Innovative Methodology For Multiple Gene Insertion Into Plants - Easier Plant Improvement

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Albany, California, have found a way to streamline the process that scientists use to insert multiple genes into a crop plant, developing a reliable method that will make it easier to breed a variety of crops with vastly improved traits.

The technology is expected to speed up the process for developing new varieties of potatoes, rice, citrus and other crops that are better equipped to tolerate heat and drought, produce higher yields and resist a myriad of diseases and pests. Crops with greater resistance to pathogens and insects could greatly reduce pesticide use and prevent billions of dollars in crop losses.

“Making genetic improvements that were difficult or impossible before will be much easier because we can now insert not just one or two genes, but multiple genes, into a plant in a way that will lead to predictable outcomes,” said Roger Thilmony, an ARS molecular biologist in Albany.

A paper describing the achievement by Thilmony, James Thomson, an ARS geneticist in Albany, and Ray Collier, a former ARS postdoctoral researcher, was published recently in the August issue of The Plant Journal.

The GAANTRY gene stacking technology will be freely available to anyone interested, and a commercial firm in the US is planning to use it to introduce multiple genes into potatoes to make them more resistant to late blight, which is caused by a fungus-like organism. Late blight can destroy entire fields and force some farmers to spray fungicides up to 15 times a year.

“We have struggled to put multiple late blight resistance genes into potatoes for years. They are very long, complex genes, and with existing technologies it’s been extremely difficult. But the GAANTRY technology will help us tremendously,” said Craig Richael, a director of research and development for J.R. Simplot Co., an Idaho-based company that produces French fries, frozen vegetables, fertilizer, turf grass seed and other products.

Scientists over the years have modified the genetics of soybeans, corn, canola and other crop plants to develop varieties that tolerate specific herbicides and resist insect pests. But those traits were controlled by one or two genes, and in most crop plants, important traits such as cold and drought tolerance, yield and seed production are almost always controlled by multiple genes. Inserting more than two or three genes into the same site on a plant chromosome has been notoriously difficult.

The researchers’ unique platform stabilizes large “stacks” of DNA needed for conferring key traits, allowing researchers to insert suites of genes “so precisely that no unintended DNA is added or lost during the process,” says Thomson.

“Before this, assembling 10 genes to insert into a new line would be difficult or impossible, but this technology basically stabilizes the stack and makes for results that are more stable and much easier to predict,” Thilmony said.

Read the report in The Plant Journal.

This technology offers some very smart options for plant improvement, and is potentially likely to be assessed similarly as the CRSPR system whereby derived plant lines are not assessed as GM plants, easing regulatory approvals. 

The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. 

Each dollar invested in agricultural research through the ARS results in $20 of economic impact.

That is a very good return on the investment.   I wonder if those returns are achieved in Australian institutions?

[ modified from publicly available press release of ARS ]

GMO Truth - Confessions of an Anti GMO Activist

This is a classic case of about face, with a former strident anti GMO activist now an active campaigner for GMO crops, Mark Lynas and his book "Seeds of Science" is published today, June 26.

The article is in the Wall Street Journal - about as pro business as it comes, on June 23 2018.
This is the link - https://www.wsj.com/articles/confession-of-an-anti-gmo-activist-1529679465

It might be behind a pay wall, but my guess it will be leaked...... and as I could read it now, it might not be unavailable anyway, as it was a few days ago.

A strong case for using GMO seeds and well written.

The case for more serious embrace of the technology is strong, and with newer techniques including the CRSPR technology of gene insertion using material from the same  or very similar species, it now is not even treated as a GMO in many countries plant varieties registration systems.

This article opens the potential for improving plant science and crop yield and overall performance,especially disease and insect resistance and follows up on a recent article by Bill Gates on similar roles for GM crops.  

GM Breeding Explained Simply

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.

Exploiting genetic variation

Gregor Mendel. Wikimedia, CC BY

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.

danbruell/Flickr, CC BY-ND

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMPE5wlB3Zk

Enter the lab coats …

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. 
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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!  

Cassava - A Crop for Now and the Future

International teams are working to bring cassava genetics into the 21st century and help food-insecure countries.

Cassava plant drawings

Cassava is a starchy, tuberous root first domesticated about 10,000 years ago in South America. Also dubbed manioc, cassava may be more familiar to many as tapioca—tiny pearls of starch used to thicken pies and jams.

For about 800 million people in the tropics, however, it is a staple, not a baking aid.

Now, concerted efforts at crossbreeding and genomic selection have created novel versions of cassava that could dramatically boost yields, ward off malnutrition and grow in a wide range of conditions.

The typical cassava shrub produces unassuming brown roots with snowy white or creamy coloured interiors. 

A cassava crop is perennial—after maturing for at least eight months roots can be harvested for a few years. New plants grow easily from cuttings. The root is carbohydrate-rich, protein-poor and must be boiled, roasted, fermented or otherwise processed to tame compounds that can produce toxic hydrogen cyanide during digestion.  In Africa, 500 million depend on the root as their main staple.

Because many cassava consumers live in developing countries, the plant has not received the intense breeding that has benefited crops more familiar to the Western world such as corn, wheat and rice. In the past decade, however, cassava has started to garner attention. China and Thailand use it to make high-quality starch, and some countries see the crop as a potential biofuel. What’s more, cassava will likely do well in the world’s changing climate; it survives drought when other crops have failed and flourishes in warmer temperatures.  For many years Thailand has exported cassava chips to Europe to use in poultry feeds.

Big boost in yield
Among the latest and most impressive breeding successes comes from Nagib Nassar, a cassava breeder and professor emeritus of genetics at the University of Brasilia. He has developed a new variety that could dramatically boost yields. Each of his plants produces about 14 kilograms of edible roots after one year whereas traditional varieties yield just two to three kilograms.

These are not the only new cassava varieties out there, with others including a cassava high in vitamin A, which turns the root orange, and one with extra protein.  Work is also advancing on varieties resistant to other problems including brown streak disease, green mites that devastate leaves, cassava bacterial blight that browns stems and defoliates the plants and cassava mosaic virus that yellows leaves and stunts plant growth.

Cassava crop showing tubers with growing crop in background

Getting to the next generation

These promising varieties could be just the beginning in a cassava revolution. “There is a growing recognition for the importance of food security in the most food-insecure areas," says Jim Lorenzen, a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major supporter of cassava research. The foundation aided researchers in the sequencing of the cassava genome and awarded $25 million in late 2012 to a massive international effort called the Next Generation Cassava Breeding (NEXTGEN) project, which aims to jump-start genetic improvement of cassava. "It’s a very good time for cassava research," Lorenzen says.

He notes that this attitude is reflected in more researchers focusing on cassava and intense interest from African leaders, including Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Akinwumi Adesina.

Millions of small famers and their families stand to benefit from cassava researchers’ efforts.

By the end of 2014, more than 9,000 farmers are scheduled to grow Nassar’s chimeras in Brazil. Expect to hear more about the starchy root in the future, as new varieties help feed the tropical world

Better Tasting Tomatoes

Do you think tomatoes are tasteless?   Many do.

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.

fresh tomatoes on the vine
 

More here - http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/scientificamerican0513-84

Gene for Improved Phosphorus Uptake Found

Rice Genes

 

/top_stories/article/44844Rice is a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in Asia and the West Indies.

It is the grain with the second-highest worldwide production, after maize (corn), according to data for 2010. Since a large portion of maize crops are grown for purposes other than human consumption, rice is the most important grain with regard to human nutrition and caloric intake, providing more than one fifth of the calories consumed worldwide by the human species.

  Scientists have now pinpointed a gene that enables rice plants to produce around 20% more grain by increasing uptake of phosphorus, an important, but limited, plant nutrient. The discovery unlocks the potential to improve the food security of rice farmers with the lowest value phosphorus-deficient land allowing them to grow more rice to add to global production, and earn more.

As of 2009 world food consumption of rice was 531,639 thousands metric tons of paddy equivalent , while the far largest consumers were China consuming 156,312 thousands metric tons of paddy equivalent (29.4 % of the world consumption) and India consuming 123,508 thousands metric tons of paddy equivalent (23.3% of the world consumption). Between 1961 and 2002, per capita consumption of rice increased by 40%.

The studied gene — called PSTOL1 which stands for Phosphorus Starvation Tolerance — helps rice grow a larger, better root system and thereby access more phosphorus. Farmers can apply phosphorus fertilizers to increase productivity but on problem soils phosphorus is often locked in the soil and unavailable to plants.

Also, phosphorus fertilizer is often unaffordable to poor farmers. Adding to the problem is that phosphorus is a non-renewable natural resource and rock phosphate reserves — the source of most phosphorus fertilizers — are running out.

“We have now hit the jackpot and found PSTOL1, the major gene responsible for improved phosphorus uptake and understand how it works,”� Heuer (author)said.

According to Dr. Wricha Tyagi at the School of Crop Improvement at the Central Agricultural University in the Indian state of Meghalaya, knowledge of the exact gene will be critical for future breeding programs suited to Eastern and North-Eastern parts of India where rice productivity is less than 40% of the national average due to acidic soil and poor availability of phosphorus.
Dr. Joko Prasetiyono, of the Institute for Agricultural Biotechnology and Genetic Resources Research and Development in Indonesia, is breeding rice plants with the PSTOL1 gene. The plants are not genetically modified just bred using smart modern breeding techniques.

"In field tests in Indonesia and the Philippines, rice with the PSTOL1 gene produced about 20% more grain than rice without the gene," said Heuer. "In our pot experiments," she added, "when we use soil that is really low in phosphorus, we see yield increases of 60% and more, suggesting it will be very effective in soils low in phosphorus such as in upland rice fields that are not irrigated and where farmers are often very poor."

The discovery also demonstrates the importance of conserving the genetic diversity of traditional crop varieties such as Kasalath. IRRI conserves more than 114,000 different types of rice in the International Rice Genebank.

For further information see New Gene.

This is an important advance in crop development as phosphorus is so important in crop development and yield, worldwide.  While phosphorus is not critically in short supply, it is expensive and especially so in less wealthy countries.

I am sure that plant breeders for many other crops will be very interested in incorporating this gene into their crop for evaluation.

It might be a few years before this genetic advance is publicly available but it does seem to augur well for improved crop yields across many crops in future, while reducing costs, and allowing lower quality phosphorus sources.

Salt Resistant Wheat - A Big Step Forward by Australian Science

The news has been a few more years in development following the discovery of the actual gene in the 1990s, that can convey salt resistance in wheat.
The news was even on AM this morning, with the interview of people involved, following publication of the article in the journal Nature.
[link to AM story - http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3450926.htm ]

This has been a big step forward by the staff at the Waite Institute [ Uni of Adelaide] and Centre for Plant Functional Genomics in Adelaide with the incorporation of the gene from a wheat ancestor into durum wheat and the material moving into the pre production phase of a new commercial variety, with commercial availability likely to be 4-5 years from now.

While durum wheat is a smaller crop area than the more traditional bread wheats, it is also an important one, as prices can be quite a bit higher. Durum wheats conventionally are used for pasta and related products.

Salt tolerance is a very important trait, as both in Australia and elsewhere the areas suitable for cropping, but damaged by salt ingress are increasing, as well as the possibility of being able to use less than ideal water for irrigation, a major issue in many areas of the world.

The interview is a bit superficial I thought, as the real issues are of world wide relevance for wheat production. No doubt work is already under way to extend this to bread wheats. A better overview is here on a science report - http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/03/12/3451266.htm?WT.svl=news5

The other part of the work is that now the gene hs been identified, it may be feasible to also incorporate it into other major crops - with other grains an obvious first target - think rice, maize, as major ones initially. It also comes soon one of the same groups has been associated with improving iron levels in cereals, a similar outstanding achievement.

Farrer, the grand father of wheat breeding in the Australian context, would be pleased with the wheat breeders of 2012.

Potential New Cacao Varieties

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.

Long Chain Omega-3 Oil from Plants - Soon

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.

Read the Full Article here.

Plant Power - Build Better Plants for More Carbon Capture or Bioenergy

WOW!!! Scientific American seems to have woken up to a fact probably well understood by many in the agriculture research area, and also by many farmers.

Better plants for carbon capture, biofuels, or for that matter almost anything else requires an investment in R and D, specifically some decent plant breeding and genetics. Along with some public policy work to see that the plants get used.

The article below appeared in http://www.sciam.com/ in mid October 2010, and at least the review does build a case for a decent and ongoing investment in plant research, something that seems to have been over looked in the rush to develop geosequestration of carbon. Algae also probably has a place, especially for coal power stations, as does agrichar.

The comments about a price for carbon are very US-centric, and reflect what I would consider as "head in the sand" thinking by many US policy gurus, as another study, on mainstream media reports today, has indicated that many countries already have an explicit or implicit carbon price, including China and the EC countries, and that the US is probably out of line in its current thinking.

The article really says little that is new, but getting this approach into the mainstream thinking is very necessary to ensure the $$$$ do flow into a very useful avenue of development, in a time when agriculture seems to be less endowed with investment for long term progress.

Review article below.

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Flower Power: Genetic Modification Could Amply Boost Plants' Carbon-Capture and Bioenergy Capacity
A new review sums up options for increasing global carbon-sequestration by flora, and speculates that genetically engineering crops and trees could enhance the process, trapping gigatons of the greenhouse gas as well as increasing bioenergy production.

Human activities currently add about nine gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere yearly.
Photosynthetic organisms on land and in the ocean absorb about five of those gigatons through the natural uptake of CO2, leaving to humans the task of dealing with the rest. But no matter how much carbon there is, capturing it and preventing it from reentering the atmosphere is an immense engineering challenge; even today's best technology is orders of magnitude less effective than photosynthesis at trapping atmospheric carbon.

A new analysis published in the October issue of Bioscience suggests that by 2050 humans could offset between five and eight gigatons of the carbon emitted annually by growing plants and trees optimized via genetic engineering both for fuel production and carbon sequestration.

Bioenergy crops represent an opportunity to mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide in two separate ways, says lead author Christer Jansson, a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Earth Sciences Division. First, they are a carbon-neutral energy source that could offset the burning of fossil fuels. Second, "if they are the right kind of plants, they have a chance to transfer a lot of carbon underground for long-term sequestration," he says.

Plants take up CO2 and store carbon in their biomasses. Carbon can stay for decades or centuries in leaves, stems, branches, seeds and flowers aboveground, whereas carbon allocated to underground root systems is more apt to be transferred into the soil, where it can stay sequestered for millennia. Therefore, an ideal bioenergy plant would produce lots of aboveground biomass for fuel as well as have an extensive root system. Preliminary research indicates that genetic engineering approaches could be employed to enhance both these traits.

Using genetic modification to enhance photosynthesis and thus biomass yield is a realistic approach, says Stephen P. Long, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign who was not part of the study. Long notes that transgenic tobacco plants, with simple modifications applicable to other plants as well, have already been shown to be more productive. "We are in a position now where we certainly know enough to where we could engineer quite a few of these changes," he says.

Meanwhile, regarding the problem of coaxing plants to allocate more carbon to their root systems, Jansson says an important difference between perennial and annual plants is a good place to start. "Perennials are more efficient than annuals at hiding carbon underground," he says. That's because annuals, which make up most of the world's food crops, spend much more energy producing seeds, stems and leaves than for building their root systems. On the other hand, perennials like switchgrass and Miscanthus have more extensive root systems—necessary because they remain dormant for part of the year and then must grow up again from their roots.

Whereas it may be exciting to imagine a bioenergy or food crop that produces lots of aboveground biomass and has large, carbon-sequestering root systems, research into whether this goal is realistic is still in its early stages. "Perenniality is a complex trait," Jansson says. He suggests it may end up being easier to modify perennials so they possess desirable annual-like features, as opposed to the other way around—but it's too early to tell. For the short term Jansson is confident that science can modify plants so they are more drought resistant and salt tolerant. Crops that could be maintained with brine or brackish water, such as industrial wastewater or seawater, would help preserve freshwater supplies. "These are important traits that need to be introduced into food and bioenergy crops," Jansson says, adding that "we will see this sooner" than enhanced photosynthesis or perennials with annual traits and/or vice versa.

The authors stress that genetic engineering should not be viewed as a cure-all, but rather part of a larger breeding effort. Further, Jansson says, "One problem is that the different aspects we mention—increasing photosynthesis, improving bioenergy crop yield, and putting more carbon into the root systems—are highly interlinked, and thus not necessarily additive." It could be, for example, that a modifying a plant to grow more roots takes away aboveground biomass production. Again, research in this area is too preliminary to tell.

Allison Thomson, who studies climate change and land use at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., also expressed the need for caution when interpreting the study's projections. They are valuable in principle, she says, but also based on many assumptions regarding future economic conditions, land availability, and the size of bioenergy's role in a larger future energy strategy. For example, she says, "you can't really say how much bioenergy we are going use if you're not also considering other available energy sources and how much they emit." Furthermore, she points out, whether or not there is a price for carbon, which is hard to account for at this point, will figure heavily into future energy scenarios.

Also important to consider are potential land-use issues related to increasing demand for food. "When we do modeling, that's the one demand you can't ignore," Thomson says. "People want to eat before they want bioenergy."Besides all the unknowns, there is also existing regulatory policy regarding genetically modified organisms, which imposes high costs of compliance, thereby making it difficult to assess whether the ideas discussed in the paper are all doable.

Long says: "The bottleneck and damper on all this is really, 'How do you get transgenics out there, and meet all the regulatory requirements and costs?'"

GM Debate Continues - STILL

While I generally support using modern plant breeding techniques to enhance most crops, across a wide spectrum of types, not everyone is for those techniques such as genetic modification - GM.

Modern techniques do have opportunities to develop very significant advances across a wide range of areas from salt tolerance and disease resistance, to herbicide resistance - the latter the one that seems to ire many people. So does the ownership of the intellectual property embedded in the plants, or for that matter in animals too.

Many just rant and rave about it. Others are more subtle, but still oppose many modern breeding concepts very trenchantly.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2191

This link connects to a piece opposing GM technology. It is worth reading. Not only for what it says, but how. And the comments are thoughtful, a bit provocative and useful.

This debate is far from settled, and both sides can do more to inform, rather than just squeal.

Plant breeding has much to contribute to agriculture. It has in the past and will continue to do so. The debate is about how...............but is the developed world being a bit cute, when the biggest gains are likely with modern techniques on crops and plants used in developing countries?

There are not many serious debates about using insecticide treated mosquito nets for mosquito control, or ivermectin as a region wide chemical taken by the population as a measure for treating river blindness, but there are qualms about GM technology to add disease resistance into bananas [ currently stressed and poor yielding due to disease] that are a food staple in east Africa. Is that logical??

Plant Based Lubricant Additives CAN Replace Petroleum Sources

Plants continue to amaze me with how adaptable the products from them can be, and how many functions they can contribute to, often replacing the petroleum based current generation of products.

Sustainable production of these plant materials seems a no brainer, if petroleum products continue to increase in price, as is expected. If peak oil is nigh, then NOW is the time to really investigate the substitution of oil based with plant based products.

This link http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/sep09/petroleum0909.htm

takes you a recent ARS publication where a few of these are discussed. Many will have heard of starch based "polystyrene" substitutes, which are fully biodegradeable, in fact mostly compostable. These are now becoming more mainstream in Australia, although the USA has much wider use. They are just one product among many options.

Oil additives for lubrication especially high end areas, are a developing field with opportunities to replace oil based products with plant substitutes.

While this is US work, it applies very much to Australia as well. While we do not always manufacture these products, it does open up opportunities to develop some new options.

And we do sure need that.........NOW.

Bioplastics from Sugarcane

The Cooperative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology (CRC SIIB) today announced strong progress in providing new and diverse bioproduct opportunities for the Australian sugar industry in their 2007/08 Annual Report released in late October, 2008.

The CRC SIIB 2007/08 achievements include:
- together with its American-based member company Metabolix, the CRC SIIB reported the production of sugarcane containing 3.5% PHA (polyhydroxy alkanoate – a new class of biodegradable plastics). The CRC SIIB has made significant progress in producing bioplastics in sugarcane plants that can be used for a wide range of commercial applications and confirming that sugarcane is a preferred feedstock (over corn and sugar beet) for the production of bioproducts.

The chief executive of the CRC SIIB, Dr Peter Twine says he is now looking for investors to turn the research into a viable business venture. He hopes biodegradable plastic extracted from sugar cane will be used to produce a multitude of products in around five years time. "It could be used for any form of plastic where you want to get rid of it at the end of the day," he said. "Mulching in agriculture, mobile phone cases, beer keg tops. It can be injection-moulded or it can be created into sheet plastic."

Sugarcane has high biomass yields, significantly greater than competitive crops, which then offers a major cost advantage to sugarcane with high bioplastics yields. Combine that with other uses for sugarcane and maybe Australian biotechnology has a real winner. There is likely to be greater returns from this technology rather than the current simplistic process of producing ethanol from sugarcane.

Some additional detail is on the CRC website www.crcsugar.com

Four Potatoes Species NOT Seven

"One potato, two potato, three potato, four" turns out to be exactly right--when classifying cultivated potatoes, that is.

Scientists at the United States Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru [the country considered the centre of origin of potato species] have used morphology--the outward appearance of a plant--in combination with molecular markers to revise the number of potato species from seven to four.

Until recently, potato species designations have been based primarily on morphological characteristics and estimates--often incorrect--of how many chromosome sets they possessed.
Botanist David Spooner works in the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit, Madison, Wis. His initial research with CIP colleagues indicated that morphological variations [the commonly used botanical tool] among cultivated potatoes were not reliable indicators of a particular species.

They then examined DNA molecular markers from 742 cultivated potato varieties and eight wild relatives of potatoes. Based on results from this study and previous studies, Spooner and CIP lead scientist Marc Ghislain concluded that cultivated potato varieties could most accurately be assigned to one of four species - not the seven currently used.

They refined the species designations by checking each potato variety for the presence of one particular DNA mutation. This characteristic mutation distinguishes between potatoes from the Chilean lowlands and potatoes from the high Andes.

The domestic potato, Solanum tuberosum--the type eaten around most of the world--is one of the four recognized species. This is by far the most common potato species and has from two to four sets of chromosomes. The less common potato species--S. ajanhuiri, S. juzepczukii and S. curtilobum--have two, three and five sets of chromosomes, respectively. These can often be distinguished from each other by morphological data.

This new system of species classification eliminates much of the guesswork that previously served as the foundation for the potato classification system. Potato breeders will benefit greatly from a classification system that groups related collections by combining traditional morphological with modern molecular methods.

A paper reporting the results of this study was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

While it may not seem much, successful breeding of new varieties does rely significnantly on understanding the genetics of the material being used. It does become more complex with widely used cultivated plants, due to the enormous influence of man [and sometimes serendipity] on developing varieties over the centuries. Knowing what you are working with allows better planned breeding programs.