosperms are orthologs. From this finding, it is supposed that the gemma cup formation in liverwort and axillary bud formation in angiosperms have the same mechanism.Technology to control axillary shoot formation in angiosperms could be used to directly increase crop production. It is hoped that further research into GCAM1 could provide a foundation for such technology. Next, it is necessary to illuminate the network involved in GCAM1 management, and to investigate the commonalities between liverwort and angiosperms. This will contribute not only to the understanding of vegetative reproduction in liverwort but will also reveal the common mechanism by which plants produce new buds.propagates via vegetative reproduction- whereby clones (gemmae) of the parent plant develop inside gemma cups which form on the body of the plant. The whole genome information for liverwort has been available since 2017 and the plant has received attention as a model for research into the evolution of mechanisms in land plants and gene functions.Tissue containing undifferentiated cells. It is found in parts of the plant where growth can occur.Also known as thale cress, it is a small flowering plant (angiosperm) in the brassicaceae (mustard) family. The whole genome sequence for this plant has been available since 2000, meaning that it is often used as a model in plant biology research studies investigating gene functions and mechanisms.are flowering plants that have seeds enclosed within a carpel. Many kinds of land plant are classified as angiosperm- including herbaceous plants, shrubs and most trees.are proteins that help turn specific genes (and their functions) 'on' or 'off'.Basic cells that have yet to develop any specialized functions.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 13, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113095246.htm
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Plants might be helping each other more than thought
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Contrary to the long-held belief that plants in the natural world are always in competition, new research has found that in harsh environments mature plants help smaller ones -- and thrive as a result.
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The first study to examine plant interactions in a hostile environment over their lifespan found that plants sheltering seedlings help the smaller plant survive and are more successful themselves, a processed in ecology called facilitation.The study, led by Dr Rocio Pérez-Barrales at the University of Portsmouth and Dr Alicia Montesinos-Navarro at Desertification Research Center in Valencia, Spain, studied adult and seedling plants in the 'ecological desert' of gypsum soil in the south-east of Spain.The findings could have significance for those managing harsh environments including coastal management.Dr Pérez-Barrales said: "If you're a seedling in a barren landscape -- the top of a mountain or a sand dune, for example -- and you're lucky enough to end up underneath a big plant, your chances of survival are certainly better than if you landed somewhere on your own."What we have found which was surprising is an established large plant, called a 'nurse', shields a seedling, it also produces more flowers than the same plants of similar large size growing on their own."This win-win for adult and seedling plants in harsh environments has not previously been reported."Scientists have often looked at such plant relationships and found an adult or a seedling at one stage of its life, and made conclusions," Dr Pérez-Barrales said. "But by studying these plants' entire lifespan, from seed germination and establishment, growth of young plants, and flowering in adult plants, we have evidence that the benefits for both stack up over time."Dr Pérez-Barrales and her all-female team of scientists studied plant growth in southern Spain over three months during summer. The plants were growing in gypsum, a very poor soil, with little nutrients or water.They found clear evidence the seedling and nurse were more likely to thrive when grown together, compared to either plant growing alone.The seedling benefited from shade, more moisture and more nutrients, from the leaf litter of the 'nurse' plant, and probably higher bacteria and fungi in the soil, among other things. As it matured, the 'nurse' plant grew more flowers than similar plants nearby growing alone, greatly increasing her chances of producing seeds and propagating.Other benefits of nurse-seedling partnerships include that more variety of plants growing together can trigger a positive cascade effects in the environment. For example, vegetation patches with nurse and facilitated plants with more flower density might be able to attract higher numbers and diversity of pollinators in an area, in turn supporting insect and soil life, and even provide a greater range of different fruit types for birds and mammals."The biggest winner for this system of nursing a plant is biodiversity," Dr Pérez-Barrales said."The more biodiverse an area, the more we have a greater number of species of plants, insect life, bacteria, fungi, mammals and birds, the better the chances are of long-term healthy functioning of the environment and ecosystems."The research is likely to be of value to those who manage and protect plants in hostile and harsh environments, such as shingle and sand dunes ecosystems, both of which encircle the UK and are considered at high risk due to human intervention and climate change.Most home gardeners and arable farmers plan to ensure their soil and conditions are the best they can be for optimum plant growth, but the findings might be of value to those who garden in inhospitable places.Dr Pérez-Barrales suggested gardeners experiment with planting different species of different ages together to test which partnerships help plants thrive in any particular location.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 12, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191112114005.htm
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Knowledge of the origin of the food makes it taste better
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The research was conducted in Indonesia with the participation of young Indonesians who rated modern and traditional versions of tempe, which has a long tradition in Indonesian cuisine and consists of beans fermented with a type of fungus.
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Tempe is a sustainable food for several reasons. Legumes fix nitrogen from the air and can thus be grown efficiently without the input of nitrogenous fertilizers, while simultaneously improving the soil for other crops. Tempe is high in protein, and during the fermentation vitamin B12 is formed, which we otherwise obtain predominately from animal products. For centuries, tempe has been an important source of protein in Indonesia and the rest of the world could very well benefit from this food, which can often be made with local produce.The researchers let the young people judge the taste of 5 modern and 4 traditional versions of tempe. It turned out that the young people liked the modern versions as long as they were only considering the taste. But when the researchers provided information about the background of the different versions of tempe, it changed both the taste and how well they liked the traditional versions."When the young people were told that the tempe in front of them was made from local ingredients with traditional production methods, the information made the products taste significantly better," explains one of the researchers behind the study, Associate Professor Michael Bom Frost from the Future Consumer Lab, Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen (UPCH FOOD).The traditional tempe is being supplanted by the modern, industrially produced versions that have a more standardised taste, which researchers believe is one of the reasons for this result."We know from other research that we really like the taste of something we can recognise, and therefore it is not surprising that the young Indonesians like the modern versions of the tempe best, as it is simply these versions that they know best," says Michael Bom Frost.Earlier research has also shown that the narrative of a food can influence the taste of the dish, but the research here specifically showed that it was the pride in a traditional dish with deep roots in the participants' own culture and made of local produce that made the food taste better."Much more than taste and how much we like what we eat affects our behaviour. Here it was clear that other elements of the experience, such as the pride of eating food made from local produce and using traditional production methods, significantly changed the perception of the food. There are a lot of feelings about food that are connected to where it comes from," explains Michael Bom Frost.That is why it might be interesting for producers in Indonesia to formulate strategies that take into account the fact that consumers have strong positive feelings about the traditions. It has a major impact on how food production can be modernised in a way that is developed and streamlined while keeping consumers connected to their original food culture.165 young Indonesians tasted nine different kinds of tempe twice in a sensory lab -- 5 traditional types and 4 modernised versions. The tempe served was prepared in the simplest way: briefly fried in oil after a short marinating in a brine of salt and garlic. This is a very common method of preparing it in Indonesian cuisine. The first time, the participants were given no information about the samples. The second time, they were told the types of beans used, whether they were local or imported, and whether modern or traditional production methods had been used. They had to answer several types of questions for each taste sample: How well do you like it? What does it taste like? What overall characteristics (e.g., familiar and authentic) does the sample have? What emotions (e.g. pride and enthusiasm) does the taste evoke in you?
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191111102407.htm
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Potential vitamin and Alzheimer's drug produced in yeast
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Ergothioneine is a natural amino acid with antioxidative properties. It prevents cellular stress, which can lead to brain diseases, neurological damage and cancer. In rats and roundworms, research shows that ergothioneine has promising effects in preventing neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's. Also, it has been reported that patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases have significantly lower blood levels of ergothioneine than others. These findings suggest that ergothioneine might have great potential as a vitamin to prevent or delay the onset of those diseases.
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Currently, it is both complicated and expensive to produce ergothioneine with chemical synthesis. However, by engineering and optimising baker's yeast, scientists from The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain) has for the first time exploited the potential of making ergothioneine in yeast in a bio-based fashion.In a study published in Because of today's expensive chemical production routes, current market prices of ergothioneine are very high compared to vitamins such as vitamin C and vitamin D that also prevent certain diseases. Thus, one of the main goals for the scientists is to further optimise the production of ergothioneine to reach a higher yield, so it can be sold to the consumer at a much cheaper price in the future.One of the main reasons for ergothioneine being so expensive at the moment is that the chemical process is costly and the yields fairly low. Furthermore, it has not been tested for its efficacy for the prevention or treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in humans yet. But since the safety assessment of ergothioneine has already been done, it is 'simply' a question of being able to produce enough.Before the scientists were able to produce ergothioneine in a biobased fashion, some explored the possibility of simply extracting ergothioneine from mushrooms. But again, this would be extremely expensive and require mushroom farms taking up areas of potential farming land."By making this important antioxidant in a biobased fashion, you avoid using chemicals or farmland. Yeast is far better at producing ergothioneine than humans or mushrooms could ever be," says the first author Steven van der Hoek.In nature, ergothioneine is produced by bacteria and fungi, but the enzymes bacteria and fungi use for making ergothioneine make up slightly different pathways.In the study, the scientists chose to screen enzymes from different fungi and from the bacterium Furthermore, they also investigated potential ergothioneine transporters to increase the yield from their yeast strain. Unfortunately, this did not have any effect.One thing that worked was to add amino acids that operate as building blocks of ergothioneine to the medium. By doing this, they were able to increase the production of ergothioneine significantly.Thus, optimisation of the medium was one of the important steps to increase the production to 0.6 g/L in 84 hours, which compares well with the current best-reported production in "The bacterial pathway in Currently, the scientists are trying to increase productivity by engineering the strain further to make a commercially viable product.The authors of this study also stress that the positive effects of ergothioneine have so far only been reported in animal models, and, hence, it is too soon to say if this will work in humans. Regardless, ergothioneine production in a larger scale than today could be important to get access to a beneficial dietary supplement.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 11, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191111100935.htm
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Too much sugar doesn't put the brakes on turbocharged crops
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Plants make sugars to form leaves to grow and produce grains and fruits through the process of photosynthesis, but sugar accumulation can also slow down photosynthesis. Researching how sugars in plants control photosynthesis is therefore an important part of finding new ways of improving crop production.
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Recent research into highly productive turbocharged crops such as maize and sorghum, show the secret to their productivity could lie in their sugar sensing responses which regulate photosynthesis inside their leaves."By comparing rice and millet we found that crops that use the C4 photosynthesis path, such as maize, sorghum and millet, regulate photosynthesis using different sugar signal mechanisms than C3 crops, such as wheat and rice. This may be part of the reason why they are more productive," said lead researcher Dr Clemence Henry from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis (CoETP)."Plants can detect how much sugar is being produced and used through a complex set of sugar sensing mechanisms. These mechanisms can shut photosynthesis down if sugar accumulation is too high. However, to our surprise, we found out that unlike previously shown in some C3 plants, C4 plants are not so sensitive to high levels of sugars, which shows us that the feedback mechanism is not as simple as we previously thought" Dr Henry says."We are trying to understand how photosynthesis is regulated in C4 plants, which are some of the most important cereals in global food production. The regulation mechanisms have been well studied in C3 plants, but until now, we didn't know what happens in C4 crops and how this is related to their ability to produce more sugars," says Dr Oula Ghannoum, CoETP Chief investigator at Western Sydney University."One of the most exciting outcomes of this research is that if we understand how sugar signalling works in C4 crops, in the future when we transfer turbocharged photosynthesis mechanisms to crops like wheat and rice we will ensure we improve their yield," says Dr Ghannoum.Improving photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight, water and CO2 into organic matter, is recognised as one of the best ways to increase crop production."The tricky part is to translate the results found at the molecular level to the crop level. For improved photosynthesis to give more yield we need to "take the brakes off" the crop. This is an essential piece of the puzzle to achieve improved yield through increased photosynthesis," says CoETP Director Professor Robert Furbank, one of the authors of this study.During the study, published recently in the "We still have a lot of unanswered questions about how these sugar sensors work. Our next steps are to manipulate these sensors, which will help us to gather essential information we need to transfer them to C3 crops in the future," Dr Ghannoum says.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 8, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191108155447.htm
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Superfood for Mesozoic herbivores?
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The long-necked, big bodied sauropod dinosaurs comprise some of the largest terrestrial vertebrates to walk the earth. These behemoths were herbivores that survived solely on plant material. There has been long speculation as to what food resources could have supported their size, particularly when young and growing fast. New research being presented at this year's annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology held this year in Brisbane, Australia by lead author, Carole Gee, University of Bonn, Germany, points to a plant commonly known as the horsetail.
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Equisetum is a spore-bearing plant commonly known as the "scouring rush" or "horsetail," and close relatives of the modern genus are known in the fossil record as far back as the Triassic. Gee and co-authors studied the digestive fermentation and comparative calorie yield of seven extant species of Equisetum for living herbivores using a standardized feed evaluation test. Their data confirm earlier studies that suggest Equisetum was an important, highly digestible, nutritious, and therefore preferred food source for herbivorous dinosaurs in Mesozoic times. "My approach to understanding the paleobiology of ancient plants and deep-time plant-animal interactions is not only to look at paleontology, but also to include studies of living plants and their ecology, as well as the dietary habits of living animals," says Gee.In this study, Gee and her colleagues turn their attention to the diets of hatchling and young sauropods, as well as other small-stature herbivorous dinosaurs. "Up to now, plants used as likely food resources have only been studied for fully-grown sauropods," Dee stated. Young and growing sauropods grow very quickly, recognizing the value of Equisetum as a major food source for young and growing sauropods is extremely important in learning more about their growth. Gee and her colleagues began research on the comparative value of the nearest living relatives of the Jurassic flora as dinosaur fodder about a decade ago within the framework of a Research Unit on the Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs, funded by the German Research Foundation.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 7, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107202600.htm
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Intended to help human, planetary health, EAT-Lancet diet too costly for 1.6 billion people
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A new study estimates that a diet meant to improve both human and planetary health would be unaffordable for at least 1.58 billion people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
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Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health published recommendations for a universal diet that addresses both human and planetary health. The Commission suggested that adherence to this diet could ensure that our future food systems can sustainably and nutritiously feed the estimated population of 10 billion people in 2050.The study published today in "When formulating this pioneering benchmark diet -- addressing individual health outcomes as well as the health of the planet -- the Commission deliberately did not take its cost into account," said senior and corresponding author Will Masters, an economist at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts.The research team also found that the EAT-Lancet diet was 64 percent more costly than the lowest-cost combination of foods that would provide a balanced mix of 20 essential nutrients. The EAT-Lancet diet has higher quantities of animal-source foods and fruits and vegetables than the minimum required for nutrient adequacy, and much higher quantities than are now consumed in low-income countries."We found that the global median of the proposed diet would cost $2.84 per day as of 2011. In low-income countries, that amounts to 89.1 percent of a household's daily per capita income, which is more than people can actually spend on food. In high-income countries, we found that the EAT-Lancet reference diet would cost 6.1 percent of per-capita income, which is often less than what people now spend on food," said Kalle Hirvonen, the lead author and development economist in Ethiopia at the International Food Policy Research Institute.The EAT-Lancet Commission diet consists of a large amount of vegetables, fruits, whole grain, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils, some seafood and poultry, and little to no red meat, processed meat, added sugar, refined grains, and starchy vegetables.Fruits, vegetables, and animal-source foods are often the most expensive components of a healthy diet, but prices vary widely around the world, report the researchers.To compute the affordability of an EAT-Lancet diet in each country, the researchers drew on retail prices for standardized items obtained through the International Comparison Program, a collaboration between the World Bank and country statistical agencies. They used prices for 744 food items in 159 countries, from which they could identify the lowest-cost combination of items in each country to meet EAT-Lancet criteria. They then did the same for nutrient requirements, and compared the cost of food in each country to survey data on household expenditure and income per capita from the World Bank's PovcalNet system."Although 1.58 billion is a lot of people, it is actually a conservative lower limit on the total number who cannot afford the diet recommended by the EAT-Lancet Commission. The cost of food preparation and of non-food necessities ensure that an even larger number of people cannot afford that kind of healthy diet," said Masters."Even if many poor consumers were to aspire to consume healthier and more environmentally sustainable foods, income and price constraints frequently render this diet unaffordable. Increased earnings and safety-net transfers, as well as systemic changes to lower food prices, are needed to bring healthy and sustainable diets within reach of the world's poor," concluded Hirvonen.Limitations to the study include that the models count only the least expensive items in each country, so other research would be needed to address the additional costs and barriers to food use imposed by time constraints, tastes and preferences. Additionally, the study used 2011 prices and nationally aggregated data, so next steps include research on variation within countries as well as over time. There is also uncertainty regarding the nutritional content of the foods whose prices were used in the study's models.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 7, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107170505.htm
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Nematode fumigants have very low long-term impact on soil health, study suggests
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It started with curiosity. How does a fumigant, commonly used for nematode management in potato cropping systems, influence soil microbial communities?
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To explore this question, scientists at Colorado State University and Oregon State University used high-throughput sequencing techniques to investigate changes in soil bacterial and fungal community structure in response to the application of 1,3-Dichloropropene (1,3-D) in Pacific Northwest potato production fields. Their research found that the fumigant had very minor effects.1,3-D is an organic compound used as a pesticide to control nematodes (roundworms) that reduce the yields of many plants. Despite its widespread use, little is known about the fumigant's effects on other organisms in soil. A recent paper published in the open access "We found it interesting that only minor effects of 1,3-D were observed on both bacterial and fungal communities, suggesting that soil can be a robust ecosystem and fumigants may not have a long-term impact on the overall microbial community," said researcher Kenneth Frost. The research also showed that the average efficacy of 1,3-D was estimated to be 98% across all nematodes studied, which included root lesion and stubby root nematodes.As a result of this research, the authors suggest there may be a greater impact on microbial community from other agricultural practices, such as tillage, use of cover crops, irrigation, and precipitation, than fumigant application in potato cropping systems.There is still room for more studies of this nature, according to Frost, who says, "We think that investigating soil microbial community structure in response to different crop management strategies, including pesticide application, may eventually help farmers manage their communities in ways that will enhance crop health and productivity."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 7, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107160614.htm
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Origin of deadly wheat pathogen revealed
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Stem rust is a devastating wheat disease that has caused famines and undermined economies around the world for centuries.
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One particular strain of the stem rust fungus, dubbed "Ug99," threatens the global wheat supply because it can attack more than 80% of all varieties planted across the world. The ability of Ug99 to attack so many wheat varieties has confounded scientists and farmers since its discovery in Africa two decades ago.Now, a team of researchers has uncovered the basis of Ug99's wide virulence by examining the pathogen's genome. They determined that the pathogen's ability to attack so many wheats can be traced to a rarely observed phenomenon where two different rust strains fuse together and exchange intact nuclei. This event creates a hybrid strain with a wider host range than its original parents.This investigation is the first to provide compelling genome-wide data that this event, called "somatic hybridization," in the rust fungi can generate new virulence combinations. It also helps explain the sudden emergence of Ug99 in Africa."Ug99 is an imminent threat to global food security due to its wide virulence and ability to readily spread across continents and oceans to infect distant wheat crops," said study co-author Brian Steffenson, a plant pathology professor at the University of Minnesota College of Food Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS)."We have known for a long time that the stem rust fungus is highly variable, but the molecular basis for this variation was not well understood. This study documents, at the genomic level, one important mechanism for how rust pathogens alter their virulence repertoire in nature."The discovery is detailed in a paper published Thursday in the journal "This information will be critical for deciphering the genetic basis and evolution of rust virulence on wheat and for monitoring the global movements of the pathogen," said Eva Henningsen, a University of Minnesota graduate student in Plant Pathology.By analyzing the DNA sequences of the two individual nuclei present in Ug99 and another more established African stem rust strain called Pgt21-0, researchers discovered that:"As plant scientists, we're always looking for an advantage over stem rust in order to develop more durably resistant crops," said Feng Li, a University of Minnesota Ph.D. student and joint first author on the study. "The data obtained from this study will provide us with new insights on how Ug99 emerged to threaten wheat across the world."Beside the practical implications of the study, researchers say they were surprised to learn that hybridization and a nucleus swap were the basis for the virulence shift in Ug99. These events were thought to be rare in nature."It was one of those amazing moments in science when you stop and think about how much there is still to learn about nature," said former University of Minnesota professor Melania Figuera, group leader at CSIRO.This research was supported by the 2Blades Foundation, USDA-Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture, an ARC Future Fellowship and the University of Minnesota Lieberman-Okinow Endowment.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 7, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107111746.htm
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Minimizing post-harvest food losses
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The crops have been harvested. Now it is important to store the various crops well and to preserve them as long and as carefully as possible. Post-harvest losses due to spoilage, however, represent a significant problem along the supply chain and lead to profit losses in the millions. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) statistics, almost half of the world's harvest (45 percent) of fruits and vegetables are lost on their way to the end consumer. The main causes of these losses are pest or disease infestation and incorrect storage conditions, which lead to rotting or loss of fresh mass due to respiration and evaporation. The only remedy is often the excessive use of chemicals. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology at TU Graz in cooperation with the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib) and industrial partners have successfully tested ecological methods that improve the storage of apples and sugar beet -- representative examples for other types of fruit and vegetables.
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Hot water treatment (HWT) has proven to be a sustainable method for reducing fungal fruit decay after harvest in a large number of crops. In this treatment, apples are briefly dipped into a hot water bath. This "heat shock" stimulates the apple's natural defence mechanisms, the principle of action has not yet been fully clarified. Nevertheless, there are always outbreaks of pathogens in storage and apples spoil.In a laboratory experiment, the head of the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology, Gabriele Berg, PhD student Birgit Wassermann and PhD student Peter Kusstatscher, have now successfully tested a method that significantly improves the shelf life of organic apples through the combined use of HWT and biocontrol organisms. Birgit Wassermann explains the experimental setup: "We infected organic apples with two of the most important putrefactive agents, then treated them with hot water and a biocontrol agent designed by us. This combined approach enabled us to either kill the post-harvest pathogens completely or to reduce the infection diameter to a maximum in about 60 percent of the apples treated in this way." Compared to the control group -- apples that were only treated with HWT -- the combi-method showed 20 percent better results in the resistance of the apples to storage rot. The additive protective effect of the biocontrol agent obtained from the apple microbiome of native organic apples for the control of the storage moulds could be clearly demonstrated. The results of the study were published in the journal "This combined approach is a sustainable and ecologically sound way to reduce apple blight. On the basis of this method, we can optimize apple storage together with industrial project partners," summarizes Gabriele Berg, head of the institute.At the same time, Gabriele Berg and her team have investigated for the first time how the hot water treatment affects the microbiome of the apple, i.e. the entirety of all microorganisms. Together with an Austrian organic fruit company, the researchers were able to show in a trial on an industrial scale that the natural microbiome of apples remains unchanged through HWT treatment, whereas harmful fungi are almost completely contained. This proves that HWT leads to the release of certain plant defence metabolites that kill pathogens without affecting the natural apple-associated microbiome. The close connection between the plant and its microbial symbionts is thus confirmed once again. Just a few weeks ago, the same team of researchers at Graz University of Technology, led by Gabriele Berg and Birgit Wassermann, caused a stir with their study on the composition of the apple microbiome. With every apple we eat about 100 million bacteria, but the microbiome of an organic apple differs considerably from that of a conventional apple. Stored apples with rotten spots also contain a fundamentally different microbiome, which consists of 99 percent fungi and only one percent bacteria.Not only apple farmers, but also the sugar beet industry suffers millions in losses every year due to storage rot. In cooperation with the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib), the research team has also devoted itself to this topic and developed an environmentally friendly crop protection agent together with one of the largest European sugar producers and the Graz start-up Roombiotic. acib researcher Peter Kusstatscher designed his own biocontrol agent for this purpose and tested it under industrial conditions. "The treatment of the beets leads to significantly higher sugar levels after storage," explains Peter Kusstatscher. In addition, a process was developed that shows which beets from which fields are particularly susceptible to storage rot even before the beets are harvested and therefore must be processed quickly. The research results could considerably minimize economic losses in the future, especially since the sugar losses occurring in Germany alone currently cause more than half a million euros of damage per day.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 7, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107084034.htm
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Plants and fungi together could slow climate change
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A new global assessment shows that human impacts have greatly reduced plant-fungus symbioses, which play a key role in sequestering carbon in soils. Restoring these ecosystems could be one strategy to slow climate change.
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Human-induced transformations of Earth's ecosystems have strongly affected distribution patterns of plant-fungus symbioses known as mycorrhiza. These changes have greatly reduced vegetation featuring a particular variety of mycorrhiza -- ectomycorrhiza -- a type of plant-fungal symbiosis crucially important for soil carbon storage. The study, published in the journal Most plant species form symbioses with various fungi, in which fungi provide plants with nutrients, while the plants provide carbon to the fungi. Previous research has shown that these relationships increase the potential of vegetation to remove COThe study is the first to provide a global accounting of the distribution of mycorrhizal vegetation across the planet along with estimates of their contribution to terrestrial carbon stocks. Even with the loss of mycorrhizal symbioses, the study finds, that ecosystems encompassing mycorrhizal vegetation store on the order of 350 gigatons of carbon globally, compared to just 29 gigatons stored in non-mycorrhizal vegetation."Human activities such as agricultural practices have altered 50-75% of the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems, transforming natural areas with previously strong carbon sequestering mycorrhizal plant-associations to much weaker relationships. By altering the plants that grow across much of the Earth's surface from those with strong soil carbon storage to weak carbon storage we have potentially further contributed to increased atmospheric COThis study identifies a potential mechanism that could be used to decrease atmospheric CO"Among the pathways available to mankind to reach the atmospheric CO
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 6, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191106162537.htm
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Water mold research leads to greater understanding of corn diseases
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Corn is a staple feed and biofuel crop with a value close to $3.7 billion in the Michigan economy alone. However, knowledge about seedling pathogens in Michigan corn fields is limited. A group of scientists in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University set out to gain a better understanding of the composition of seedling pathogens, with results that will aid disease management research not only in corn but in rotational crops such as soybean and wheat.
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This research focused on oomycetes, also known as water molds, which comprise several hundred organisms that include some of the most devastating plant pathogens some of which cause seedling disease and root rot. They used both traditional pathogen isolation methods and amplicon sequencing to identify the most abundant oomycetes from corn seedlings and characterize the isolates for their ability to cause disease on corn."The study is unique as we combined both a traditional pathogen isolation and amplicon sequencing to characterize oomycetes of corn," explained Martin Chilvers, one of the researchers. "Using both of these approaches enabled us to get a snap shot of oomycetes in soil and corn seedlings, but also enabled virulence and fungicide sensitivity phenotyping."This research will lead to a greater understanding of the causes of seedling disease and root rot and enable more targeted approaches for disease management, from breeding hybrids with improved root rot resistance to screening fungicides that combat disease and improve management.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 6, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191106130332.htm
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Horses blink less, twitch eyelids more when stressed
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How can you tell when a horse is feeling stressed? It's all in the eyes and the way their eyelids twitch, University of Guelph researchers have discovered.
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A horse will blink less and twitch its eyelids more when it's under mild stress, the research team found -- a new finding that could offer handlers a simple, easy-to-spot sign their animal is becoming agitated.The study, published in the journal "With humans, we already know our blinking changes when we are under pressure. Some studies have shown we blink more when agitated while others found we blink less. We wanted to see if horses blink rates change too," said Merkies, a professor in the Department of Animal Biosciences at the Ontario Agricultural College.Although many horse handlers can tell when their animals are agitated, it can sometimes be hard to get a good read on a horse's mood -- particularly if the animal has been well trained."When we train horses, we specifically teach them to suppress their stress responses because we don't want horses to react when they are startled or nervous. But even if they've learned to suppress their reaction, it doesn't actually decrease the stress they feel," she said.While stress can be measured through heart rate monitors or blood cortisol levels, Merkies and her team wanted a non-invasive measurement, so they decided to test whether a horse's eyes could offer clues.They recruited 33 horses of various breeds from three riding lesson facilities in eastern Ontario and exposed them to three mildly stressful scenarios.In the first, a ball was thrown in front of the horse in an attempt to startle the animal. In the next, the horse was visually separated from its herd for a few minutes. Finally, the horse's food was withheld for three minutes at feed time while its herd mates were allowed to begin eating.The researchers filmed the horses, watching for changes in eye and ear movement, head tilt and general restlessness.They found that withholding the feed for a few minutes was the most stressful for the horse as indicated by its increased heart rate, restlessness and head movement. Conversely, separation and the startle test evoked little response.Researchers attempted to startle the horses by throwing a ball in front of them."It's important to remember these were riding school horses, so they were used to being startled and being separated. But the withholding of food was new, so that's likely why they became stressed," she said.When researchers reviewed videos of the horses' eyes during feed withholding, they noticed the horses blinked less but twitched their upper eyelids more.On average, the horses' full blink rate decreased to an average of five blinks per minute during the stress compared to the eight to nine times per minute when relaxed. During the feed restriction, when the horses felt the most stress, their eyelid twitches increased from an average of two twitches per minute to six twitches per minute. There was no increase in eyelid twitches with the other stress tests.Merkies said she hopes her team's finding will help horse handlers looking for simple ways to gauge their animals' moods."There's no one measure that is going to tell us everything, but this is another tool we can add to the toolbox that we can use together to understand our animals better," she said.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 6, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191106120434.htm
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Reassessing strategies to reduce phosphorus levels in the Detroit river watershed
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In an effort to control the cyanobacteria blooms and dead zones that plague Lake Erie each summer, fueled by excess nutrients, the United States and Canada in 2016 called for a 40% reduction in the amount of phosphorus entering the lake's western and central basins, including the Detroit River's contribution.
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Both countries then developed domestic action plans that outline strategies to meet the new Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement targets.But the current U.S. reduction strategy for the Detroit River doesn't address Lake Huron, which is responsible for 54% of the phosphorus that ends up in the Detroit River, according to recent calculations from a University of Michigan-led research team.Also, the current strategy doesn't contemplate further reductions at the regional wastewater treatment plant in Detroit, the largest single, identifiable source of phosphorus entering the Detroit River. The Water Resource Recovery Facility has already reduced phosphorus in effluent by 51% since 2008.If those two major sources aren't part of the plan, then the overall 40% reduction target can only be met if other phosphorus sources in the binational Detroit River watershed are cut by 72%, according to a new study from the same U-M-led research team, published online Nov. 6 in the "Reducing phosphorus loads from the remainder of the watershed by 72% would be a daunting challenge if no adjustments are made to the reduction strategy," said U-M aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, the first author of the study and a professor emeritus at the School for Environment and Sustainability.The The new paper offers several potential changes to the U.S. and Canadian domestic action plans that could increase the chances of reaching phosphorus-reduction targets for the Detroit River watershed.Amendments to the plans could include:"Both domestic action plans emphasize that the targets and approaches are not static," said Jennifer Read, a co-author of the "For systems this complex and dynamic, it is critical to set targets, take action, monitor the results, and make adjustments as necessary. We anticipate that our results will be helpful in evaluating both the overall load reduction targets and their allocation."In their May study, "Watershed Assessment of Detroit River Phosphorus Loads to Lake Erie," the U-M-led team reported that 54% of the Detroit River's total phosphorus load comes from Lake Huron -- a proportion several times higher than previous estimates.The higher-than-expected contribution from Lake Huron is due, in part, to a previously undetected phosphorus source that is "sizeable and increasing over time," they reported.A climate-driven decline in winter ice on Lake Huron and an increased frequency of intense storms appear to be boosting shoreline erosion and re-suspending lake sediment along the lake's shoreline, washing phosphorus-rich sediments downriver and eventually into Lake Erie, according to the May 2019 report.When the researchers analyzed satellite images of southernmost Lake Huron, they spotted sediment plumes that occur frequently and that are often missed by monitoring programs."Our new understanding of the contribution of Lake Huron suggests that reaching Lake Erie phosphorus-loading targets may require greater attention to Lake Huron sources and larger reductions from the Detroit River watershed than previously thought," Scavia said.In the The most effective way to reduce that agricultural runoff is to apply combinations of conservation practices such as adding cover crops and buffer strips, creating or restoring wetlands, and applying fertilizer below the soil surface, the researchers report.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 5, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191105152647.htm
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Helpful insects and landscape changes
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We might not notice them, but the crops farmers grow are protected by scores of tiny invertebrate bodyguards. Naturally occurring arthropods like spiders and lady beetles patrol crop fields looking for insects to eat. These natural enemies keep pests under control, making it easier to grow the crops we depend on.
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New research from Michigan State University by Nate Haan, Yajun Zhang and Doug Landis sheds light on how these natural enemies respond to large-scale spatial patterns in agricultural landscapes. These areas are made up of crop fields, forests and grasslands. It turns out their configuration, or spatial arrangement, can go a long way in determining how many natural enemies show up in a field to eat pests.A new review article published in "One of the take-homes from our review is that natural enemies can be more abundant when agricultural landscapes are made up of smaller farm fields," said Haan, MSU postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Entomology and one of the study's authors. "Some natural enemies need resources found in other habitats or in crop field edges. We think when habitat patches are small, they are more likely to find their way back and forth between these habitats and crop fields, or from one crop field into another."Haan emphasizes that the exact effects of landscape configuration depend on the natural history of the critter in question."A predator that finds everything it needs to survive within a single crop field might not need natural habitats outside that crop field, but there are lots of other insects that need to find nectar or shelter in other places," Haan said. "For these insects, the spatial arrangement of crop fields and those other habitats can become very important."This research will help scientists predict how future changes to farming landscapes will affect insect diversity and pest suppression, a service that is estimated to save farmers billions of dollars every year.One expected change to landscapes in the Midwest will occur as farmers begin to grow more bioenergy crops. This is a key interest to the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, or GLBRC, which funded the study. Farmers are likely to grow more crops that can be processed and used as substitutes for petroleum; these crops could be traditional crops like corn, but switchgrass, poplar trees and native prairie are promising alternatives. Depending which crops are used and where they are planted, future landscapes will contain new habitats and will likely be in new spatial arrangements.The next steps for this research include learning more about whether life history traits of beneficial arthropods predict how they will respond to landscape change. Insects have different food requirements and strategies for moving around the landscape, Haan and colleagues are excited to learn how these differences can be used to predict how the insects will respond to future landscape changes.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 5, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191105104424.htm
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Palm oil: Less fertilizer and no herbicide but same yield?
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Environmentally friendlier palm oil production could be achieved with less fertilizer and no herbicide, while maintaining profits. These are the encouraging preliminary results of the first two years of a large-scale oil palm management experiment by an international team of researchers led by the University of Göttingen. The research was published in
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The palm oil industry often hits the headlines with news about the destruction of tropical forests and the plight of orangutans. Yet palm oil continues to represent a considerable proportion of the Gross Domestic Product of many tropical countries; and large numbers of people, including smallholder farmers, depend on it. In addition, a multitude of products that we use on a daily basis would be more expensive without affordable palm oil. Together with industry partners, the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) established the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil in 2004. However, concrete recommendations on the levels of herbicides or fertilizer and the management practices are still missing. There hasn't been enough research, meaning that oil palm growers were hesitant to adopt alternative management strategies that could reduce their yields a few years later.In 2016, the German-Indonesian Collaborative Research Centre "Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (EFForTS)" set up an experiment in an oil palm company estate in Jambi province, Sumatra, in collaboration with the Indonesian national company PTPN6. Fertiliser input was set to one of two levels: either low, compensating for the nutrients that are removed by the harvest; or high, corresponding to the industry standard for fertiliser-usage, which is roughly twice as high. Weed control was performed either mechanically or with common chemical herbicides such as glyphosate. Research groups studied the oil palms, the soil, and the biodiversity, measuring variables such as microbial biomass, bird activity, soil base saturation, nitrogen content, and oil palm leaf area index."Two years after implementing our treatments, we were still not able to detect a reduction in yield. In fact, profits were higher because of reduced fertiliser costs," says lead author Kevin Darras from the Agroecology Group at the University of Göttingen. The impact on soil-related functions and nutrients was either negligible or there was a positive effect. Some biodiversity measures responded positively to mechanical weed removal, because there was increased plant cover and this bolstered animal biodiversity.EFForTS plans to continue monitoring the experimental plots for four more years. "These results are encouraging but it is crucial to continue the experiment. Oil palm can take years to react so we need to check whether this positive trend will continue," says Darras. Future research will synthesize the long-term results of the experiment, take into account greenhouse gas emissions, and perform economic-ecological modelling to deliver clear recommendations for stakeholders.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 4, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191104112827.htm
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Crop competition as a weed control strategy
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A new study featured in the journal
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Researcher Michael Walsh of the University of Sydney explored the impact that crop density might have on the biomass and seed production of four weed species found in Australian wheat crops.When wheat was planted at the commercially recommended density of 120 plants per square meter, the biomass of rigid ryegrass, wild radish, ripgut brome and wild oat were reduced by 69, 73, 72 and 49 percent, respectively, compared to weeds grown in the absence of wheat. Weed seed production was reduced by 78, 78, 77 and 50 percent, respectively.When wheat was planted more densely with 400 plants per square meter, there were additional reductions in both weed biomass (19, 13, 20 and 39 percent) and in seed production (12, 13, 17 and 45 percent). Grain yields remained the same.Walsh also found that crop competition causes weeds to grow more upright and retain significantly more of their seeds in the upper crop canopy. "This modified growth pattern makes it possible for more weed seeds to be captured and destroyed as the wheat is harvested," he says.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 1, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191101124618.htm
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Helping hands from within: Live-in bacteria protect plants against infections
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Micro-organisms living inside plant roots team up to boost the plant's growth and tolerance to stress. An international research team led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Wageningen UR reports its discovery in today's issue of the scientific journal
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Certain species of 'resident' bacteria can protect plant roots against fungal infections. Researchers from the Netherlands (Wageningen, Leiden, Rotterdam), Brazil, Colombia and the United States made this discovery using metagenomics: a form of DNA-technology that analyses genes from an environment to reveal the previously hidden diversity of the local microbial community."It's without precedent that we were able to reconstruct the composition and functions of this community in plant roots based solely on DNA-sequencing," says the study's last author and research leader, Jos Raaijmakers from NIOO-KNAW."Bacteria are essential to the functioning of plants, animals and people," argues Raaijmakers. "Our main goal was to discover micro-organisms inside roots that are recruited by the plant when it's under attack from fungal pathogens. Our study represents a big step forward for developing more sustainable crop production systems, with fewer pesticides."So what exactly happens in plant roots when they're on the verge of being infected? The researchers found out that 'helping hands' inside the roots begin producing all kinds of useful substances. Chitinases, for example: enzymes that break down the cell walls of attacking fungal pathogens.This discovery allowed the researchers to develop tailor-made microscopic backup troops for plants, using "The micro-organisms living in the roots also turned out to have a wealth of hitherto unknown genetic properties," says Raaijmakers. New software, developed by researchers at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), facilitates the comparison of the DNA of thousands of species at once.Using this method, the researchers found more than 700 unknown gene clusters that produce unique substances. Only twelve had so far been recorded in worldwide databases. Raaijmakers: "We have discovered a real treasure trove of properties of which we do not even know the function yet. This is only the tip of the iceberg."The NIOO researcher stresses that these discoveries were only possible because of the study's multidisciplinary approach: "It included ecologists as well as microbiologists, molecular biologists, bio-informaticians and statisticians."The team's research is part of the BackToRoots-project, which received funding from the Dutch Research Council's AES Domain (Applied & Engineering Sciences). BackToRoots aims to enhance plant growth and productivity by exploring beneficial microbial communities, including ones found in wild ancestors of our present-day crops.With more than 300 staff members and students, the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) is one of the largest research institutes of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The institute specialises in water and land ecology. As of 2011, the institute is located in an innovative and sustainable research building in Wageningen, the Netherlands. NIOO has an impressive research history that stretches back 60 years and spans the entire country, and beyond.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 1, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191101124616.htm
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Harvesting genes to improve watermelons
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When many people think of watermelon, they likely think of
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Researchers have now taken a comprehensive look at the genomes of all seven species, creating a resource that could help plant breeders find wild watermelon genes that provide resistance to pests, diseases, drought and other hardships, and further improve fruit quality. Introducing these genes into cultivated watermelon could yield high-quality sweet watermelons that are able to grow in more diverse climates, which will be especially important as climate change increasingly challenges farmers."As humans domesticated watermelon over the past 4,000 years, they selected fruit that were red, sweet and less bitter," said Zhangjun Fei, a faculty member at Boyce Thompson Institute and co-leader of the international effort."Unfortunately, as people made watermelons sweeter and redder, the fruit lost some abilities to resist diseases and other types of stresses," said Fei, who is also an Adjunct Professor in Cornell University's School of Integrative Plant Science.As described in a paper published in Fei co-led the creation of the first watermelon reference genome using an East Asian cultivated variety called '97103,' which was published in 2013."That first reference genome was made using older short-read sequencing technologies," Fei said. "Using current long-read sequencing technologies, we were able to create a much higher quality genome that will be a much better reference for the watermelon community."The group then sequenced the genomes of 414 different watermelons representing all seven species. By comparing these genomes both to the new reference genome and to each other, the researchers were able to determine the evolutionary relationship of the different watermelon species."One major discovery from our analysis is that one wild species that is widely used in current breeding programs, C. amarus, is a sister species and not an ancestor as was widely believed," Fei said.Indeed, the researchers found that cultivated watermelon was domesticated by breeding out the bitterness and increasing sweetness, fruit size and flesh color. Modern varieties have been further improved in the past few hundred years by increasing sweetness, flavor and crispy texture. The researchers also uncovered regions of the watermelon genome that could be mined to continue improving fruit quality, such as by making them bigger, sweeter and crispier.In the past 20 to 30 years, plant breeders have crossed cultivated watermelon with the sister species C. amarus and two other wild relatives, C. mucusospermus and C. colocynthis, to make the dessert watermelon more resistant to nematode pests, drought, and diseases like Fusarium wilt and powdery mildew.These types of improvements using wild relatives is what excites Amnon Levi, a research geneticist and watermelon breeder at that U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina. Levi is a co-author of the paper and provided the genetic material for many of the watermelons used in the study."The sweet watermelon has a very narrow genetic base," says Levi. "But there is wide genetic diversity among the wild species, which gives them great potential to contain genes that provide them tolerance to pests and environmental stresses."Levi plans to work with BTI to discover some of these wild genes that could be used to improve the dessert watermelon, especially for disease resistance."Watermelon is susceptible to many tropical diseases and pests, whose ranges are expected to continue to expand along with climate change," says Levi. "We want to see if we can bring back some of these wild disease resistance genes that were lost during domestication."Other co-authors included researchers from the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.The study was supported in part by funds from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative (2015-51181-24285), and the US National Science Foundation (IOS-1339287 and IOS-1539831).In the same issue of Earlier this year, Fei, Levi and colleagues published a reference genome of the 'Charleston Gray' watermelon, the principle U.S. variety of
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
November 1, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191101081958.htm
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Rice yields plummet and arsenic rises in future climate-soil scenarios
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Rice is the largest global staple crop, consumed by more than half the world's population -- but new experiments from Stanford University suggest that with climate change, production in major rice-growing regions with endemic soil arsenic will undergo a dramatic decline and jeopardize critical food supplies.
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These experiments exploring rice production in future climate conditions show rice yields could drop about 40 percent by 2100 -- with potentially devastating consequences in parts of the world that rely on the crop as a basic food source. What's more, changes to soil processes due to increased temperatures will cause rice to contain twice as much toxic arsenic than the rice consumed today. The research was published Nov. 1 in "By the time we get to 2100, we're estimated to have approximately 10 billion people, so that would mean we have 5 billion people dependent on rice, and 2 billion who would not have access to the calories they would normally need," said co-author Scott Fendorf, the Terry Huffington Professor in Earth system science at Stanford University's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). "We have to be aware of these challenges that are coming so we can be ready to adapt."The researchers specifically looked at rice because it is grown in flooded paddies that help loosen the arsenic from the soil and make it especially sensitive to arsenic uptake. While many food crops today contain small amounts of arsenic, some growing regions are more susceptible than others. Future changes in soil due to higher temperatures combined with flooded conditions cause arsenic to be taken up by rice plants at higher levels -- and using irrigation water with naturally occurring high arsenic exacerbates the problem. While these factors will not affect all global commodities in the same way, they do extend to other flood-grown crops, like taro and lotus."I just didn't expect the magnitude of impact on rice yield we observed," said Fendorf, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "What I missed was how much the soil biogeochemistry would respond to increased temperature, how that would amplify plant-available arsenic, and then -- coupled with the temperature stress -- how that would really impact the plant."A naturally occurring, semi-metallic chemical, arsenic is found in most soils and sediments, but is generally in a form that doesn't get taken up by plants. Chronic exposure to arsenic leads to skin lesions, cancers, aggravation of lung disease and, ultimately, death. It is especially concerning in rice not only because of its global significance, but also because the low-allergen food is often introduced early to infants."I think this problem is also crucial for people that have young kids in our society," said lead author E. Marie Muehe, a former postdoctoral scholar at Stanford and now at the University of Tübingen, Germany. "Because infants are a lot smaller than we are, if they eat rice, that means that they take up more arsenic relative to their body weight."The researchers created future climate conditions in greenhouses based on estimates of a possible 5 degree Celsius temperature increase and twice as much atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2100, as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.While previous research examined the impacts of increasing temperature in the context of the global food crisis, this study was the first to account for soil conditions in combination with shifts in climate.For the experiments, the group grew a medium-grain rice variety in soil from the rice-growing region of California. The greenhouses were controlled for temperature, carbon dioxide concentrations and soil arsenic levels, which will be higher in the future due to its buildup in soils from irrigating crops with arsenic-contaminated water, a problem that is worsened by over-pumping groundwater."We don't often think about this, but soil is alive -- it's teeming with bacteria and a lot of different microorganisms," Fendorf said. "It turns out those microorganisms determine whether the arsenic stays partitioned onto the minerals and away from the plants or comes off the minerals into the water phase."The researchers found that with increased temperatures, microorganisms destabilized more of the soil's inherent arsenic, leading to greater amounts of the toxin in the soil water that is available for uptake by the rice. Once taken up, arsenic inhibits nutrient absorption and decreases plant growth and development, factors that contributed to the 40 percent decrease in yield the scientists observed.While the dramatic loss in production is a major cause for concern, the scientists are hopeful that this research will help producers find potential solutions for feeding the world."The good news is that given past advances in terms of the global community's ability to breed varieties that can adapt to new conditions, along with revisions to soil management, I'm optimistic we can get around the problems observed in our study," Fendorf said. "I'm also optimistic that as we continue to shine a light on the threats resulting from a 5 degree Celsius change, society will adopt practices to ensure we never reach that degree of warming."As next steps, Fendorf, co-author Tianmei Wang and Muehe hope to asses rice yields on a global scale by using remote sensing to pinpoint contaminated rice paddies in order to model future yields and arsenic contamination."This is most likely to be a problem where most rice is consumed, so we think about South and East Asia," said Wang, a PhD candidate in Earth system science. "Especially for people like my dad -- he consumes rice three times a day and he just cannot live without it."Fendorf is also a member of the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI). Researchers from the Bayreuth Center for Ecology and Environmental Research at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, are co-authors on the study.The research was funded by the Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Fellowship of the European Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 31, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191031123426.htm
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Non-GM produce earns 'halo effect' under new labeling laws
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Consumers were more willing to buy unlabeled produce after being shown food tagged as "genetically modified" in a new Cornell University study that comes two months before a new federal law, requiring genetically modified organism disclosure labels on food products, goes into effect.
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"We wanted to learn from consumers what will happen to conventional products when the labeling goes into effect and we start seeing 'GM' and 'non-GM' labeled produce at the market," said co-author Miguel Gómez, associate professor at Cornell's Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. "Will shoppers be willing to purchase a product when the new labels are introduced?"Consumer aversion toward genetically modified food has inspired mandatory labeling proposals and laws at the state and federal levels, according to the paper. On Jan. 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will begin implementing the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, which requires food marketers to disclose the use of GMOs in food and food products.In the study, the Cornell researchers recruited 1,300 consumers, who were shown GM, non-GM and unlabeled opportunities -- in random sequences -- to purchase apples, as well as other fruits and vegetables.The paper found that when an unlabeled apple was presented first, the initial consumer demand -- willingness to purchase -- was 65.2%. But if the unlabeled apple was presented after participants saw an apple with a GM label, the demand for the unlabeled apple jumped to 77.7%.If a consumer was presented first with an apple labeled "non-genetically modified," the shopper's preference for it was 67.2% -- statistically even with the shopper initial preference for an unlabeled apple. "In other words, the 'non-GM' label is not stigmatizing the unlabeled product," Gómez said."We were pretty surprised when we first saw this paper's results," said co-author Adeline Yeh, a Cornell doctoral student in applied economics. "Our original hypothesis was that having a non-GM label would have a stigmatizing effect on the [unlabeled] fresh product. The results contradicted our original hypothesis. Instead, we found that the GMO label had a halo effect on the unlabeled product."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 30, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191030170542.htm
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Sorghum grain yield could be doubled
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Plant scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), in their search for solutions to global food production challenges, have doubled the amount of grains that a sorghum plant can yield.
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Sorghum, one of the world's most important sources of food, animal feed, and biofuel, is considered a model crop for research because it has a high tolerance to drought, heat, and high-salt conditions. Increasing the grain yield has become even more important to plant breeders, farmers, and researchers as they try to address and overcome food security issues related to climate change, growing populations, and land and water shortages.Led by Doreen Ware, CSHL Adjunct Professor and research scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and USDA colleague Zhanguo Xin, Ph.D, the research team identified novel genetic variations that occurred in sorghum's MSD2 gene, increasing the grain yield 200 percent. MSD2 is part of a gene line that boosts flower fertility by lowering the amount of jasmonic acid, a hormone that controls the development of seeds and flowers."When this hormone is decreased, you have a release of development that does not normally occur," said Nicholas Gladman, a postdoctoral fellow in Ware's lab and first author on the study, recently published in The MSD2 is regulated by MSD1, a gene discovered by Ware's team last year. Manipulating either gene increases seed and flower production."Major cereal crops are very close to each other evolutionarily. A lot of the genes that they share have similar functions," said Yinping Jiao, a postdoctoral associate in the Ware Lab and an author on the study. "This gene that plays an important role controlling the sorghum yield may also help us improve the yield of other crops like maize or rice."Ware's lab uses this type of genetic research to understand how plants have changed over time."These genetic analyses actually give us the molecular mechanisms that provide more opportunities to engineer crops in the future," she said.The team is now looking to work with collaborators, such as the United States Department of Agriculture, to see if one of the genes -- MSD2 or MSD1 -- can be used to improve sorghum yield in large field trials.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 30, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191030132715.htm
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Using probiotics to protect honey bees against fatal disease
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Probiotics, beneficial microorganisms best known for promoting gut health in humans, are now being used by Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute scientists to save honey bee colonies from collapse. A new study published in the Nature journal
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"Probiotics aren't just for humans," said Gregor Reid, PhD, Professor at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and Endowed Chair in Human Microbiome and Probiotics at Lawson. "Our idea was that if you could use beneficial microbes to stimulate the immune response or attack the pathogens that are infecting the hives, then maybe we can help save the bees."Honey bees are an important part of the cultural and economic landscape in Canada and globally because of their role in food production both through pollination of crops and through honey production. However, the world's bee population is being threatened by the spread of viruses and bacteria that infect the hives.The team's previous work in a fruit-fly model suggested that the wide-use of pesticides reduces bees' immunity and their ability to fight back against these harmful pathogens.With that in mind, a group of researchers at Western and Lawson combined their expertise in probiotics and bee biology to supplement honey bee food with probiotics, in the form a BioPatty, in their experimental apiaries. The aim was to see what effect probiotics would have on honey bee health.During their experiment, the hives became inadvertently infected with American Foulbrood, a common hive disease produced by the bacteria P. larvae, which would typically cause the bees to die."Bee colonies are really interesting little microcosms of biology. There are lots of individuals bees, but they are all genetically related and they are living in a close confined space," said Graham Thompson, PhD, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Science at Western who studies the biology and social behaviour of bees. "They are all very susceptible to contagious disease and they are demographically disposed to outbreaks."What they found was that in the bee hives treated with probiotics, the pathogen load was reduced by 99 per cent, and the survival-rate of the bees increased significantly. When they examined the bees in the lab, they also found that there was increased immunity against the bacteria that causes American Foulbrood in the bees treated with the probiotics."The results from our study demonstrated that probiotic supplementation could increase the expression of a gene called Defensin-1 -- a key antimicrobial peptide shown to play a pivotal role in honey bee defense against P. larvae infection," said Schulich Medicine & Dentistry PhD Candidate Brendan Daisley who was the lead author on the paper. "Alongside these findings, we also observed an increase in pathogen clearance and overall survival of honey bee larvae."Another interesting observation was that the bees that were given the BioPatty, but no probiotic, were the most susceptible, even more so than bees that were given nothing at all. The research team says this suggests there may be a negative outcome to the common practise of supplementing bee colonies with extra food as it could stimulate the pathogens to proliferate."Long term we hope to add a viable, practical and available treatment alternative to chemicals and antibiotics that beekeepers can readily adopt into their bee-keeping habits to help prevent colony collapse," said Thompson.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 30, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191030132706.htm
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Bacterial arsenic efflux genes enabled plants to transport boron efficiently
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Stubby roots, brittle branches, poor fertility -- these are some of the symptoms which can occur in the case of boron deficiency in plants. Thanks to transport proteins called Nodulin26-like-intrinsic-proteins (NIPs), modern seed plants can efficiently take up and distribute this essential micronutrient. However, this ability was not always inherent to plants. An international collaboration of researchers has now uncovered that the enigmatic functional origin of NIPs lies within genetically encoded arsenic detoxification units of bacteria. After its horizontal gene transfer a protein, which is important for arsenic efflux and detoxification in bacteria, became incorporated into the pool of transport proteins of land plants and evolved to channel proteins which are essential for the transport logistics of the for higher plants important nutrients boron and silicon.
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The majority of essential micronutrients for plants -- such as copper, iron and zinc to name a few -- are metals. The two metalloids boron and silicon are also considered essential (boron) and highly beneficial (silicon) for seed plant development though most other organisms from bacteria to humans, including 'lower' plants, have probably no essential need for these two elements. Both micronutrients contribute to the proper differentiation, structural support and elasticity of cell walls in vascular plants and promote pathogen defence and general stress tolerance. Another shared property of these metalloids is that they are taken up and distributed within seed plants via Nodulin26-like-intrinsic channel proteins (NIPs). NIPs are highly conserved proteins and are unique to plants. NIPs belong to the channel protein superfamily of aquaporins which transport uncharged solutes such as water, hydrogen peroxide, glycerol, ammonia and metalloids in various organisms. However, until recently, the original transport selectivity and functional origin of NIPs were inscrutable.By combining intense sequence-, phylogenetic and genetic context analyses, an international collaboration of researchers was now able to resolve the functional trans-organismal beginnings of NIPs. Led by Dr. Gerd Patrick Bienert of the Emmy Noether research group "Metalloid Transport" from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben, the scientists revealed that NIPs originated in plants due to the horizontal gene transfer of a probable arsenic resistance operon-localised arsenous acid-transporting bacterial AqpN-aquaporin into the genome of a charophytic algae. Alike boron and silicon, arsenic is also a metalloid. The metalloid species boric acid, silicic acid and arsenous acid sterically resemble each other from a protein channel pathway point of view.The ancestral bacterial AqpN-aquaporins had been functionally uncharacterised so far. The researchers were able to identify NIPs with characteristics very similar to the ancestral bacterial proteins in archetype plants such as algae, moss and ferns. Interestingly, these ancestral NIPs as well as their bacterial progenitors were near to impermeable to water and silicon but transported arsenic and also boron. Utilising a mutational approach, the researchers showed that during the evolution of terrestrial plants, a shift in the functional selectivity of NIPs had occurred. The transport proteins, which had originally functioned as bacterial arsenic efflux channels, over time turned into the essential nutrient transporters found in our modern seed plants.Moreover, the results of the study also explain, why seed plants which have a high demand for boron or silicon, such as e.g. rice, often accumulate very high levels of arsenic when growing on arsenic-rich soils: The ancestral bacterial substrate selectivity, which is arsenic permeability, still resides in our present day crop plant NIPs and leads to an 'accidental' arsenic uptake and translocation when NIPs aim for boron or silicon transport regulation in an arsenic-rich environment."Without the horizontal gene transfer of bacterial arsenic detoxification channels, our modern-day crop plants would not be able to efficiently regulate the transport logistics of boron or silicon and our crop yields would probably not be nearly as high as they are," describes Dr. Bienert the importance of these findings. Despites this transport-ability, boron deficiency still causes losses in agricultural plant production. This is one of the reasons why the researchers within the "Metalloid Transport" group will continue investigating the mechanisms behind the uptake and distribution of boron in plants -- with the aim of breeding crops with an improved boron efficiency and contributing to an optimised boron fertiliser management in the field.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 30, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191030132656.htm
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Land restoration in Ethiopia pays off but climate change necessitates many strategies
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In the last decade, Ethiopia has invested more than US$1.2 billion annually in restoring landscapes in several regions of the country. But despite its big restoration initiatives, Africa's second-most populous country is still insufficiently tracking how projects have helped to recover and boost ecosystem services, a new study shows. Recent research led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) takes stock of Ethiopia's major restoration projects and investigates their impact on ecosystem services. Researchers say their work can help policymakers tailor future restoration actions to specific ecosystem needs.
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Pressured by population increases and climate change, Ethiopia's lands have experienced severe degradation. By some estimates, Ethiopia has the worst land degradation among sub-Saharan countries, which leads to about $4.3 billion in lost productivity per year. But restoration has been underway for decades, with most restoration projects focusing on reducing soil erosion and runoff, the study shows."Huge investment in land restoration in Ethiopia has provided a multitude of ecosystem service benefits," said Wuletawu Abera, a scientist at CIAT and the study's lead author. "Various land restoration practices and technologies provide various degrees of success, but they are site-specific. There is no-one-size-fits-all solution."Researchers looked at how specific restoration methods influenced ecosystem services. Conservation agriculture, soil and stone structures, and restricting areas for grazing and agriculture have dominated restoration efforts. Stone structures alongside biological interventions increased crop yields the most -- by as much as 170 percent -- while conservation agriculture did so by 18 percent. Separately, however, these methods did not have much impact, suggesting an integrated land management approach is needed to boost all ecosystem services.Starting with securing food for vulnerable communities in the 1970s, projects went on to rehabilitate natural resources on a large scale in the mid to late 2000s. Since 2008, the Ethiopian Strategic Investment Framework (ESIF) has supported sustainable landscape management, leading to extensive soil and water conservation, and water harvesting projects. Communities have also planted hundreds of millions of trees in the Ethiopian highlands.On average, the various land restoration practices have cut soil loss by a range of 45 to 80 percent, and runoff by 38 to 90 percent, while all methods have helped improve organic carbon stocks in the soils.Monitoring project benefits remains insufficient, the study shows. Of the 24 agro-ecological zones with ongoing restoration projects, only 11 have been studied, mostly at plot level, without looking at the benefits for ecosystem services at landscape scale. This prevents policymakers from tailoring interventions to specific sites.Restoring soils is also critical for addressing Ethiopia's water issues. Over the last 20 years, runoff at a national level has increased by about 80 mm/year on average, equally influenced by climate change and land transformation, another CIAT-led study found. Water availability in Ethiopia's southeast has been mainly affected by decreasing rainfall and changing climate, while a mix of higher climate variability, extensive land use and degradation have undermined water resources in its central and western highlands."If a landscape tends to increase runoff, then its ability to store water in soils and vegetation is lower," said Abera. "More runoff, less storage, and less evapotranspiration suggest the landscape is more degraded and vice versa. Looking at what happens with the hydrological cycles helps us understand land degradation and restoration impacts."One of the challenges is to design research that looks at how land restoration impacts on landscapes and ecosystems influence small farmers' livelihoods. We need to actively engage businesses and investors in land restoration, as it is a way towards economic and environmental rehabilitation."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 30, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191030110006.htm
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Impact of water droplets on leaves quickly triggers stress responses in plants
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In contrast to humans, plants cannot feel pain. However, so-called mechanical stimulation -- rain, wind and physical impact from humans and animals -- contributes to the activation of a plant's defence system at a biochemical level. This in turn triggers a stress hormone that, among other things, can lead to the strengthening of a plant's immune system.
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The new study confirms the results of previous research. However, this time the researchers looked at molecular changes on a much larger scale -- genome-wide -- and focused on the role and regulation of the plant hormone jasmonic acid.The researchers found that thousands of genes, hundreds of proteins and many growth hormones are affected within t just ten minutes following water hitting the leaf surface of a plant. They also discovered a never seen before regulatory network that affects how the plant's defence hormones are strengthened by mechanical stimulation."This type of stimulation can lead to a delay in the flowering of plants and stunted growth. However, we can now show that the plant also has an increased immune response to certain pathogens and that the plant's biochemical changes are measureable after a very short period of time," says Olivier Van Aken, biology researcher at Lund University and leader of the study.In experiments carried out in laboratory environments, the researchers used a common plant spray bottle set on a soft spray. The plants were showered once from a distance of 15 centimetres after which the researchers registered the molecular changes at the cellular level at several points in time after the treatment."Our results show that plants are very sensitive and do not need heavy rain to be affected and alerted at a biochemical level," says Olivier Van Aken.But why do plants react so strongly and quickly to drops of water? The research team says it may be a defence mechanism. When it rains heavily, water droplets that rebound from plants infected with bacteria, fungi and viruses can hit healthy plants."The sick leaves can act as a catapult and in turn spread smaller droplets with pathogens to plants several metres away. It is possible that the healthy plants close by want to protect themselves," says Olivier Van Aken.The research team says that mechanical stimulation plays a much more significant role than was previously believed, and that different kinds of physical impact can affect plants both positively and negatively depending on the plant's age and growing conditions. Which practical application could these new findings have then?"We are currently studying an old Japanese agricultural technique that is based on treading down grains during the growth phase to achieve more abundant crop production. I think there is a lot more to learn about how mechanical stimulation affects plants, knowledge which may have significant consequences for agriculture in the future," says Olivier Van Aken.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 29, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191029104754.htm
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Following in Darwin's footsteps: understanding the plant evolution of florist's gloxinia
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More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin's fascination with genetics and domestication catapulted the scientific world into new territory as scientists started to ask: How did a species evolve to be this way?
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In a study published in "The hallmark here is that, with early stages of domestication, we see increased phenotypic variation but an overall decrease in genetic variation. So it's a paradox -- and we've made it even more of a paradox because we're showing that all of this phenotypic variation came from a single founder population," said Tomas Hasing, lead author and graduate student in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciencesin the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.Florist's gloxinia, a species originally documented by Darwin himself, was introduced to England in the 18th century. Since then, plant breeders have cultivated hundreds of strains by intentionally selecting for desired traits. Within 200 years -- a mere blink of an evolutionary eye -- florist's gloxinia reached the same levels of phenotypic variation as snapdragons, Antirrhinum spp. Snapdragons, however, have been cultivated for 2,000 years."Florist's gloxinia presents a clear domestication syndrome and rich phenotypic diversity. We already knew that it had a small, simple genome, but the complexity of its origin was a mystery that we needed to solve before we started to use it as a model," said Aureliano Bombarely, a former assistant professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. In 2014, he proposed the use of this species as a model to study genomic evolution during domestication.To account for the plant's major aesthetic changes in such a short period of time, the team expected florist's gloxinia to have been cross-bred with other species at some point during its history. They used reduced representation sequencing of the genome to trace the origins of the plant back to its native home of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but found no evidence of hybridization, indicating that most varieties of florist's gloxinia come from a single founder population just outside of the city.The discovery of the single founder population explains why florist's gloxinia has such low genetic variation -- cultivating plants in captivity allows breeders to select for different physical traits like color, shape, or size and purge unwanted genetic variation from a population. When beneficial mutations arise, breeders can increase a mutation's frequency by breeding it into the population. Ultimately, the accumulation of small changes from mutations led to the plant's high levels of phenotypic diversity."Most studies conducted on domesticated plants are focused on food crops, but studying how ornamental crops are domesticated expands our understanding of plant genetics and patterns. This ultimately benefits agriculture as a whole," said David Haak, assistant professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and an affiliated member of the Global Change Center, housed within the Fralin Life Sciences Institute.The commercial cultivation of flowers, known as floriculture, was recently named the ninth highest-grossing sector of Virginia's top 20 agricultural products by generating $146 million annually. An increased understanding of plant genetics will allow floriculturists to grow and harvest flowers more efficiently and generate more income.With the new-found discovery of this alternate evolutionary route to plant domestication, Bombarely, Haak, and their research teams are looking forward to continuing their work on plant genomics and studying its implications for agriculture.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 29, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191029080746.htm
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Climate change could drive British crop farming north and west
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Unchecked climate change could drive Britain's crop growing north and west, leaving the east and south east unable to support crop growing, new research suggests.
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At present, most of Great Britain's arable (crop growing) farming is in the east and south east, with livestock pasture and other uses more common further north and west.The new study, led by the University of Exeter, looks at the effects of the 5C warming predicted by 2100 if the world's carbon emissions continue to rise at the current rate (a scenario known as RCP 8.5).As well as being significantly warmer, Britain would have a predicted 140mm less rainfall per growing season (April to September) with more acute drying than this in the south east."Britain is relatively cool and damp, so a warmer and drier growing season is generally expected to increase arable production," said Dr Paul Ritchie, of the University of Exeter."However, our research suggests that, by 2100, unmitigated climate change would see a decline in arable farming in the east and south east."Crops could still be grown with the aid of irrigation, but this would involve either storing large quantities of winter rainfall or transporting water from wetter parts of the country."The amount of water required would be vast, representing a major challenge for UK agriculture."Part of the impact of warmer, drier conditions could be offset by higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because this allows plants to use water more efficiently."Our findings suggest that unmitigated climate change would change the way we use our land in Britain," said Professor Tim Lenton, director of Exeter's Global Systems Institute."In this scenario summer droughts mean that without significant irrigation, large regions of the east and south east of England would become less productive land. Meanwhile livestock farmers further west and north may be able to switch to more profitable arable farming."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 28, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191028164358.htm
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Nutritious foods have lower environmental impact than unhealthy foods
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Widespread adaptation of healthier diets would markedly reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and food production, according to new research from the University of Minnesota and Oxford University.
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For the first time, researchers have tied the health impacts of foods to their overall environmental impact. The report, published Monday in the journal "The foods making up our diets have a large impact on both ourselves and our environment. This study shows that eating healthier also means eating more sustainably," said David Tilman, professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences."Normally, if a food product is good for one aspect of a person's health, it's better for other health outcomes, as well. The same holds for environmental outcomes."The researchers explored how consuming 15 different food groups is, on average, associated with five different health outcomes and five aspects of environmental degradation.Their results show that:Researchers concluded that transitioning diets toward greater consumption of healthier foods would also improve environmental sustainability.The study underscores recent recommendations from the United Nations and others about the environmental impacts of human diets. An August report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommended individuals eat more plant-based foods as a way to adapt to and limit worsening climate change."This study shows that replacing red meat with more nutritious options can greatly improve health and the environment," said Jason Hill, bioproducts and biosystems engineering professor at the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences."It's important that all of us think about the health impacts of the foods we eat. We now know that making our nutrition a priority will pay dividends for the Earth, as well."Financial support for the study came from the University of Minnesota Grand Challenges Research Initiative, the Wellcome Trust, Balzan Award Prize, the U.S. Department of Agriculture , and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 25, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191025075842.htm
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Game changer: New chemical keeps plants plump
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A UC Riverside-led team has created a chemical to help plants hold onto water, which could stem the tide of massive annual crop losses from drought and help farmers grow food despite a changing climate.
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"Drought is the No. 1 cause, closely tied with flooding, of annual crop failures worldwide," said Sean Cutler, a plant cell biology professor at UC Riverside, who led the research. "This chemical is an exciting new tool that could help farmers better manage crop performance when water levels are low."Details of the team's work on the newer, more effective anti-water-loss chemical is described in a paper published today in "The name is also a shoutout to my 10-year-old at home," Cutler said.An earlier version of OP developed by Cutler's team in 2013, called Quinabactin, was the first of its kind. It mimics abscisic acid, or ABA, the natural hormone produced by plants in response to drought stress. ABA slows a plant's growth, so it doesn't consume more water than is available and doesn't wilt."Scientists have known for a long time that spraying plants with ABA can improve their drought tolerance," Cutler said. "However, it is too unstable and expensive to be useful to most farmers."Quinabactin seemed to be a viable substitute for the natural hormone ABA, and companies have used it as the basis of much additional research, filing more than a dozen patents based on it. However, Quinabactin did not work well for some important plants, such as wheat, the world's most widely grown staple crop.When ABA binds to a hormone receptor molecule in a plant cell, it forms two tight bonds, like hands grabbing onto handles. Quinabactin only grabs onto one of these handles.Cutler, along with other collaborators from UCR and the Medical College of Wisconsin, searched millions of different hormone-mimicking molecules that would grab onto both handles. This searching, combined with some chemical engineering, resulted in OP.OP grabs both handles and is 10-times stronger than ABA, which makes it a "super hormone." And it works fast. Within hours, Cutler's team found a measurable improvement in the amount of water plants released.Because OP works so quickly, it could give growers more flexibility around how they deal with drought."One thing we can do that plants can't is predict the near future with reasonable accuracy," Cutler said. "Two weeks out, if we think there's a reasonable chance of drought, we have enough time to make decisions -- like applying OP -- that can improve crop yields."Initial funding for this project was provided by Syngenta, an agrochemical company, and the National Science Foundation.Cutler's team is now trying to "nerf" their discovery."That's gamer speak for when a weapon's power is reduced," Cutler said.Whereas OP slows growth, the team now wants to find a molecule that will accelerate it. Such a molecule could be useful in controlled environments and indoor greenhouses where rainfall isn't as big a factor."There's times when you want to speed up growth and times when you want to slow it down," Cutler said. "Our research is all about managing both of those needs."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 25, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191025075848.htm
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What's driving tropical deforestation? Scientists map 45 years of satellite images
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Tropical forests are under increasing pressure from human activity such as agriculture. However, in order to put effective conservation measures in place, local decision-makers must be able to precisely identify which areas of forest are most vulnerable.
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A new analysis method spearheaded by researchers from the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the University of Rennes-2 could hold the key.The method focuses on the concept of forest vulnerability, meaning a forest's exposure to threats and its capacity to recover from them. Previously this concept of vulnerability, as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was only used in relation to the effects of climate change on forests.The researchers are pioneering the use of the concept of forest vulnerability in terms of human activity as well as integrating images of forest cover and changes in land use into one detailed, holistic analysis. This combined use of data marks a paradigm shift in the way forest vulnerability is calculated.The method was tested for the first time in the Di Linh district of Vietnam's Central Highlands, where the cultivation of cash crops such as coffee has transformed forestlands into areas vulnerable to drought, soil erosion and the outbreak of fires.The researchers combined mosaic mapping of current land use with 45 years of Sentinel-2 and Landsat satellite images. Together this data provided a detailed picture of how the territory had changed over time and enabled the precise identification of the most vulnerable areas."We show that the most vulnerable areas are composed of degraded forests, a high fragmentation of forest habitat that increases the sensitivity of a forest to fires, and the presence of coffee growing by extension," said Clément Bourgoin, a CIAT scientist and Ph.D. student at CIRAD who helped develop the method. "These maps make it possible to target areas where we must limit crop expansion and increase the response capacity of forests by limiting fragmentation."The results of the study, published in the The method was tested in the region as part of a REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) pilot project that aims to help decisions makers such as land use planners and local forest rangers in the monitoring of forests. The researchers hope the mapping will lead to more regular monitoring of forest vulnerability through systems such as Terra-i, which can detect deforestation in near real-time.The team has applied a similar method to a former deforestation front in Paragominas in the Brazilian state of Para, and expect to publish a study with their findings next year.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 24, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024154108.htm
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US corn yields get boost from a global warming 'hole'
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The global average temperature has increased 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100 years. In contrast, the Corn Belt of the U.S., one of the most agriculturally productive regions of the world, has experienced a decrease in temperatures in the summer during the growing season. Known as the "U.S. warming hole," this anomalous cooling phenomenon, which occurred in tandem with increasing rainfall, was responsible for boosting corn yields by 5 to 10 percent per year, according to a Dartmouth-led study published in
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Most of the increases in corn yield over the 20th century have resulted from advancements in crop genetics, increased fertilizer application and improved agricultural practices. "If however, the U.S. warming hole had not existed, corn yields for the average county in the central U.S. would have been approximately 10 percent lower per year," explained lead author Trevor F. Partridge, a graduate student in the department of earth sciences at Dartmouth. "This benefit of a 10 percent higher corn yield translates to roughly $1.5 billion per year in additional value. Our results underscore how the central U.S. has been relatively sheltered from the impacts of climate change," he added. ($1.5 billion calculation uses historical market value data from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and U.S. corn production data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture).To examine the relationship between corn yields and climate, the researchers used over 70 years of historical climate and yield data, machine learning algorithms, and biophysical crop models to simulate corn yields under multiple climate scenarios. The scenarios included historical climate with the warming hole, where temperatures dropped in the late-1950s and rainfall increased, and a counterfactual climate scenario where temperature and rainfall changes associated with the warming hole were removed.The researchers found that cooler temperatures associated with the warming hole were responsible for most of the increased U.S. corn yield -- 62 percent of the simulated yield increase, whereas, summer precipitation was responsible for the remaining 38 percent of the simulated yield increase. The lower temperatures allowed corn to mature slower. Extended maturation time allows for more grain to accumulate on a corn plant, increasing yields. The cooler temperatures and increased rainfall associated with the warming hole meant that corn was less likely to experience heat and drought stress during the growing cycle, also increasing yields.The findings demonstrated that North Dakota and South Dakota, and western Minnesota benefited most from the U.S. warming hole, as counties in these states had yield differences of up to 24 percent based on the study's simulations. For Greene County, Illinois, if the warming hole did not exist, corn yield would have decreased by an average of 26 percent, and maximum temperatures would have increased by an average of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.The authors emphasize that the U.S. warming hole is an anomaly, one of two places in the world that has not warmed significantly, and that the last five years (2014-2018) have, globally averaged, been the hottest years on record. These findings should not be misinterpreted as evidence against the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans. Climate projections suggest that by the mid-21st century, temperatures in the central U.S. will increase by up to 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit, and summer precipitation may decrease by approximately 10 percent."The boost in yield that the Corn Belt has enjoyed from the effects of the warming hole is likely to diminish in the future. While this region has been an anomaly for the past half century, we need to be prepared for the challenges associated with climate change," said co-author Jonathan Winter, an assistant professor of geography and principal investigator of the Applied Hydroclimatology Group at Dartmouth.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 24, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024154106.htm
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Deformed wing virus genetic diversity in US honey bees complicates search for remedies
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Deformed Wing Virus (DWV), one of the leading causes of honey bee colony losses, is much more genetically diverse in the United States than previously thought, according to a study published by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in
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The diverse lineages of this virus are all equally bad for bees, and they make it more complicated to develop antiviral therapeutics, which could be the basis for developing a vaccine for the virus.The high level of genetic diversity was found among the virus population within individual honey bees as well as within bee colonies. About nine percent of the nucleotides in DWV's RNA have polymorphic variants (places in the genetic sequence with natural alternatives) that are present at numbers higher than half of one percent of the virus population. This corresponds to 100 million to 1 billion virus copies for any single divergent genetic position in an infected individual bee."We found the genetic makeup of DWV in the United States is showing marked expansion in diversity after going through a strong bottleneck event, probably the arrival in the United States of the Varroa mite in the 1980s. Varroa seems to cause a dramatic loss of DWV genetic diversity in honey bees, because transmission by the mites favors a few more virulent strains," said virologist Eugene Ryabov, an International Fellow with the ARS Bee Research Laboratory, who led the study. ARS researchers Jay Evans and Judy Chen also worked on this study."Differences in the genetic sequence of virus highlight the importance of analyzing DWV in different locations in the United States and in other countries so we will be able to track how the virus evolves," Ryabov said.This study employed a new reverse-genetics system for the first time that makes it possible to assess the virulence of United States DWV populations. This required making a series of cloned DNA copies of DWV RNA variants. DWV naturally has only RNA which allows more copies of each variant to be made. By infecting honey bees with these cloned DWV variants individually or in combinations under laboratory conditions, the researchers can track which variants are virulent.The discovery of these high levels of genetic diversity indicates the job of developing new treatments or a vaccine targeting DWV is going to be much harder than scientists previously thought.With a divergent virus population such as in the United States DWV, there are likely to be variants already present in the population with the potential to not be affected by any genetic sequence-specific treatments. What was a minor fraction of the virus population could then quickly become predominant once the targeted variants are eliminated."For now, the best thing that beekeepers can do to cut the amount of damage from DWV is to limit virus levels by treating for and reducing exposure to Varroa mites, which spread the virus," Ryabov said.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 24, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024115018.htm
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A win-win for forests and small-holder dairy farming in East Africa
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The native Napier grass could hold the key to improving diets, boosting farming yields and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in East Africa.
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Growing and using Napier as a nutrient rich animal fodder on the farm, could also reduce pressure on forests, according to new research.Intensive farming -- increasing yields by using more fertilisers or nutrient-rich animal fodder -- is often assumed to come at the cost of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.A new study, by researchers at Lancaster and Wageningen Universities and the Centre for International Forestry Research in Kenya, suggests that by using Napier grass it is possible to intensify small-scale dairy farming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.The study, 'Intensification of dairy production can increase the GHG mitigation potential of the land use sector in East Africa', modelled the impact on greenhouse gas emissions and efficiency of three scenarios for feeding nutrient-rich diets to dairy cows in Kenya.Unlike previous studies, the research factored in the impact of cattle's diets on land use and forests, as well as measuring the emissions involved in producing the fodder and how diet alters the amount of methane cows emit.Currently there are 2 million small-holder dairy farmers in Kenya -- defined in the study as farms with ten cows or fewer. They tend to feed their livestock on a mixture of wild grasses grown on local grassland, and through forest grazing -- letting their cows graze in commonly owned forests. This long-established practice reduces a forest's ability to act as a carbon sink by removing vegetation and slows the speed at which forests regenerate after being cleared.The three scenarios involved feeding cows on either silage made from maize grown locally or on a cultivated African Napier grass grown on existing grassland, or on a mixture of the two.All three diets included small amounts of concentrated feed imported into the farms to feed livestock during the dry season. Maize yield per hectare was increased by adding fertiliser. Planting the perennial Napier grass on native grasslands causes less soil disturbance and emissions than planting maize, and is only fertilised with manures.The researchers found all three nutrient-rich diets increased milk production per cow by between 44% and 51%. While the Napier and silage combination reduced greenhouse gas emissions slightly per unit of milk, researchers found that only the Napier grass diet reduced overall emissions, by 2.5%, dramatically reducing emissions per kg of milk produced."The impact of dairy farming on the environment is a very hot topic globally at the moment," said Professor Mariana Rufino, from the Lancaster Environment Centre, the principal investigator on the study, which was published in "Increasing milk production really matters in Africa because even a small amount of milk can make a huge difference to a young child in terms of brain development, micronutrients and growth, particularly in the under-fives."Dairy production also empowers women and improves access to medical services and education because it provides a constant income. Milk is produced most of the year, while income from crops comes in seasonally."What our study shows is that it is more efficient to get cows out of the forest and to give them richer feed on the farm."Stopping forest grazing cuts emissions, and a richer diet reduces the amount of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- emitted by cows. But producing richer feed increases emissions."If you plough up native grassland to plant maize you release carbon, and producing and applying fertiliser involves carbon emissions," Professor Rufino explains.Napier grass produces a richer biomass per hectare than maize, with less impact on carbon emissions."Our study shows that there can be win-win solutions for both forest and agriculture development objectives," said Professor Martin Herold from Wageningen University, co-author on the study. He emphasizes the key innovation of the study was the data-driven approach combining field and farm surveys with satellite remote sensing and simulation model to assess the different scenarios linking the forest and livestock sector."Intensification of the current Kenyan dairy sector, if done properly, can reduce emissions from the forest sector and so overall emissions. We believe this has implications for small dairy farms all over East Africa since both food security and enhancing forests are high on national policy agendas."But this will only work if agricultural policy and forestry policy are aligned. And it won't reduce carbon emissions if the dairy sector expands overall, or if it moves away from small farms to industrial scale production."Professor Rufino said: "Currently the way the dairy sector's greenhouse gas emissions are measured only include what is used on the farm. This study shows the importance of including all the emissions involved, whether from land use changes around the farm or from feed production."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 24, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024105831.htm
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The pectin is protectin': Study uncovers a plant barrier against toxic aluminum
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Aluminum toxicity has long been known to damage plant cells and inhibit the growth of plants. Aluminum is widely found in soils that are too acidic, and as human activities have increased soil acidity across the globe, aluminum toxicity has become a leading cause of low crop yield worldwide. While the effect of aluminum on plants is widely known, precisely how aluminum enters plant cells and causes harm is not well understood. In a new study published in
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The study focused on Oryza sativa, a species of rice widely grown in Asiatic countries. The group took advantage of a mutant strain of the rice called star1 (Sensitive To Aluminum Rhizotoxicity 1). As its name suggests, the mutant is highly sensitive to the toxic effects of aluminum, and its root tips grow very poorly when aluminum is in the soil. The mutant strain allowed the researchers to piece apart how rice plant cells respond, at the molecular level, to aluminum."Earlier work suggested that the cell wall somehow plays a mechanistic role in aluminum susceptibility, including a possible role by pectin," says Hiroaki Iwai, lead author of the study. "We focused on pectin because it is a major polysaccharide component of the cell wall, and because prior evidence suggests that the sensitivity of star1 to aluminum might be related to a pectin deficiency."To confirm the suggestive evidence from other studies, the researchers measured pectin at the growing tips of the plant's roots, the site where aluminum is thought to make its way into the plant. Compared with the wild strain rice, the star1 mutant had notably lower levels of pectin. This seems to affect the accumulation of aluminum in the root tip: when root tips were soaked in a solution of aluminum, only the tips from star1 plants had taken up appreciable levels of aluminum. The wild form of the rice plant was apparently protected from aluminum, with very little of the element entering the plant."Our study suggests that the distribution of pectin in the root tip, particularly in the root border cells, plays a significant role in conferring aluminum tolerance," corresponding author Jun Furukawa concludes. "We believe that the pectin found in cell walls plays an outsized role in determining whether aluminum can penetrate into cells at the root tip. Pectin thus appears to serve as a major protective barrier against aluminum."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 24, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191024075015.htm
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Fungi could reduce reliance on fertilizers
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Introducing fungi to wheat boosted their uptake of key nutrients and could lead to new, 'climate smart' varieties of crops, according to a new study.
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Researchers at the University of Leeds have demonstrated a partnership between wheat and soil fungi that could be utilised to develop new food crops and farming systems which are less reliant on fertilisers, reducing their contribution to the escalating climate crisis.It is the first time the fungi, which form partnerships with plant roots, have been shown to provide significant amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen to a cereal crop. The fungi continued to provide nutrients under higher levels of carbon dioxide (COThe results were published today in the journal Lead researcher Professor Katie Field, from the University of Leeds' School of Biology and Global Food and Environment Institute, said: "Fungi could be a valuable new tool to help ensure future food security in the face of the climate and ecological crises."These fungi are not a silver bullet for improving productivity of food crops, but they have the potential to help reduce our current overreliance on agricultural fertilisers."Agriculture is a major contributor to global carbon emissions, partly due to significant inputs such as fertilisers. Whilst meat production contributes far more to global warming than growing crops, reducing the use of fertilisers can help lower agriculture's overall contribution to climate change.Most plants form partnerships with fungi in their root systems, known as arbuscular mycorrhizas, which enable them to draw nutrients from the soil more efficiently. In exchange, the plants provide carbohydrates to the fungi as a form of payment, known as a symbiosis.Plants can give 10-20% of the carbon they draw from the air to their fungal partners, in exchange for up to 80% of their required phosphorus intake. These fungi can also help plants increase their growth, nitrogen levels, water uptake, and defend the plant against pests and disease.But over the last 10,000 years, crop plants have been domesticated through intensive breeding, which has inadvertently stopped some varieties from having such close relationships with beneficial fungi.Across the globe, wheat is a staple crop for billions, and wheat farming uses more land than any other food crop (218 million hectares in 2017). Despite increasing the application of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilisers to boost yields, the amount of wheat that can be produced from a given area has reached a plateau in recent years.Whilst some varieties of the wheat grown by farmers form these partnerships with beneficial fungi, many do not. The Leeds researchers therefore suggest there is potential to develop new varieties of wheat that are less dependent on fertilisers.Co-author Dr Tom Thirkell, from the University of Leeds' School of Biology, said: "For thousands of years, farmers have been breeding crops to increase productivity and disease resistance, but this has mainly been based on what can be seen above ground."We are starting to realise that some of the crops we have domesticated lack these important connections with fungi in the soil. Our results suggest there is real potential to breed new crop varieties which regain this lost relationship with beneficial fungi, and improve the sustainability of future food production systems."Scientists allowed the fungi to colonise the roots of three different varieties of wheat in the laboratory and grew them in one of two chambers -- either mimicking current climatic conditions or those projected for 2100, when COBy chemically tagging phosphorus and nitrogen in the soil and COAs expected, the three varieties of wheat underwent different levels of exchange with the fungi, with some varieties gaining much more from the relationship than others for a similar carbohydrate 'cost'.In particular, the Skyfall variety of wheat took up far more phosphorus from the fungi compared to the other two varieties, acquiring 570 times more than the Avalon variety and 225 times more than Cadenza.There was no difference in phosphorus or nitrogen exchange from the fungi to the wheat at the higher COThe researchers suggest it could be possible to breed new varieties of wheat which are more accommodating to a fungal partnership. This could allow farmers to use less fertilisers, as it may allow the wheat to get more of its required nutrients through the fungi.There is ongoing discussion about whether fungi are a net positive or negative to the growth of cereal crops, as some evidence suggests fungi can act as parasites to their plant hosts.It has previously been predicted that higher COThe researchers recommend that field-scale experiments are now needed to understand whether the fungi's beneficial effects on wheat demonstrated in this study are replicated in a farm setting.This study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 23, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191023104608.htm
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Strategies of a honey bee virus
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The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus is a pathogen that affects honey bees and has been linked to Colony Collapse Disorder, a key factor in decimating the bee population. Researchers have now analyzed in detail how the virus hijacks the cellular protein production machinery and misuses it for its own purposes. The research, published in
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Bees are important pollinators of agricultural crops and wild plants and provide valuable services for ecology and economy. In the past decades, beekeepers worldwide have reported massive losses of their colonies, in large due to a phenomenon termed Colony Collapse Disorder, where worker bees mysteriously disappear from apparently healthy colonies. There is a close correlation between affected colonies and the presence of the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, suggesting that the virus plays a significant role in causing the syndrome. Israel S. Fernández, Joachim Frank and their colleagues at Columbia University in New York, have now analyzed the virus' course of action in unprecedented detail.The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus is an RNA virus that captures the host protein production machinery using a structured RNA sequence called IRES. Every cell has a system to manufacture proteins based on the information coded in its mRNA molecules. This very complex machinery is constructed step by step: First, the mRNA recruits the ribosomal small subunit bound to a number of initiation factors and a specific initiator tRNA carries the first protein building block. After subsequent conformational re-arrangements the production line is completed by the recruitment of the large subunit of the ribosome.Previous work from Fernández, Frank and other research groups have revealed how viruses related to Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus hoax the cells' ribosomes into producing viral proteins, employing the IRES sequences characteristic of this family of viruses. In brief, the virus' trick is to by-pass the intricate initiation step of the cells' canonical protein production process hijacking the ribosomes without initiation factors or tRNA, manipulating their structural arrangement to produce viral proteins making use of the IRES sequences. In the current study, Fernández and Frank used sophisticated electron microscopy methods to take a closer look at the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus IRES itself. They precisely determined how the viral IRES forms a complex with the ribosomes and how it impacts on their structure. They showed that the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus IRES is particularly efficient in capturing the cells' protein production machinery, as the complex it builds with the small ribosomal subunit is especially stable.Ongoing research by other groups explores the possibility of fighting Colony Collapse Disorder by feeding bees RNA molecules that interfere with the RNA of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. The detailed analysis of the virus' protein production strategy presented by Fernández and Frank advances this approach by allowing for a better structure-based design of the interfering molecules.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 23, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191023075145.htm
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Mapping millet genetics
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In the semi-arid tropics of Asia and Africa, conditions can be difficult for crops. Plants need to have short growing seasons, survive on poor soils and tolerate environmental stresses.
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Enter, the millets.Close to 97% of millets grown worldwide are produced in developing countries. Millets are a diverse group of cereal crops. Importantly, they generally have high nutritional content."However, millets have been largely overlooked by modern genetics research," says Matthew Johnson, a researcher at the University of Georgia. In a new study, Johnson, along with colleagues in India, have generated some of the first genetic resources for three different varieties of millets.As genetic resources are created for less-studied crops, researchers can better leverage the genetic diversity within the crop family. This can lead to the development of new varieties of crops. "Our results will give researchers tools to develop better millet varieties for farmers," says Johnson.Most farmers who grow millets are smallholders (farming less than 5 acres). Millets are crucial for their livelihood. That's because they can grow on marginal lands and need less water than most crops."Millets also grow much quicker than most other major crops," says Johnson. That's important because farmers can plant millets if weather or natural disasters cause initial plantings to fail. "So, with millets, the farmers can at least get some harvest," he says.Johnson's team sequenced and analyzed DNA from three species of millets -- kodo, little and proso. "These are three crops that have had relatively few resources developed for them," Johnson explains.The plant source materials were obtained from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India. The researchers' goal was to better understand the genetic diversity within and between each variety of millet. "Understanding this diversity is an important step in developing better varieties of the crop," says Johnson.They uncovered tiny differences in the DNA sequences of the various plants. These genetic differences may ultimately be connected to characteristics, such as drought tolerance and growth rate."Genetics and field testing go hand-in-hand," says Johnson. Growing different kinds of millets can provide information about yield and flowering time, among other characteristics. "We need to pair these results with knowledge of the genetic relatedness of the millet plants," he says.By collating field results and genetic data, researchers identify desired traits and develop improved varieties. "We can continue improving these varieties year after year," says Johnson.An important part of breeding desirable varieties of a crop is understanding how existing ones are related to each other. "We were able to find evidence that the previous understanding of how the millet varieties are related to each other didn't always reflect their genetics," Johnson explains.The existing classifications were done based on physical characteristics. But it turns out those may not be accurate reflections of close genetic relationships."Think of it as trying to classify genetic relationships among humans by hair color," he says. "Hair color is genetically controlled. Everyone with blonde hair, for example, has some genetic relatedness.""But there is so much more than just hair color that determines who we are related to genetically," says Johnson. "Sometimes siblings can have a different hair color. However, they will be more closely related to each other than to a stranger who happens to have the same hair color."Uncovering the underlying genetics, as in this study, can help plant breeders develop millet varieties with desired physical characteristics. "Millets are a great crop," says Johnson. "I believe they can diversify our diet and contribute to food sources and security as our climate continues to change."This research was supported in part by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and the University of Georgia.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 22, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191022174418.htm
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New portable DNA sequencer quickly and accurately diagnoses wheat viruses
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Blasts cause significant loses in wheat crops. Recently Bangladesh was devastated by an invasion of South American races of wheat blast fungus, which occurred for the first time in the country in 2016. The disease spread to an estimated 15,000 hectares (16% of cultivated wheat area in the country) and resulted in yield losses as high as 100%.
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Diagnosis of crop disease is crucial but traditional methods rely on the expertise of pathologists, who in turn rely on the physical appearance of disease symptoms, which can be similar to damage caused by other factors, such as nutrient deficiencies or environmental elements. Pathologists also experience difficulty detecting coinfections and pathogens that do not infect aerial parts of the plant.Furthermore, there is no existing method for rapidly identifying unknown pathogens during an outbreak, as was made clear during the wheat blast fungus outbreak in Bangladesh.A group of scientists in Kansas have developed a new technology that makes it possible to rapidly identify viruses in wheat fields with a significantly higher accuracy. They collected four wheat samples from western Kansas and used a new harmonica-sized DNA sequencer and a computer program to quickly detect three different viruses in the samples. Furthermore, their results suggested that the samples contained a new virus strain.These scientists, based at the USDA-ARS and Kansas State University, are now working on improving the technique so that it can be used in field applications. Their research, described in "Wheat Virus Identification Within Infected Tissue Using Nanopore Sequencing Technology" published in the September issue of
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 22, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191022174414.htm
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Scientists enhance color and texture of cultured meat
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A team of Tufts University-led researchers exploring the development of cultured meat found that the addition of the iron-carrying protein myoglobin improves the growth, texture and color of bovine muscle grown from cells in culture. This development is a step toward the ultimate goal of growing meat from livestock animal cells for human consumption.
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The researchers found that myoglobin increased the proliferation and metabolic activity of bovine muscle satellite cells. Addition of either myoglobin or hemoglobin also led to a change of color more comparable to beef. The results, published today in FOODS, indicate potential benefits of adding heme proteins to cell media to improve the color and texture of cell-grown meat."Taste, color, and texture will be critical to consumer acceptance of cultured meat," said David Kaplan, Stern Family Professor of Engineering at the Tufts University School of Engineering and corresponding author of the study. "If our goal is to make something similar to a steak, we need to find the right conditions for cells to grow that replicate the formation of natural muscle. The addition of myoglobin looks to be one more important addition to the recipe that brings us closer to that goal," added Kaplan, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a program faculty member at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts.The rationale for developing cultured meat (also referred to as 'lab-grown meat', 'cellular agriculture' or 'cell-based meat') is the potential to reduce the amount of resources required in meat production, as well as significantly shrink its environmental footprint relative to animal farming. Animal farming has been associated with greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotic resistance problems, animal welfare concerns, and land use issues, such as the clearing of the Amazon rainforests. The ability to grow cultured meat in a bioreactor, as in tissue engineering, could potentially alleviate these issues. However, much remains to be done to grow the cells in a way that replicates the texture, color and flavor of naturally derived meat.Plant-based meat substitutes like the Impossible Burger have incorporated heme proteins from soy, which make the product more meat-like in appearance and taste. The Tufts-led research team hypothesized that adding heme proteins to meat cell culture could not only have a similar effect but also could improve the growth of muscle cells which require the heme proteins to thrive.Myoglobin is a natural component of muscle, and hemoglobin is found in blood. As heme proteins, both carry iron atoms that are responsible for the natural bloody, slightly 'metallic' taste of beef. The researchers found that adding hemoglobin or myoglobin changes the color of the bioartificial muscle to a reddish-brown meat-like hue. Myoglobin, however, was much better for promoting cell proliferation and differentiation of the BSCs to mature muscle cells, and better at helping the cells form fibers and adding a rich meat-like color."We knew that myoglobin has an important role to play in muscle growth, as it is one of the most abundant proteins in muscle cells" said first author of the study Robin Simsa, an industrial Ph.D. student from Europe who conducted the studies during his fellowship stay at the Tufts University School of Engineering. "It's possible that myoglobin is bringing oxygen to the cell's mitochondria, boosting their energy and helping them to proliferate. More than just an ingredient for color, iron content and potentially flavor, myoglobin could also be an important element in the scaled-up production of cell-based meat to increase cell yield."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 22, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191022112156.htm
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Are humans changing animal genetic diversity worldwide?
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Human population density and land use is causing changes in animal genetic diversity, according to researchers at McGill University.
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The findings reported in the journal Because species depend on genetic variation to adapt and evolve in response to environmental change, many species we rely on may disappear as their susceptibility to habitat loss, pollution and climate change grows. While we can observe the effect of humans on the planet's biodiversity through the lens of animal extinctions, it was unclear until now just how much humans were eroding the underlying ability of biodiversity to sustain itself.A team of biologists at McGill drew upon the largest genetic data repositories available, accumulating over 175,000 sequences from more than 27,000 populations of 17,082 animal species. Using the year each genetic sequence was collected and its spatial coordinates, the authors were able to assess whether the effect of humans has resulted in temporal trends (increase, decrease, no effect) between 1980 and 2016. A previous investigation of this relationship had not focused on tracking diversity over time, nor the way it changes in space."We were sure to include these factors in our study because they have important effects on patterns of genetic diversity and impact the conclusions we make," says lead author Katie Millette, a PhD candidate in the Biology Department at McGill. "This is currently our best estimate of how humans are impacting animal genetic diversity worldwide. We found that there is an effect of humans on animal genetic diversity, but it is a matter of species and spatial scale because we found nearly equal instances of increasing versus decreasing trends."Co-author and McGill professor in Biology Andy Gonzalez explains: "The loss of genetic diversity will hinder the ability of plant and animal populations to adapt to changing environments. We need to monitor the genetic diversity of wildlife so that we can understand better where, when and why it is declining in some places and increasing in others." Without this knowledge, we will have little warning of the losses of many species, or the invasive spread of others.The findings are likely to increase efforts by researchers to fill data gaps on species for which we have no genetic diversity data, and motivate researchers to expand global monitoring efforts so that we can understand the causes of worldwide temporal changes in species genetic diversity.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 21, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021183301.htm
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How rat-eating monkeys help keep palm oil plants alive
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Found as an ingredient in many processed and packaged foods, palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil. Now, researchers reporting in
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Macaques have had a reputation as crop raiders, but the new study shows they in fact cause only relatively minor losses in palm oil yield. And, more importantly, they actively search for rats, the major oil palm pest."By uncovering cavities in oil palm trunks where rats seek shelter during the day, one group of pig-tailed macaques can catch more than 3,000 rats per year," said leading author Anna Holzner of the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.As a result, they say macaque visitors can reduce rat numbers by more than 75 percent, suggesting they could even replace chemicals used to kill rodents.Nadine Ruppert, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and her team have been studying the ecology and behavior of Southern pig-tailed macaques since 2013. They soon realized that wild macaques were spending a good deal of time on oil palm plantations, which are found in a large part of macaques' home range. They were curious to learn more about the macaques' activities while on those plantations.Their studies showed that macaques' plantation diet included plenty of oil palm fruits. Although a group of macaques ate more than 12 tons of oil palm fruits per year, that's just 0.56% percent of the overall oil palm production in the macaques' home range. And, they make up for it by eating lots of rats. That's key because rats cause losses of about 10 percent of production; hence, they do far more crop damage than macaques."I was stunned when I first observed that macaques feed on rats in plantations," said Ruppert, the corresponding author. "I did not expect them to hunt these relatively large rodents or that they would even eat so much meat. They are widely known to be frugivorous primates who only occasionally feast on small birds or lizards."She was immediately intrigued by their potential role in pest control. In fact, her team reports that regular visits of pig-tailed macaques in Malaysia's oil palm plantations could reduce crop damage from 10% to less than 3%, corresponding to a yield increase equal to crops grown over approximately 406,000 hectares (or US$ 650,000 per year).The findings should come as good news for oil palm producers and for macaques. "We expect that our results will encourage both private and public plantation owners to consider the protection of these primates and their natural forest habitat in and around existing and newly established oil palm plantations," said Anja Widdig, the senior author affiliated with the University of Leipzig, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig."In collaboration with local palm oil companies and NGOs, we will work towards the realization of a plantation design that maintains viable macaque populations and higher levels of biodiversity via wildlife corridors while increasing the plantations' productivity and sustainability by effective and environmentally friendly pest control. This ultimately can lead to a win-win situation for both biodiversity and the oil palm industry."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 21, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021082759.htm
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Real texture for lab-grown meat
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Lab-grown or cultured meat could revolutionize food production, providing a greener, more sustainable, more ethical alternative to large-scale meat production. But getting lab-grown meat from the petri dish to the dinner plate requires solving several major problems, including how to make large amounts of it and how to make it feel and taste more like real meat.
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Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have grown rabbit and cow muscles cells on edible gelatin scaffolds that mimic the texture and consistency of meat, demonstrating that realistic meat products may eventually be produced without the need to raise and slaughter animals.The research is published in Nature Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and senior author of the study, began his foray into food after judging a competition show on the Food Network."The materials science expertise of the chefs was impressive," said Parker. "After discussions with them, I began to wonder if we could apply all that we knew about regenerative medicine to the design of synthetic foods. After all, everything we have learned about building organs and tissues for regenerative medicine applies to food: healthy cells and healthy scaffolds are the building substrates, the design rules are the same, and the goals are the same: human health. This is our first effort to bring hardcore engineering design and scalable manufacturing to the creation of food."Animal meat consists mostly of skeletal muscle (and fat tissue) which grow in long, thin fibers -- as can be seen in the grain of a steak or when shredding pork or chicken. Reproducing these fibers is one of the biggest challenges in bioengineering meat."Muscle cells are adherent cell types, meaning they need something to hold onto as they grow," said Luke Macqueen, first author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and the Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering. "To grow muscle tissues that resembled meat, we needed to find a 'scaffold' material that was edible and allowed muscle cells to attach and grow in 3D. It was important to find an efficient way to produce large amounts of these scaffolds to justify their potential use in food production."To overcome these challenges, the researchers used a technique developed by Parker and his Disease Biophysics Group known as immersion Rotary Jet-Spinning (iRJS), which uses centrifugal force to spin long nanofibers of specific shapes and sizes. The team spun food-safe gelatin fibers to form the base for growing cells. The fibers mimic natural muscle tissue's extracellular matrix -- the glue that holds the tissue together and contributes to its texture.The team seeded the fibers with rabbit and cow muscle cells, which anchored to the gelatin and grow in long, thin structures, similar to real meat. The researchers used mechanical testing to compare the texture of their lab-grown meat to real rabbit, bacon, beef tenderloin, prosciutto and other meat products."When we analyzed the microstructure and texture, we found that, although the cultured and natural products had comparable texture, natural meat contained more muscle fibers, meaning they were more mature," said Macqueen. "Muscle and fat cell maturation in vitro are still a really big challenge that will take a combination of advanced stem cell sources, serum-free culture media formulations, edible scaffolds such as ours, as well as advances in bioreactor culture methods to overcome."Still, this research shows that full lab-grown meat is possible."Our methods are always improving and we have clear objectives because our design rules are informed by natural meats. Eventually, we think it may be possible to design meats with defined textures, tastes, and nutritional profiles -- a bit like brewing," said Macqueen."Moving forward, the goals are nutritional content, taste, texture, and affordable pricing. The long-range goal is reducing the environmental footprint of food," said Parker."The development of cultured meat involves a number of technical challenges, including the formulation of a scaffold material that can successfully support cells and the development of cell lines that are amenable to cultivation for consumption at scale," said Kate Krueger, Research Director at New Harvest, a cellular agriculture research institution, who was not involved in the research. "The authors of this publication have developed scaffold materials that show great promise in these areas."Harvard's Office of Technology Development has protected the intellectual property relating to this project and is exploring commercialization opportunities.This research was co-authored by Charles G. Alver, Christophe O. Chantre, Seungkuk Ahn, Luca Cera, Grant M. Gonzalez, Blakely B. O 'Connor, Daniel J. Drennan, Michael M. Peters, Sarah E. Motta and John F. Zimmerman. It was supported by SEAS, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and the TomKat Foundation.
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
October 18, 2019
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191018100504.htm
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Researchers call for responsible development of synthetic biology
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Engineering biology is already transforming technology and science, and a consortium of researchers across many disciplines in the international Genome Project-write is calling for more discussion among scientists, policy makers and the general public to shepherd future development. In a policy forum article published in the October 18 issue of
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Two researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture are co-authors on the piece titled "Technological challenges and milestones for writing genomes: synthetic genomics requires improved technologies." Neal Stewart and Scott Lenaghan with the UTIA departments of Plant Sciences and Food Science, respectively, join Nili Ostrov, a Ph.D. research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School, and 18 other leading scientists from a number of institutions and disciplines, in outlining a potential timeline for the development of what they call transformative advances to science and society.Stewart and Lenaghan are the co-directors of the UT Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology (CASB). Formed in 2018, Stewart says CASB is the first synthetic biology center in the world aimed specifically at improved agriculture. A professor of plant sciences in the UT Herbert College of Agriculture, Stewart also holds the endowed Racheff Chair of Excellence in Plant Molecular Genetics. Lenaghan is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science who also holds an adjunct position in the UT Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) Department.Synthetic biology uses computational techniques to help scientists identify genes that result in beneficial traits. In agricultural practices, these characteristics can then be triggered so that plant and animal production is improved. In addition to improved biology, Lenaghan hopes the CASB will allow for collaborations to expand the current definition of synthetic biology beyond molecular biology tools, translating advances into synthetic and engineered constructs, such as micro/nanorobots, diagnostic devices and smart materials that can benefit society beyond the food we produce and eat.The paper's authors assert, "A highly interdisciplinary, multinational effort from government and private sectors will help achieve and disseminate these advances to make an impact in biomedical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and chemical industries."Emerging technologies and improvements to existing gene synthesis methods are identified and needed, say the paper's authors, in four major areas to advance synthetic genomics within the next ten years: genome design, DNA synthesis, genome editing, and chromosome construction. But first they say substantial improvements are needed to reduce the cost and increase the speed and reliability of genetic tools."In a world that expects to sustain a population of more than 9 billion people by the year 2050, we will have to have more efficient and productive crop production to survive," asserts Stewart. "Writing whole plant genomes, such as the relatively small one in chloroplasts, could revolutionize crop productivity simply by making photosynthesis more efficient. This road map paper tells us how to get there safely."
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Agriculture & Food
| 2,019 |
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