Above Capricorn Technologies - agricultural and environmental consultants /managers focussing on agriculture, horticulture, turf, sportsturf, livestock, land and land rehabilitation, erosion management, bioremediation, phytoremediation, water/wastewater and waste management [especially organics] in the tropics
As CRISPR gene editing only edits the genome and does not insert foreign genetic material from other species the light hand of regulation may be considered as adequate, or does it need more regulation? So far it seems that less is adequate, which is generally accepted by many involved in new crop and horticulture variety devlopment. The following article is a brief, but relevant take on the subject from The Scientist online magazine. This attitude is likely to influence other countries regulatory agencies.
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USDA Will Not Regulate CRISPR-Edited Crops
Restrictions will remain on transgenic plants, which contain artificially inserted genes from other species.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will not regulate plants that have been modified through genome editing, according to a statement released last week (March 28) by the agency.
In the announcement, the USDA states that it won’t oversee the use of genetically altered plants, as long as they could have also been developed through traditional breeding methods, such as cross-breeding or selecting for desirable properties. The agency adds that genome editing allows breeders to introduce new traits more precisely, and at a faster rate.
“With this approach, USDA seeks to allow innovation when there is no risk present,” US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue says in the statement. “Plant breeding innovation holds enormous promise for helping protect crops against drought and diseases while increasing nutritional value and eliminating allergens.”
MIT Technology Review notes that transgenic crops—plants that contain artificially inserted genes from other species—will still be regulated.
This announcement comes as good news to biotech companies using CRISPR to modify plants. According to Wired, this move will “[shave] years and tens of millions of dollars off the cost of developing a designer plant.”
“Having this consistent position enables smaller companies and academic labs to form this ecosystem of innovation to bring options to consumers,” Federico Tripodi, CEO of Calyxt, a Minnesota-based biotech that has already developed soybeans that produce oil low in trans fats that can be cooked at high heat, tells Wired.
Whether gene-edited plants require special labeling is still unclear. “Bioengineered foods are defined by containing genetic material that could not otherwise have been conventionally bred or obtained in nature,” Deepti Kulkarni, a former member of the FDA’s Office of Chief Counsel who currently works at Sidley Austin, a corporate law firm in the U.S., tells Wired. “If USDA is construing the language this way, there is some suggestive signaling that these products might not be subject to disclosure.”
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has called for submissions on a potato that has been genetically modified to reduce both bruising and the amount of acrylamide formed during cooking. FSANZ Chief Executive Officer Steve McCutcheon said the potato had been modified by inserting genetic sequences from this potato and wild potato varieties. “Acrylamide is a chemical that can form when certain starchy foods, like potatoes, are cooked or processed,” McCutcheon said. “Bruising of potatoes during processing and production can lead to food waste and economic consequences for growers. “FSANZ has not identified any public health and safety concerns in its assessment of the potato.” All FSANZ decisions on applications are notified to ministers responsible for food regulation who can decide to adopt, amend, or reject standards or they can ask for a review. The closing date for submissions is Friday 30 September 2016. This approach to insert gene slices into existing plant varieties is a modern development and may technically not even be a true GM variety, when you consider that the gene sequences actually come from existing potatoes. Most seem to equate GM varieties with gene sequences from dissimilar organisms, even different species or different classes of organisms eg bacterial genes into plants. Recently some overseas authorities have not classed this approach to variety development as genetic modification, for example some plant varieties where the CRISPR technology has been used to add beneficial genes.
Professor Robert Henry ... discovery turns half a century of plant biology on its head. view more
Credit: The University of Queensland
A new photosynthesis discovery at The University of Queensland may help breed faster-growing wheat crops that are better adapted to hotter, drier climates. A research team led by Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation researcher Professor Robert Henry has today published a paper in Scientific Reports, showing that photosynthesis occurs in wheat seeds as well as in plant leaves. "This discovery turns half a century of plant biology on its head," Professor Henry said. "Wheat covers more of the earth than any other crop, so the ramifications of this discovery could be huge. It may lead to better, faster-growing, better-yielding wheat crops in geographical areas where wheat currently cannot be grown." Professor Henry said the work built on a biological discovery in the 1960s at the old Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Brisbane. "Many said that discovery should have won a Nobel Prize," he said. "The Brisbane researchers at that time demonstrated that sugarcane and some other tropically adapted plants had evolved a different photosynthesis pathway than that seen in around 85 per cent of plants." The classic photosynthesis pathway was known as C3, and plants with the alternative photosynthesising chemistry came to be known as C4 plants, Professor Henry said. "C4 plants capture carbon faster and have higher growth rates, particularly in subtropical and tropical environments," he said. "Our research characterised a previously unknown photosynthetic C4 pathway in the seeds of wheat - which is not a C4 plant. "Like most plants, wheat photosynthesises through its leaves, but we've discovered there is also photosynthesis in the seed. "This has never been known before, yet the wheat seed is quite green when you peel it off and it is the last part of the plant to die." Professor Henry said photosynthesis - the process by which plants converted sunlight into energy for growth and produce oxygen - was arguably the most important biological process on earth. "Wheat has the classic C3 photosynthetic pathway in its leaves, however C3 plants, which include rice, are less efficient in hotter, drier climates," Professor Henry said. "The holy grail of plant science has long been to bioengineer the photosynthetic pathways in C3 and C4 plants to grow larger, more productive crops that are better adapted to climate change and boost food security. "The population of the world's tropical regions will soon exceed that of the rest of the world, and this discovery may be important in growing food to meet future demand." Professor Henry said the discovery was quite unexpected. "We were looking at the genes in wheat seeds and all the computer systems kept coming back with these C4 genes, which we thought must be wrong because wheat is not a C4 plant," he said. "Eventually we discovered wheat does have all these C4 genes in different places, on different chromosomes. It's never been known in wheat." Wheat had been cultivated for 10,000 years and it had always been a C3 plant, Professor Henry said. "Wheat's photosynthetic pathway evolved 100 million years ago when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were up to 10 times higher than they are today," he said. "One theory is that as carbon dioxide began to decline, the plant's seeds evolved a C4 pathway to capture more sunlight to convert to energy."
The Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation is a UQ institute jointly supported by the Queensland Government. ----------------- This is quite amazing stuff from an agricultural science and plant physiology perspective with longer term potential for more effective biochemical pathways in wheat and maybe other grass grain crops.
Catastrophe is looming for the banana industry. A new strain has emerged of a soil-borne fungus known as “Panama disease” which can wipe out entire plantations – and it is rapidly spreading around the world. Farmers in Australia, Latin America and across Asia and Africa all fear the worst.
The fungus is almost impossible to stop or eradicate. It moves through soil, so contamination can be as simple as infected dirt travelling from one farm to another on the sole of a shoe, or as complex as soil particles blowing on the wind across long distances – even across oceans, in theory.
Faced with huge losses to a global industry, many have called for a new strain of disease-resistant “superbanana”. However, this would be just another temporary fix. After all, the world’s most popular banana, the Cavendish, was itself the wonder fruit of its day, being introduced in the 1950s after an earlier strain of Panama disease destroyed its predecessor.
Panama disease causes banana plants to wilt and die. Scot Nelson
The fungi simply adapted and fought back, though, until the Cavendish also became susceptible. Panama and other diseases will continue to do so until we seriously reform how we grow and market bananas.
The banana industry is its own worst enemy. The huge farms where most exported bananas are grown are ideal for pests. These plantations are monocultures, which means they grow only bananas and nothing else. With very few shifts between crops over the years, and lots of tropical sunshine, there is an abundant and year-round supply of food for pests without any breaks, in time or space, to disrupt the supply and lower the disease pressure.
Banana producers spend a third of their income on controlling these pests, according to a study I published in 2013. Chemicals to control microscopic but deadly worms are applied several times a year. Herbicides that control weeds are applied up to eight times a year, while bananas may be sprayed with fungicides from a plane more than 50 times per year in order to control Black Sigatoka, an airborne fungus.
And those bags that are wrapped around each individual banana bunch? They’re lined with insecticides to serve as both a physical and chemical barrier to insects feeding on and damaging the skins.
All of this amounts to approximately one litre of active ingredients for every 18.6 kg box of bananas that is exported to consumers in the global north. It’s a huge, long-running problem for the industry and the new strain of Panama disease may just be the nail in its coffin.
Or maybe this is the wake-up call the export banana industry so desperately needs.
Searching for the superbanana
Given the way the fungus spreads, containment and quarantine are hardly long-term solutions. Some experts, especially those entrenched in the business of growing export bananas, argue that we need to breed or genetically modify a new type of banana that is resistant to the latest strain of Panama disease.
But this is harder than it sounds. Modern bananas – the tasty yellow ones – don’t exist in nature; they were bred into existence around 10,000 years ago. They reproduce asexually, which means they don’t have seeds and every banana is a genetic clone of the previous generation.
This lack of genetic variation makes breeding a new banana particularly challenging. If one Cavendish is susceptible to a disease, all others will be too. When all bananas are clones, how do you create the genetic variation from which traits for better disease resistance can be identified and nurtured?
Identical bananas – and only bananas – for miles on end. underworld / shutterstock
A new banana would also have to be tasty, durable enough to withstand long voyages without bruising, and bright yellow. Looks really do trump pest-resistance. A new type of banana introduced during a previous Panama disease panic back in the 1920s was rejected by consumers for going black on the outside, even when it was ripe and sweet inside.
Saving the banana
Today, banana growers are in a fight for survival, continuously applying newly-formulated fungicides in an effort to keep ahead of the diseases. But they are acutely aware that they are losing ground. While breeding a new banana staves off the current problem, history has already shown that this doesn’t get to the root of the problem, which is the design of the production system.
We need to ditch the massive farms. Around the world, millions of small-scale farmers already grow bananas in a more organic and sustainable way. Alongside bananas are cacao, avocado, mango, corn, orange, lemon and more. A mix of crops creates more stable production systems which rely on fewer, if any, pesticides and generates diverse income sources, handing local people greater food sovereignty. Farms where bananas are mixed in with other crops are also more resilient to climate change which is likely to hit banana-producing regions – developing countries – harder than most.
Yes, this would mean fewer bananas are grown. Sustainable agriculture simply can’t keep up with the megafarms. But if we learned to ignore the odd blemished or undersized banana, then the actual amount sent to market need not drop at all.
The farmers themselves should be okay as they’ll make up their income by producing different crops. Breaking the dominance of the banana multinationals should also distribute wealth among more farmers and empower the regions where they’re grown. As a consumer, ask yourself this: isn’t that a far better way to spend your money?
This is but one view, and a variety of views is always worth hearing. There is a lot of research occurring to deal with the proliferation of Panama Disease TR4. Agricultural science research focused on solutions!.
Also relevant is a need to improve the nutrition quality of bananas in regions especially where it is a staple food eg Uganda and other parts of Africa. Progress is being made, supported by the Gates Foundation. Loss of bananas as a crop in these regions would be a very serious issue. Genetics are at the forefront of the scientific work to find a solution.
The picture worldwide with bananas is far from the gloom and doom portrayed in this article. It might not be all beer and skittles, but a lot of bananas are still being produced and shipped around the world.
Biosecurity programs, cultural and agronomic interventions and management are somewhat mitigating the disease spread in areas known to have the disease, but it is spreading slowly - absolutely correct. And it is a steady "war "between plant disease and plant varieties - across many different crops, with new disease resistant varieties produced regularly across many crops yet the diseases continue to adapt and infect crops that are either not resistant, or the disease adapting to forma modified strain. It has been that way for thousands of years. Genetics at work, Even if more difficult in a cloned variety.
But banana demand in many regions also is expanding. It is a fruit of choice quite often in many countries, so pressure to develop solutions is high. And there may well be multiple solutions.
USDA Scientists,
International Colleagues Sequence Upland Cotton Genome
By Dennis O'Brien
April 21, 2015 Resulting "roadmap" could help improve yields, fiber quality
and plant resilience WASHINGTON, April 21, 2015—U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their partners have sequenced the genome
of the world's most widely cultivated and genetically complex species of
cotton, a milestone that will make it easier to address increasing threats to
cotton by tapping into its natural defenses. The results were published today
in two Nature Biotechnology
reports. Sequencing the genome of Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) will
help breeders develop varieties of cotton that are better equipped to combat
the pests, diseases and higher temperatures and droughts expected to accompany
climate change. Cotton growers have experienced a plateau in yields since the
early 1990s, and most commercial varieties lack genetic diversity, making
cotton vulnerable to natural threats. The findings will help researchers and
breeders in the years ahead develop cotton varieties with improved fiber
qualities, higher yields and more tolerance to heat, drought and diseases
anticipated due to climate change. Cotton is grown on 12 million acres in 17
states and is a $6 billion crop in the United States, and a major crop worldwide. "There is a vast, untapped reservoir of genes in wild cotton plants
that could offer us stronger and more effective defenses to the numerous
challenges faced by cotton growers. Sequencing of a genetic standard in cotton
gives us the roadmap to identify and tap into that reservoir of genetic
variability," said Chavonda
Jacobs-Young, administrator of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service
(ARS). ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency. The studies are the result of nearly a decade of international
collaboration. ARS scientists Richard
Percy and Russell Kohel (retired) are coauthors and John Yu is
corresponding author of one publication. They are based in College Station,
Texas. ARS scientist Brian
Scheffler, based in Stoneville, Mississippi, is a coauthor of the other.
The two teams sequenced the genome of the genetic standard of Upland cotton,
Texas Marker-1, which is often used in studies and in developing new genetic
lines. Upland cotton is the result of millions of years of evolution and thousands
of years of domestication. The sequencing efforts were made possible because
several of the scientists involved in today's studies recently sequenced the
two "parent" species of most commercial cotton varieties—an Old World
cultivated cotton and a New World wild cotton. The results will allow scientists to analyze two sets of extensive DNA data,
compiled independently of each other, compare the results and exploit cotton's
genetic diversity by tapping into the potential of genes found in the 10,000
accessions of exotic and wild cotton plants in the ARS Cotton Germplasm
Collection in College Station, Texas. The papers, with a list of the contributing authors, can be found at:
ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and this
research supports the USDA priority of promoting American agriculture by
conducting cutting-edge research and expanding markets at home and abroad.
GM: from the field to the lab......and back to the field!!
PETER LANGRIDGE - AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PLANT FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS
23 Jun, 2014
GM canola seed: GM canola planting will rise in Australia this year.
Breeders are always looking for new sources of variation
Welcome to GM in Australia, a The Conversation series looking at the facts, ethics, regulations and research into genetically modified (GM) crops. In this first instalment, Peter Langridge describes two GM techniques: selective breeding and genetic engineering.
GENETIC modification (GM) sounds very laboratory-based – people in white coats inserting and deleting genes – but the vast majority of GM work was completed in the field through selective breeding.
Early Middle Eastern farmers collected grain from natural grasslands, but they needed to time their harvest very carefully. If they were too early the grain wouldn’t store well, and if they were too late the grain would spread over the ground making collection difficult.
At some stage, one of these early farmers must have noticed that some heads remained fixed on their stems even after the grain was fully dry. He obviously didn’t understand this at the time, but these were plants with a mutation in the genes controlling seed dispersal.
Farmers began preferentially choosing plants with this useful mutation and planting them, perhaps the first case of breeding and selecting for a novel trait.
Systematic breeding really began in the early 1900s when scientists rediscovered Silesian monk Gregor Mendel’s groundbreaking work on genetic inheritance in peas.
Breeding involves utilising genetic variation to produce new combinations of genes and gene variants. A breeder will cross two different lines and then select offspring that have improved performance.
Breeders are always looking for new sources of variation, normally from within the elite germplasm pool – that is, within established varieties. Many important traits, such as disease resistance, are controlled by single genes and can be crossed into elite lines, with only the resistant offspring selected.
But for many crops the level of diversity available within the elite germplasm pool is very narrow and breeders must look further afield for novel variation. This search led breeders to explore land races (varieties grown by traditional farmers) and even wild relatives (undomesticated progenitors of our modern crops).
In many cases crosses between the wild relatives and modern lines will not produce normal seeds, but the embryos can often be isolated from the developing seed and grown in sterile tissue culture to produce viable, fertile plants.
This technique, called embryo rescue, has been widely used and many modern cultivars contain genes from wild relatives.
The normal number of genes present in a crop plant is around 30,000 to 40,000 – the same as for humans. In making the crosses all 30,000 genes from the wild relative are introduced but the breeder may only want one gene.
The genes are linked along chromosomes with each chromosome carrying several thousand genes. The breeders need to break up the chromosomes from the wild relative into small fragments so that only the desired region is transferred – a process called chromosome engineering.
This can take several decades of work, making the use of wide crosses technically difficult and slow. Breeders want other methods of generating useful variation.
Engineering mutations
In the 1950s the idea of inducing mutations became an important technique for creating new variation. This involved using ionising radiation, such as X or gamma rays, or chemical mutagens.
These techniques produce random damage to the genetic information in the plant by changing the DNA directly or knocking out segments of the genome (the genetic make-up). Most mutations are deleterious, and the mutagenesis usually generates many thousands of unwanted changes, so the clean-up can be slow.
After exposing the plants to the mutagen, the breeders need to select for the beneficial mutations and remove the deleterious mutations.
Scientifically the ideal solution would be to be able to take a gene from any source and introduce it into your crop plant to change the plant’s characteristics. This would allow breeders to use variation from diverse sources and make changes just one gene at a time without the extensive collateral damage done by mutagenesis or wide crosses. This is what genetic engineering offers.
The first genetically engineered crops were produced in the 1980s and, as in all areas of science, the technology continues to advance. The most widely used method today takes advantage of a natural DNA transfer mechanism.
Several groups of soil bacteria are able to engineer plants for their own benefit. These bacteria transfer a segment of their genome into the plant’s genome so that the transformed plant cells will proliferate and produce compounds that only the bacteria can use. In this way the bacteria control the plant development to produce nutrients for the bacteria.
The mechanisms for this type of natural genetic engineering are now well understood, allowing scientists to change the DNA segment transferred so that the genes causing altered plant growth are removed and new genes inserted.
How does this work practically? In a laboratory the scientist will design and build a DNA sequence containing specific sequences that delineate the region of DNA to be transferred (the left and right borders). They then insert the gene of interest and usually a selectable marker, such as resistance to a herbicide.
Agrobacterium tumefaciens attaching to a plant cell.Wikimedia, CC BY
This construct is then introduced into a bacteria called Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which readily takes up DNA. The bacteria are then applied to growing plant tissues in sterile culture.
After a period the bacteria are removed and the plant tissues placed onto media containing the herbicide. Only the plant cells that have been transformed (those that took up the construct from the bacterium) are able to grow and divide.
These cells are allowed to multiply and divide until they produce plants, which are taken out of sterile culture to a glasshouse where they can grow to maturity. The genes that have been transferred will now be included in the genetic make-up of the plant.
Different species and even varieties will differ in their ability to take up DNA from the bacterium and to regenerate normal plants. Where in the genome the new DNA inserts is usually random but will preferentially occur in regions containing active genes.
Extensive growth trials and evaluation are needed to ensure that the transgenic or genetically engineered plant behaves as expected.
… and back to the field
In Australia all aspects of genetic engineering research are closely regulated. The researcher, organisation and facilities used must all be licensed and meet tight standards.
Before a field trial can be grown, the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) conducts a detailed risk assessment of the genes used, the reasons for the trial, and the design and management of the trial site.
The OGTR have issued 103 licenses for field trials covering 14 different crops. In Australia 37 genetically engineered crops have been approved for commercial cultivation for seven different species, but only GM cotton (eight different events) and canola (three events) are grown to any great extent.
The resistance to GM crops in many parts of the world has encouraged scientists to look for alternative techniques for making targeted changes to the genetic make-up of crops and other organisms.
For example, a new technique called “genome editing” allows us to make specific changes to native genes within the plant that are essentially identical to the changes induced by mutagenesis but at only one site rather than all over the genome. Mutagenesis is widely used and is not subject to regulation – will the same apply to genome editing?
There are other developments that are also challenging the community’s views on new technologies. How will people feel about GM crops where a native gene has been isolated, changed and re-inserted (a process known as cisgenics)?
What about using GM rootstocks engineered for resistance to root diseases, but grafted with non-GM scion so that they produce non-GM apples or avocados?
These questions are now challenging the regulators since the first examples are starting to become available.
Peter Langridge, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, receives research funding from Pioneer/Dupont, the Australian Research Council, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, the South Australian government, Australia/India Strategic Research Fund and the US AID program. He provides advice to several public sector research organisation in Europe, North America and to international agricultural aid programs. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. -------------------------------------------------- This is a very readable overview of breeding using genetic engineering techniques. It is increasingly common as a technique to generate variation, with more conventional selection and assessment being the finishing options. Genetics is one of the fields where big data really first appeared. More is better for plant breeding, it seems.......a real numbers game. More plants to select from and the chances of both qualitative and quantitative traits being adequately assessed!
They hanker back to fresh vine ripened tomatoes where both smell and taste were terrific. If you grew up in a summer tomato production area like I did you can probably still smell that great odour from ripe tomatoes and taste the ripe flesh.
Today, even growing the same varieties, they are never quite the same. Produced too far from fresh markets, they are picked too green to allow travel time and prevent damage. When working in a tomato field, picking was made to be about getting what were called semi ripe tomatoes - thosse expecte to be at their peak in just a few days. With major markets 50 -80km away, you knew they would be used at their peak flavour.
While modern plant breeding and production has delivered varieties that retain "taste"and ripeness over extended periods, so that production is often several thousand kilometres from the user, and they arrive in a good condition in the shops.........they are just not quite the same. Many say taste less!
Fear not, the same plant breeding processes are on the trail and may have discovered some genes that are linked to six specific volatile compounds that enhance the perception of sweetness - the single most critical factor in any person's rating of a tomato. These volatiles can fool the brain, with tomatoes having high levels being preferred to those varieties naturally sweeter [ based on sugar compounds].
The work is now underway to incorporate these genes into tomatoes to combine better taste and smell, while retaining keeping quality and extended ripeness.
This issue has been around for over 25 years - ever since tomatoes became a mass production crop grown a long way from consumers, but hopefully we may see some change soon.
Do you like chocolate? Delicious not so sweet dark chocolate?
Over the past few years we have seen increases in interest in wine varieties, followed by new and different olive oil flavours. Coffee is going the same way, with new blends, varieties and types offered in the market place, to titillate and entrance consumers and coffee lovers.
Watch this space..........chocolate may be next!
Recently reports of work by USDA staff in conjunction with several other agencies as well as commercial choclate company partners have been chasing new and different types of cacao.......the source tree for chocolate.
While West Africa is the source of much of the world supply of cacao, the centre of diversity is actually in south America, and up into lower central america, areas now being investigated for additional genetic diversity in cacao.
The researchers found hundreds of new cacao tree samples during the trips. One of these, discovered by collaborators from Maranon Chocolate, was Pure Nacional, an old, very rare, and highly coveted variety that has garnered a great deal of interest from makers of fine-flavoured chocolates. Chocolate is produced from cacao.
This industry covets new and unique flavour sources.
Usually, cacao trees are found along rivers, but these gems were found at a higher altitude than normal, and in Peru instead of Ecuador or Venezuela.
The industry flourished in Africa as commercial plantation trees in the new World succumbed to some nasty plant diseases. These new collections may offer some advantages for Peru to create a niche industry for the new cacao varieties.
Lets have a slighlty more light hearted look at the world of agriculture today. No more live cattle trade issues today!
Modern genetics traces back to the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid 1800s on the heritable colour traits in peas.
Modern plant breeding has achieved a huge improvement in plant performance of our major food crops. We all benefit from that work of agricultural scientists and allied scientists, and food today is a much smaller cost percentage in our budget.
Even Google must think this is something worthwhile........see their "adjusted" logo celebrating Mendel's 189th birthday on July 20.
A pioneering Australian research alliance is leading the international race to break the world’s reliance on fish stocks for its supply of the vital dietary nutrient, long chain omega-3.
Three Australian organisations recently announced an A$50 million dollar research collaboration which will use leading edge gene technology to develop and commercialise vegetable oil which will contain the same high quality, DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) rich long chain omega-3 that traditionally comes from fish.
This collaboration brings together Nuseed (a wholly owned subsidiary of Nufarm Ltd), CSIRO and the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).
Already as part of the project, CSIRO scientists have made a significant breakthrough by enabling canola plants to generate long chain omega-3 oils that contain DHA, something that up until now has only been found in beneficial quantities in ocean-based algae and the fish that eat it. Some land-based plants, like flaxseed, can produce short-chain omega-3 oils, but are unable to produce the more beneficial long chain omega-3 oils containing DHA.
SIEMENS subsidiary Osram Opto Semiconductors has developed a powerful LED for use in plant cultivation.
The new LED emits a deep-red light at a wavelength of 660 nanometers, the ideal light for plant photosynthesis. The LED has an efficiency of 37%, which is one of the highest for a light source of this colour, and yields considerable energy savings compared to conventional lamps. 5000 of the new LEDs were used in a pilot project in Denmark to illuminate a cultivation area of several thousand square meters.
The trial saw power consumption in the greenhouse fall by 40%.
According to Siemens, relatively little of the light used by plants for their growth is from the visible light spectrum. Chlorophyll molecules mostly absorb deep-red and blue light for the purposes of photosynthesis. The efficient red LED from Osram Opto Semiconductors has an emission curve that is very closely matched to the spectral sensitivity of chlorophyll. The new LED is based on the thin-film technology used for high power semiconductor chips.
In greenhouse cultivation, some plants are grown on several levels stacked on top of one another. For this reason, the new LED is available in two variants, each with a different beam angle. The Golden Dragon Plus has a beam angle of 170 degrees and is well suited for use in reflector lamps for illuminating large areas under cultivation. The Oslon SSL LED, with a beam angle of 80 degrees, is designed for use in multi-level applications, such as those for the cultivation of lettuce.
Using LED light, it is also possible to promote different growth phases of the plant under cultivation. Red light, for example, encourages plants to grow in length, whereas blue light fosters bud formation. Controlled variation of the proportion of blue light between ten and 30 percent can reduce the use of fertilizer and other chemicals.
The developers claim that compared to conventional high-pressure sodium lamps, the luminous efficacy of the system as a whole is 60% higher with red and blue LEDs. The diodes have a service life of 100,000 hours for maintenance-free operation for many years.
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This sounds pretty interesting for greenhouse growers, especially in higher latitudes where daylength and daylight is severely restricted in winter months. Even if only partially as effective as claimed.
As an aside.........I am sure that hydroponic marijuana growers will also find an exciting use for the technology too! [I am not advocating its use] Reports seem to indicate they usually apply the latest and greatest technology.
Using GM crops is a decision, just like any other farming decision. What to plant and how and when, what to use in a rotation.
Farmers are now advised to mix use of glyphosate and other products especially diquat / paraquat to ensure complete annual grass controls and minimise development of glyphosate resistance. Tillage might be part of the equation too.
GM crops are not a panacea..............with decisions about use considered in relation to many factors.
The recent article in an online version of the Queensland rural press covers these issues well. It is worth reading by both pro and anti GM camps to highlight decision making processes. Most are not so blind, that they cannot see................
While some research teams have gone all high tech eg Mark Tester and team in Adelaide at the Plant Genomics Centre on the same general problem of salt tolerance in cereals, this CSIRO group has used conventional breeding approaches, with success.
Salt land is a serious problem in many lower rainfall cereal growing areas, and with durum wheat commanding higher values, getting a better yield on these areas is important.
And it does go to show that there is still a lot of life left in conventional breeding approaches to crop development!
This appeared in Prospect Magazine in November 2007.
The noises have increased but really.............lets get back to basics! If agriculture is to feed the world between now and 2050, we need to invest in technology, develop a whole lot of smarts about land management and crop production and produce food. While there will be changes in how and where food wil be produced and the logistics of moving food to where required, but food will definitely be needed.
Western Europe is dominated politically by left leaning greenies, hence the anti GM stance. But recent figures quoted in Scientific American November 2009 show the big use of GM crops are in the US, Argentina, Brazil, India and often by smaller scale farmers.
They are not always chosen because the multinationals dominate the seed industry.......rather they are chosen because they perform, make money for the growers and save labour and costs.
The name might not mean much to many people, but to most agricultural scientists his name is synomous with the dramatic improvement in crop yields over the past 50 or so years...........commonly known as the Green Revolution. He received a Nobel prize in 1970.
He died after a long battle with cancer, at 95, a pretty good innings, and an active one until very recently.
One of the scourges of modern apiary production in many countries has been varroa mites. While not in Australia, they are very problematical in the US.
They have been also, at least it seems, partially implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder, which has wrecked many US apiarists and the availability of bees for pollination duty in horticultural production. This has been a plus for Australia, as new queen bees have been sold to the US. CCD is a complex issue, and there have been stories published that even these overseas queens are implicated in the disorder.
But on the varroa mite front some excellent news has recently been published from the US ARS.
Their media release is below
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Honey bees are now fighting back aggressively against Varroa mites, thanks to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) efforts to develop bees with a genetic trait that allows them to more easily find the mites and toss them out of the broodnest.
The parasitic Varroa mite attacks the honey bee, Apis mellifera L., by feeding on its hemolymph, which is the combination of blood and fluid inside a bee. Colonies can be weakened or killed, depending on the severity of the infestation. Most colonies eventually die from varroa infestation if left untreated.
Varroa-sensitive hygiene (VSH) is a genetic trait of the honey bee that allows it to remove mite-infested pupae from the capped brood–developing bees that are sealed inside cells of the comb with a protective layer of wax. The mites are sometimes difficult for the bees to locate, since they attack the bee brood while these developing bees are inside the capped cells.
ARS scientists at the agency’s Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Unit in Baton Rouge, La., have developed honey bees with high expression of the VSH trait. Honey bees are naturally hygienic, and they often remove diseased brood from their nests. VSH is a specific form of nest cleaning focused on removing varroa-infested pupae. The VSH honey bees are quite aggressive in their pursuit of the mites. The bees gang up, chew and cut through the cap, lift out the infected brood and their mites, and discard them from the broodnest.
This hygiene kills the frail mite offspring, which greatly reduces the lifetime reproductive output of the mother mite. The mother mite may survive the ordeal and try to reproduce in brood again, only to undergo similar treatment by the bees.
To test the varroa resistance of VSH bees, the Baton Rouge team conducted field trials using 40 colonies with varying levels of VSH. Mite population growth was significantly lower in VSH and hybrid colonies than in bee colonies without VSH. Hybrid colonies had half the VSH genes normally found in pure VSH bees, but they still retained significant varroa resistance. Simpler ways for bee breeders to measure VSH behavior in colonies were also developed in this study.
This research was published in the Journal of Apicultural Research and Bee World. ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief intramural scientific research agency.
It seems as if Australian science has delivered another major advance in agriculture, this time in the methodology of livestock breeding. It could have very important ramifications for almost all livestock groups, but especially cattle. Now a driver in dairy cow improvement, it is coming to beef production soon.
And so far, once again, other parts of the world have been quick to implement it's use.........with Australia lagging behind.............AGAIN! ------------------- Genetic breakthrough to change livestock breeding 18/06/2009 WHEN Mike Goddard reflects on the path that led him into livestock genetics the response takes time. "It seemed like a fun topic."
It is an incongruous reply for a Melbourne born and bred man who has dedicated himself over the best part of 40 odd years to improving methods for genetic selection, but one Professor Goddard has never seen as a disadvantage.
But taking Professor Goddard's modesty aside (when asked his reaction to a recent honourary doctorate awarded by the Norwegian University of Life Science he said "it was nice") Australia's and the world's advancement in livestock genetics has been a slow and often lonely road.
"We have been trying to use genetic markers since about 1990 but it is only in recent years that it has started to take off," he said. "The technology was never quite been good enough and in fact a lot of people gave up." So where are we at now, and just what role does Australia play?
Questions Professor Goddard takes great pride in answering.
In terms of the future, he says genetics is about to take off - the technology is working and the world's need to produce more food from less has governments seeking solutions.
The dairy industry in the United States has started using a new Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) chip that can test 50,000 gene markers at once, and New Zealand, Holland and Australia are following closely. "This means instead of having to wait five years while a bull's progeny are tested, producers can test for DNA markers when the bull is born, and when the bull is a year old and semen available it can be used."
With this science, Professor Goddard said there is the potential to double the rate of genetic gain.
As far as Australia's role in genetic advancement, considering its size "we have been at the forefront in livestock all along".
"If you were to nominate one scientific area where Australia contributes more to world knowledge than expected from its population size, it would be in genetic improvement of livestock," he said.
In 2001 Professor Goddard and his colleague Ben Hayes authored a paper that showed how to predict the total genetic value of an animal using genome-wide dense DNA markers. This work, the Meuwissen, Hayes and Goddard paper, widely revered in genetic communities as breakthrough science, has since become proven thanks to the commercial release of a SNP chip for cattle in 2004.
The ability to track tens of thousands of genes in the one test, as predicted by Professor Goddard and his colleagues, has opened the flood gates on the potential for rapid genetic gain, and word travelled quickly. In the world's leading genetic early adoption country, the United States, 4500 progeny-tested dairy bulls have been tested and thousands more are scheduled. In Australia where Professor Goddard admits it has been an "unfortunately slower" around 2000 dairy bulls have been tested.
For beef and sheep, DNA testing is not a new concept, but Professor Goddard says we can't yet predict genetic merit in beef and sheep as accurately as in dairy cattle. "In dairy there is not the multiple breed problems - if it works in Holstein that is three quarters of the job done."
What Professor Goddard and his colleagues are aiming for is a commercial arrangement with a DNA company such as Pfizer, but to retain a centralised common estimated breeding value database from which producers can benchmark stock.
"For years it has been relatively easy to find the gene for traits that are controlled by a single gene such red coat color, but many traits are controlled by lots of genes which each have a small effect so the advantage with the SNP chip is that we can test up to 50,000 markers all at once."
Beef will be next to follow the dairy lead, and sheep after that, he says.
Professor Goddard, a former tropical livestock genetics expert at James Cook University Townsville, has acquired an international reputation for his broad grasp on livestock genetics.
His passport wears the mismatched marks of a seasoned traveller who is regularly fronting international genetics conventions, and in Australia his unique skill set has him stretched across duties within the Melbourne University, Department of Primary Industries and Beef CRC - as a start.
His professional career has coincided with the livestock genetics movement.
It began as a young veterinary graduate, in the 1970s, when he completed his PhD on a breeding program for guide dogs for the blind at University of Melbourne. It was working with the genetics/breeding scheme of dogs that Professor Goddard's unfaltering intrigue in genetic possibilities started. Livestock, he said, was just the next natural step.
Looking back he said it is difficult to conceptualise that a lot of the work has only just started to eventuate, but he has no doubt that genomic selection will spawn a whole new way of selecting animals.
Already he said work is being done in the beef and dairy industries on identifying genes for feed conversion traits, and in time there is the hope that producers and processors will be able to test livestock and decide for which market the animal would be best suited. "Gradually genetic selection will be introduced into all livestock sections and it will revolutionise them."
[ partially sourced from Scientific American Magazine - January 17, 2008, original text written by Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, and added to by the author of the blog]
Sound economic solutions, not military ones, offer the most reliable route to peace for undeveloped nations.
The vast region of deserts, grasslands and sparse woodlands that stretches across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia is by far the most crisis-ridden part of the planet.
With the exception of a few highly affluent states in the Persian Gulf, these dryland countries face severe and intensifying challenges, including frequent and deadly droughts, encroaching deserts, burgeoning populations and extreme poverty. The region scores at the very bottom of the United Nations’s Index of Human Development, which ranks countries according to their incomes, life expectancy and educational attainments.
As a result of these desperate conditions, the dryland countries are host to a disproportionate number of the world’s violent conflicts. Look closely at the violence in Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan—one finds tribal and often pastoralist communities struggling to survive deepening ecological crises. Water scarcity, in particular, has been a source of territorial conflict when traditional systems of land management fail in the face of rising populations and temperatures and declining rainfall.
Washington looks at many of these clashes and erroneously sees Islamist ideology at the core.
US political leaders fail to realize that other Islamic populations are far more stable economically, politically and socially—and that the root of the crisis in the dryland countries is not Islam but extreme poverty and environmental stress.
The Washington mind-set also prefers military approaches to developmental ones. The U.S. has supported the Ethiopian army in a military incursion into Somalia. It has pushed for military forces to stop the violence in Darfur. It has armed the clans in the deserts of western Iraq and now proposes to arm pastoralist clans in Pakistan along the Afghan border.
The trouble with the military approach is that it is extremely expensive and yet addresses none of the underlying problems. Indeed, the U.S. weapons provided to local clans often end up getting turned on the U.S. itself at a later date. Tellingly, one of the greatest obstacles to posting the proposed peacekeeping troops to Darfur is the lack of a water supply for them. Given the difficulty of finding water for those 26,000 soldiers, it becomes easier to understand the severity of the ongoing and unsolved water crisis facing the five million to seven million residents of Darfur.
Fortunately, much better solutions exist once the focus is put squarely on nurturing sustainable development. Today many proven techniques for “rainwater harvesting” can collect and store rain for later use by people, livestock and crops. In some areas, boreholes that tap underground aquifers can augment water availability; in others, rivers and seasonal surface runoff can be used for irrigation.
Such solutions may cost hundreds of dollars per household, spread out over a few years. This outlay is far too much for the impoverished households to afford but far less than the costs to societies of conflicts and military interventions. The same is true for other low-cost interventions to fight diseases, provide schooling for children and ensure basic nutrition.
To end the poverty trap, pastoralists can increase the productivity of livestock through improved breeds, veterinary care and scientific management of fodder. Often pastoralists can multiply their incomes by selling whole animals, meat products, processed goods (such as leather) and dairy products. The wealthy states of the Middle East are a potentially lucrative nearby market for the livestock industries of Africa and Central Asia.
To build this export market, pastoralist economies will need help with all-weather roads, storage facilities, cell phone coverage [skipping fixed lines usually], power, veterinary care and technical advice, to mention just a few of the key investments. With crucial support and active engagement of the private sector, however, impoverished dryland communities will be able to take advantage of transformative communications technologies and even gain access to capital from abroad. New trends in microfinancing are enhancing this capital transfer even NOW!
Today’s dryland crises in Africa and Central Asia affect the entire world. The U.S. should rethink its overemphasis on military approaches, and Europe should honor its unmet commitments of aid to this region, but other nations—including the wealthy countries of the Middle East and new donors such as India and China—can also help turn the tide.
The only reliable way to peace in the vast and troubled drylands will be through sustainable development.
Australia has a significant contribution to assist this process, based on the knowledge, skills and attitudes developed by our farmers, graziers and scientists in coping with the vicissitudes of the Australian climate, information often directly transferable to others. And no, we will not do ourselves out of trade or options. In fact increased options are lilkely to develop.
Several commentators on this original article in Scientific American were critical - very critical, but a few, probably those with direct experience in running development programs, responded quite positively.
These thoughts are worth contemplating.....deeply.
One has to ask, who thinks of Norman Borlaug as a great scientist? Who you ask? Yes, Norman Borlaug, credited with the first Green Revolution, improving rice, wheat and barley, and bringing adequate food to many developing countries. Yet development is painful and slow still, with the issues identified by Sachs as crucial. Indian farmers, large and small are enthusiastically embracing GM [GE] cotton, with fantastic results [see this blog too]. Combine new yield aspects and safe living environments and we can make things better.
PIXABAY, ANALOGICUS
Breeders are always looking for new sources of variation
Recently reports of work by USDA staff in conjunction with several other agencies as well as commercial choclate company partners have been chasing new and different types of cacao.......the source tree for chocolate. 
