Research Results
1. Rice has many fathers but only two mothers
Rice is the staple food of over half of the world’s population; it is the third-largest food crop, with more than 630 million tonnes produced annually. Researchers investigating the heritage of thousands of rice varieties have identified just two distinct maternal lineages, a discovery that could help address the issue of global food security. A team of scientists—led by Robert Henry at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia—studied more than 3000 rice genotypes and found that their diversity was inherited through two maternal genomes identified in all rice varieties. “We think there were two separate domestications of virgin wild plants that diverged around a million years ago in the wild, and then in the last 7000 years human domestication of rice has occurred,” Professor Henry said.
The two domesticated varieties interbred with the local wild rice throughout Asia, resulting in thousands of landraces over many centuries of rice cultivation.
“The wild rice has pollinated the domesticated rice planted nearby and the seed of the domesticated variety has then incorporated the genetics of the local wild varieties,” he added. The maternal lineage was preserved via the seed, the study found, because rice farmers have collected (and continue to collect) the seed from the fields, and the local varieties tend to resemble local wild rice, although with farmer-preferred traits. The study concluded that the different evolutionary paths of the cytoplasmic and nuclear genomes of rice resulted in functional chloroplast genome diversity; the implications for improvement of rice require further investigation.
For more, see https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/11/rice-has-many-fathers-only-two-mothers
Access the full paper at https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-020-02689-6
2. Multiple wheat genomes reveal global variation in modern breeding
Advances in genomics have expedited the improvement of several crops, but similar efforts in wheat (Triticum spp.) have been hard to come by. This is largely owing to the size and complexity of the wheat genome, and the lack of genome-assembly data for multiple wheat lines. In a landmark discovery, a University of Saskatchewan-led international team has sequenced the genomes for 15 wheat varieties, representing breeding programmes around the world. “Now we have increased the number of wheat genome sequences more than 10-fold, enabling us to identify genetic differences between wheat lines that are important for breeding,” says Curtis Pozniak, the corresponding author of the study. The 10+ Genome Project collaboration involved more than 95 scientists from universities and institutes in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, the U.K., Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Israel, Australia, and the U.S.
The researchers generated ten chromosome pseudomolecule and five scaffold assemblies of hexaploid wheat to explore the genomic diversity. Comparative analysis revealed extensive structural rearrangements, introgression from wild relatives and differences in gene content due to complex breeding histories. The authors provide examples outlining the utility of these genomes, including a detailed multi-genome-derived, nucleotide-binding, leucine-rich repeat protein repertoire, involved in disease resistance and the characterization of Sm (Schistosoma mansoni)1, the only gene that provides resistance to orange wheat blossom midge (OWBM) (Sitodiplosis mosellana Gèhin). These genome assemblies will provide a basis for functional gene discovery and breeding to deliver the next generation of modern wheat cultivars.
Access the full paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2961-x
3. For asymbiotic growth of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, feed them fatty acids
The history of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which form symbiotic associations with land plants, spans over 460 million years. During evolution, AM fungi acquired an obligate symbiotic lifestyle, supplying their host some essential nutrients, in exchange for nutrition needed for their existence. Scientists around the world have been working to grow AM fungi without their host plants, so that they can be used as organic fertilizer in agriculture and forestry. Currently, the only way for AM fungi to be used in agriculture is with their host plants, making its use as fertilizer expensive and hard to implement.
For the first time in their 460 million-year history, it appears that AM fungi are about to gain independence from plants, so that they can be used to help plants grow in less fertile soil. A group of graduate students at Shinshu University, Japan—led by Yuta Sugiura, Rei Akiyama, and Associate Professor Katsuharu Saito—have successfully demonstrated that AM fungi can be grown asymbiotically when given myristate as a carbon and energy source. “Although it was considered difficult, AM fungi have been successfully grown in a culture medium. With advancements, microbial materials for agricultural use can be produced,” says Professor Saito. The growth speed and efficiency of the AM fungus, R. irregularis, grown in culture medium is still low, and work is in progress on spore formation, so that the next generation can be grown. The culture medium contained either one or both fatty acids (myristate and palmitate); the findings demonstrate that myristate boosts the asymbiotic growth of AM fungi and can also serve as a carbon and energy source. Work is in progress on a collection of cultures that can be grown independently and then be applied for use in agriculture.
Access the full paper at https://www.pnas.org/content/117/41/25779
4. Researchers identify gene that regulates how plants respond to stress
Although living beings, including humans, cope with various stresses in seemingly different ways, one thing is constant: at the cellular level, the stress response is universal across the animal and plant kingdoms. Researchers from the University of Delaware and Syracuse University—led by Aditya Dutta, University of Delaware, United States—have identified a single gene (SMALL DEFENSE-ASSOCIATED PROTEIN 1, SDA1) that modulates responses against both biotic and abiotic stresses. In plants, salicylic acid (SA) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) are known to be key modulators of plant defence. Among these, ROS are critical in a plant’s immune response and SDA1 acts as a master regulator. “It’s a gene that regulates other genes, affecting both the biotic and abiotic response, and making the plant hardier on both fronts” says Aditya Dutta.
Because the SDA1 gene and its seven amino acid-domains are naturally occurring, scientists could identify cultivars and select strains of crops that express this gene at high levels. By understanding oxidative stress across both plant and animal kingdoms, Dutta hopes to be able to make more generalizations across fields and apply gene regulation knowledge to different phenomena. “A lot of the basic principles stay the same, we’re just looking at it in different physiological environments and how it relates to different disease outputs. In every instance, we’re learning how cells respond to oxidative stress, and how critical this response is in ensuring good outcomes for both poultry and humans alike” says Dutta. ”Taken together, our studies suggest that SDA1 plays a critical role in modulating both biotic and abiotic stresses in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and appears to be a plant-specific stress-responsive protein”, he added.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-gene-stress.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2020.00703/full
5. Impacts of irrigated agriculture on food–energy–water–CO2
Increased irrigation is a major contributor to increased food production across the globe. However, in several locations, such increases have a major influence on available water and other environmental factors even far from the irrigated farmlands. A study carried out by Zhenci Xu and Xiuzhi Chen of Michigan State University, USA, examined how food, energy, water, and greenhouse gases together contribute to global efforts to feed the planet. The meta-coupling framework allows scientists from many disciplines to look at the interactions between socioeconomics and environmental forces—such as climate change, diet change, irrigation technologies, crop planting strategies, and water diversion—both within and across borders.
In meeting the ever-increasing demand for food, crops such as wheat and maize require massive amounts of water. The study draws inferences from the impact of the world’s largest and longest water transfer project in Hubei Province’s water reserves in southern China. Although Hubei Province itself is not directly involved in the food trade, it experienced substantial losses in water and land due to the construction of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project. The scientists took the food supply issue from the simplicity of solving a problem of producing food by transferring water, to a more complex one that recognized the many causes and effects that fan out far beyond the farms and tables. This study points out the need to understand the impacts of agriculture on the food–energy–water–CO2 nexus in other parts of the world to achieve global food and environmental sustainability.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-farms-tables-vast-impacts.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19520-3
6. Researchers reveal switch used in plant defence against animal attack
For some time, scientists have known that plants protect themselves from hungry caterpillars and other plant-munching animals using sophisticated response systems, the product of millions of years of evolution. They knew that plants can sense an attack from herbivorous animals in a way that is distinct from damage caused by hailstorms or falling tree branches. Several biologists have been studying the mechanisms underlying this attack-counter defence system, because such an understanding will help develop new strategies for improved plant health. Researchers, led by Adam Steinbrenner, University of California San Diego, USA, have identified the first key biological switch, or receptor, which sounds an alarm in plants specifically when herbivores attack.
Using forward-genetic mapping of inception-induced plant responses, Steinbrenner and his colleagues identified a corresponding leucine-rich repeat receptor, the inception receptor (INR), specific to a select legume species, which is sufficient to confer inception-induced responses and enhanced defence against armyworms (Spodoptera exigua) in tobacco. These results support the role of plant immune receptors in the perception of chewing herbivores and the plant’s defence. Like many plant immune receptors, INR is encoded only by certain plant species, but it can be transferred across families to confer new signalling and defence functions. While INR is only found in legumes, such as cowpea, common bean, etc., it confers defined elicitor responses to transgenic tobacco and suppresses the growth of attacking beet armyworm larvae. INR expands the breadth of plant pattern recognition receptors to the detection of chewing insect herbivores. The receptor detects conserved plant protein fragments accidentally released as digestive products during caterpillar munching, thereby enabling plant recognition of attack.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-reveal-defense-animal.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://www.pnas.org/content/117/49/31510
7. To predict how crops cope with changing climate, 30 years of experiments simulate future
Five years ago, the United Nations committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. Since then, however, world hunger has continued to rise. Nearly 9% of our global population is now undernourished, according to a 2020 report from the FAO. It is expected to become critical in some regions of the world as food production may be negatively impacted by climate change. Hence, studies on climate stability of crop yields assume high priority, but such studies mostly need to draw information generated by other experiments. The researchers in this study (Elizabeth Ainsworth and Stephen Long of USDA-ARS, Illinois, USA) summarize the results of nearly 250 observations, spanning 14 sites and five continents.
Across 186 independent studies of 18 C3 crops (e.g., soybean, cassava, and rice) they found an 18% increase in yield when C02 was elevated above 200ppm. However, a rise in temperature (to the level of anticipated 2oC) is expected to wipe out any such increase and result in further losses. In addition, increased C02 is linked to loss of quality (lower mineral content, for example), making the grain less nutritive. The authors indicate that there is sufficient genetic diversity in the germplasm of most corps, which should be used to counter the effects of changing climate. They also indicate the need for developing a database of all the available information in one place and making it accessible for everyone to use, thus encouraging more research to address specific solutions.
Read the full article at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gcb.15375
Potential Crops/Technologies/Concepts
1. Identifying the best chickpea crops for cattle feed
Although most chickpeas are produced for human consumption, they provide the livestock industry with an alternative protein and energy feedstuff. In addition, chickpea straw is used as a ruminant feed. As chickpea production increases in areas where it is not a preferred food, it can be recycled into cattle feed as a partial replacement for soybean meal and cereal grains, explained Dr Peiqiang Yu, a professor with the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and one of the authors of the study.
Yu and colleagues showed that the Canadian Light Source at USask can effectively image the molecular structure of chickpea seeds to determine which varieties have the highest nutritional value and would best serve as a feed for beef and dairy cattle. Using the Mid-IR beamline, the researchers imaged the distribution of chemical compounds like protein, lipid, and carbohydrates in the chickpea tissue in pixel-sized increments. “Quantifying the inherent molecular structure is vital to understanding the variation in nutrient digestibility and utilization when chickpea is used in animal feed,” Yu explained. This research shows how synchrotron techniques can offer insights into which crops will perform best before they are produced on a mass scale, and thus identify a tasty and nutritious treat for cattle. The team plans to investigate how different chickpea processing techniques—such as dry heating, moist heating, and microwave irradiation—affect the internal nutrient components.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-chickpea-crops-cattle.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the abstract at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.0c04446
2. Acute poverty affects Ghana’s savanna region: How oilseeds could help boost local diets
In parts of Ghana, there are still persistently high rates of acute malnutrition. This is despite significant progress in reducing malnutrition at the national level. Globally it is accepted that dietary diversity contributes to the overall macro and micro-nutrient adequacy, and it improves the nutritional status of individuals. Following this, Mercy Badu, at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, 
Ghana, and colleagues researched the nutritional value of a range of seeds from plants grown in the region, including Sesamum Indicum (sesame), Cucumeropsis edulis (melon), and pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo). They evaluated the nutritional and medicinal value of the seeds, and then set about measuring the levels of macro-nutrients such as proteins, fats or oils, fibre, and carbohydrates in the seeds. Sesame seeds gave more than 50% fat or oil content, while melon gave 48% and pumpkin seeds 44% fat.
These findings show that the seeds hold promise as a valuable source of food, and they could contribute to food and nutritional security in the region. Pumpkin seeds are currently used for planting, with less contribution to dietary nutritional enhancement, while melon seeds and sesame seeds are used by some community members as thickeners for soups and stews, with little emphasis on the nutritional and medicinal value of the seeds. There is a need to increase awareness of the nutritional value of seeds and how they could be used in food formulations, and to thus fortify the usual diets to reduce malnutrition in communities. In addition, there is a need to develop improved methods of seed processing to facilitate their utilization.
For more, see https://theconversation.com/acute-poverty-affects-ghanas-savanna-region-how-oilseeds-could-help-boost-local-diets-148564
Access the abstract at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10496475.2020.1747581?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=whsm20
3. New modified wheat could help tackle global food shortage
Wheat breeders have been working hard to increase yield to meet global demand, but since the 1960s, the rate of yield increase has been slow and is currently less than 1% per year. So there is the need for newer approaches to get out of this yield stagnation. In such efforts, researchers at the University of York, USA, in collaboration with researchers at the Universidad Austral de Chile, Campus Isla Teja, Valdivia, Chile (led by Daniel Calderini), have created a new modified wheat variety that increases grain production by up to 12%.
In an earlier study, the researchers had revealed an association between grain expansion and the expression of α-expansins (note: Expansins are proteins that play important roles in plant growth by enhancing stress relaxation in the cell wall, which constrains cell expansion) in wheat, and suggested that the expansion manipulation might provide a way to increase grain weight. Using this knowledge, researchers targeted overexpression of an α-expansin in early developing wheat seeds, which led to a significant increase in grain size without a negative effect on grain number, resulting in a yield boost under field conditions. The best-performing transgenic line yielded a 12.3% higher average grain weight than the control, and this translated to an increase in grain yield of 11.3% in field experiments using an agronomically appropriate plant density. This targeted transgenic approach holds great potential in the future to overcome a common bottleneck to yield improvement across many crops.
Access the full paper at https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.17048
4. Climate-adapted plant breeding
The famous seed vault in Spitsbergen and national gene banks retain hundreds of thousands of seed samples to preserve old varieties of crop plants and the genetic diversity associated with them. Are these seed banks gold mines or seed cemeteries?
Researchers around the globe are investigating whether retained samples contain genes that have been lost through breeding, but which could be beneficial in counteracting climate change. A research team, led by Chris-Carolin Schön, Professor of Plant Breeding at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, is now presenting a solution to harness the genetic potential of old varieties, the so-called landraces.
The research team asked questions such as (1) Have good plant characteristics been lost through breeding?, and (2) Are cold-tolerant varieties the winners in times of climate change?, etc. The team focused on traits related to early plant development and also took into account the stability of the plant and the growth form. While landraces are valuable sources of diversity, efficient strategies have been lacking for their targeted utilization to improve quantitative traits. The study maps haplotype-trait associations at high resolution in ~1000 doubled-haploid lines derived from three maize landraces to make their native diversity for early development traits accessible for elite germplasm improvement. The researchers concluded that the stability of haplotype effects across populations and environments, as well as their limited effects on undesired traits, indicated that their strategy has a high potential for harnessing beneficial haplotype variation for quantitative traits from genetic resources.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-climate-adapted.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18683-3
5. Precision-bred Alfalfa
Alfalfa research at universities and in the private sector has been in a steady decline over the last several decades, resulting in less alfalfa breeding progress. Alfalfa research is a long, time-consuming endeavour; therefore, breeders have been finding new ways to speed up the process using biotechnology techniques. There are two biotech methods used in alfalfa today: (1) genetic modification by insertion of foreign DNA, which results in a genetically modified organism; and (2) gene editing, or the use of precision breeding technologies that result in edited target genes, with no foreign DNA added.
Recently, S&W Seed Company has teamed up with Calyxt Inc., a plant-based technology company located in Minnesota, USA, to develop improved alfalfa with digestibility through gene editing. Calyxt used its proprietary TALEN gene-editing technology to inactivate one of the genes in the lignin biosynthetic pathway, resulting in an Improved Quality Alfalfa (IQA) trait. This new trait promises to make real and substantial improvements in alfalfa feeding quality via a non-GMO approach. Researchers were able to delete a small part of one of the genes in the lignin pathway, making it non-functional, resulting in reduced lignin levels and improved digestibility.
For more, see https://hayandforage.com/article-3268-Precision-bred-alfalfa.html
6. “Ionic wind” tech could revolutionize the fruit-drying industry
Production of horticultural crops is growing at a faster rate than field crops; production per unit area of horticultural crops is higher than that of field crops. However, postharvest losses can be much higher, especially in fruits and vegetables. Hence, efficient postharvest processing is very much a priority, free of other kinds of additives and preservatives. The use of “ionic wind” for fruit dehydration both saves energy and preserves nutrients. A new drying process developed at Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science), using ionic wind, promises to make the non-thermal drying of food much more energy-efficient, faster, and even gentler.
The so-called non-thermal convective drying of food with the help of large fans has had a drawback: the drying process is time-consuming and requires a lot of energy. Empa researchers have now developed a more energy-efficient drying system based on ionic wind, which is perfectly suitable for industrial applications. Empa researcher Thijs Defraeye used various process parameters and placed slices of fruit on the mesh, so that the ionic wind dries the food twice as fast as on an impermeable tray, which was used by researchers over the world so far. Efforts are under way to convert presently available facilities to new systems, instead of buying them all anew. Simultaneous efforts are under way to scale up to an industrial scale. Defraeye and his team at Empa are currently working with a Swiss retailer to develop the concept further.
For more, see https://www.empa.ch/web/s604/eq69-ionic-wind
7. New way of cooking rice removes arsenic and retains mineral nutrients, study shows
Arsenic, which is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, is water-soluble—so it accumulates in rice, which is grown in flooded fields more than other cereals. Previous research from the University of Sheffield, UK, had found that half of the rice consumed in the UK exceeded European Commission regulations for levels of arsenic in rice meant for the consumption of infants or young children.
A new paper by Manoj Menon from the University of Sheffield and colleagues shows that cooking rice in a certain way removes over 50%of the naturally occurring arsenic in brown rice, and 74% in white rice.
This new study tested different ways to cook rice to try and reduce the arsenic content, and it was found that by using a home-friendly way of cooking rice, the “Parboiling with absorption method”, most of the arsenic was removed while keeping most nutrients in the cooked rice. (Note: This method could help many rice eaters in Bangladesh and some states in India, where arsenic poisoning is prevalent).
Access the full paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720368728?via%3Dihub
8. Ecologically friendly agriculture doesn’t compromise crop yields
A major requirement of ecologically friendly agriculture is that it must be diversified (crops, animals, etc.) to be self-sustaining. Diversification includes practices such as growing multiple crops in rotation, planting flower strips, reducing tillage, adding organic amendments that enrich soil life, and establishing or restoring species-rich habitat in the landscape surrounding the crop field. Many believe that ecologically friendly agriculture results in reduced crop yields. However, an international team of researchers—led by Giovanni Tamburini of Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden—examined 98 meta-analyses and performed a second-order meta-analysis, based on 5160 original studies comprising 41,946 comparisons between diversified and simplified practices. The results show that increasing diversity in crop production benefits biodiversity without compromising crop yields, along with positive impacts on the environment.
The enhanced biodiversity benefited pollination and pest regulation by natural predation. It also improved water regulation and preserved soil fertility. Studies, where yield had been examined together with one or more other ecosystem services, were few but still enough to analyse the occurrence of win-win, trade-off, and lose-lose situations. Win-win outcomes between yield and another service dominated in 63% of the cases, but all other possible outcomes (i.e., representing trade-offs between yield and ecosystem services) were also represented. Many of the tested diversification practices are in use already today, but they can be more widely adopted and combined. Farms can add crop species to crop rotations, or grow crops together in the same field with intercropping.
For more, see https://science.ubc.ca/news/ecologically-friendly-agriculture-doesnt-compromise-crop-yields
Access the full paper at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/45/eaba1715?fbclid=IwAR18LFLsnO3UZHOWDx1yEJvA2sIiHU37-hY8Y1dXCyQeY6DXS7Kdi4XD64c
News:
1. The root of microplastics in plants
Over the last decade, scientists have been scrambling to understand the impacts of microplastics. With the breakdown of plastic bottles, the washing of the world’s seven billion fleece jackets, or the microbeads in face cleansers, microplastics are piling up. How they affect living things like plants is still unclear. Stephen Taylor and colleagues at the Washington State University, USA, investigated the uptake of spherical, negatively-charged, polystyrene nano- and microparticles by plant roots, using arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and wheat (Triticum aestivum). After allowing the seeds to grow for 5-12 days, researchers used a special microscope to take cross-sectioned images of the plant roots, allowing them to see root cells from all angles. Both 40 nm and 1 μm polystyrene spheres accumulated at the root surface of both species, particularly at the root tip. However, plastic particles were not seen in the internal root structure, thus indicating no uptake into roots.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-root-microplastics.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwlette
Access the abstract at https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/EN/D0EN00309C#!divAbstract
2. Virtual reality forests could help to understand climate change
The effects of climate change are sometimes difficult to grasp, but now a virtual reality (VR) forest, created by geographers, can let people walk through a simulated forest of today and see what various futures may hold for the trees. The virtual-reality experience takes the extensive climate change models, sophisticated vegetation models, and ecological models and creates a 2050 forest, which people can experience by walking through it, investigating the tree types and understory, and seeing the changes. Jiawei Huang and colleagues at the Penn State University, USA, developed strollers, using VR headsets and controllers, that can reveal the types of trees in the forest, change elevations from forest floor to birds-eye view and in-between, and more closely examine the forest composition in different scenarios due to climate change.
Access the abstract at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13658816.2020.1830997
3. Create open data culture to feed the hungry world, say experts
Many researchers and policymakers have argued correctly that the world’s ability to feed its growing and increasingly hungry population will depend on openness in research and data sharing. Making agricultural data accessible is key to accelerating discoveries and translating them into practice in the field, said Andy Robinson, managing director of publishing at the Center for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI, SciDev.Net’s parent organization), who was moderating a discussion on the topic recently. But agriculture is trailing behind its more open and accessible scientific counterparts, threatening the success of programs to reduce world hunger, the debate heard. There is an urgent need to enhance a culture of openness.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-culture-hungry-world-experts.html
4. Making sense of a universe of corn genetics
Seed banks across the globe store and preserve the genetic diversity of millions of varieties of crops. With a world of corn genetics at their disposal, how do plant breeders know which varieties are worth studying and which ones aren’t? Until now, that has required growing the varieties and studying their performance in the real world. Jianming Yu, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University and the Pioneer Distinguished Chair in Maize Breeding, has devoted much of his research to “Turbocharging” the seemingly endless amount of genetic stocks contained in the world’s seed banks. Yu said the study shows that implementing a selection process that accounts for prediction and statistical reliability can help plant breeders zero in on desirable crop genetics faster.
For more, see https://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2020/11/23/turbochargegenes2020
Access the full paper at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pbi.13420
5. Wheat disease common to Asia jumps to Africa
Wheat blast, a deadly wheat disease that is common in Asia and South America, has been identified in Africa for the first time. That causes a fear that its potential spread to wheat crops across the continent can be very damaging to wheat production in Africa. Pawan Kumar Singh, of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, says that the fast-acting and devastating fungal disease was first spotted in Africa in Zambia in the 2017-2018 crop cycle. It is a threat to wheat production, especially in warmer, humid environments. According to Singh, it is not yet known where the wheat blast in Zambian wheat fields came from, but researchers are working to determine its origin.
6. One-third of UK fruit and vegetables are imported from climate-vulnerable countries
Pauline Scheelbeek, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, and colleagues used the FAO database of bilateral trade for 27 years and estimated changes in fruit and vegetable supply in the UK from different countries. Using the climate vulnerability categories of the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, they found that the proportion of fruit and vegetables supplied to the UK market from climate-vulnerable countries increased from 20% in 1987 to 32% in 2013. This indicates that increased reliance on fruit and vegetable imports from climate-vulnerable countries could negatively affect the availability, price, and consumption of fruit and vegetables in the UK (and similarly in other importing countries), thus affecting dietary intake and health, particularly of older people and low-income households.
Access the abstract at https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00179-4
7. Climate change and food demand could shrink species’ habitats by almost a quarter by 2100
As humans move their activities deeper into the tropics, their effect on species ranges is larger, both because of greater species richness in these areas, and because the natural ranges of these species are smaller, to begin with. The results of a study by Robert Beyer and Andrea Manica, University of Cambridge, UK, predict that climate change will have an increasing impact on species’ geographical ranges. “Species in the Amazon have adapted to living in a tropical rainforest. If climate change causes this ecosystem to change, many of those species won’t be able to survive, or they will at least be pushed into smaller areas of remaining rainforest,” said Beyer.
Access the full paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19455-9#Fig4
8. Mining and megaprojects emerge as an alarming threat to tropical forests and biodiversity
Studies assessing progress on global efforts to end forest loss worldwide offer the most comprehensive overview to date of the large role that infrastructure and mining play in tropical deforestation, now and in the future. A report by the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) Assessment Partners finds that an increasing number of megaprojects (massive and complex development projects), combined with transportation, energy, and other infrastructure activities that encompass tropical forests are on track to destroy forests and open remote forested areas to even more “development.” In particular, this new infrastructure is on track to increase mining activity deeper in the remote forests of South America, Southeast Asia, and Central Africa.
Access the full report at https://forestdeclaration.org/images/uploads/resource/2020NYDFReport.pdf
9. Researchers recommend more transparency for gene-edited crops
Jennifer Kuzma and Khara Grieger, researchers at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA, call for a coalition of the biotechnology industry, government and non-government organizations, trade organizations, and academicians to provide basic information about gene-edited crops. Such a joint effort can help to lift the veil on how plants or plant products are modified, and thus provide greater transparency on the presence and use of gene editing in food supplies. To provide more transparency, the NC State researchers recommend the creation of CLEAR-GOV, or a “Community-Led and Responsive Governance” coalition, that would provide access to basic information on biotech crops in accessible language.
Access the abstract at https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6519/916
10. Groups assess organic research needs
Research needs in the organic industry are many and range from production to marketing, from growers to others in the supply chain. To identify the industry’s top priorities, The Organic Center, Washington DC, partnered with the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (of the USDA) to get input from farmers, industry members, researchers, policymakers and nonprofit organizations. Jessica Shade, director of science programs at The Organic Center, has outlined the group’s findings.
Events
1. ICITA 2021: International Conference on Internet of Things in Agriculture, 06-07 Dec 2021, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
For more, see https://waset.org/internet-of-things-in-agriculture-conference-in-december-2021-in-kuala-lumpur
2. ICSAI 2021: International Conference on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification, 13-14 Dec 2021, Cairo, Egypt.
For more, see https://waset.org/sustainable-agricultural-intensification-conference-in-december-2021-in-cairo
3. ICEAD 2021: International Conference on Ecological Agriculture and Development, 30-31 Dec 2021, Paris, France.
For more, see https://waset.org/ecological-agriculture-and-development-conference-in-december-2021-in-paris
4. ICSACB 2022: International Conference on Sustainable Agriculture and Crop Breeding, 14-15 Jan 2022, Zurich, Switzerland.
For more, see https://waset.org/sustainable-agriculture-and-crop-breeding-conference-in-january-2022-in-zurich
5. ICEAB 2022: International Conference on Ecological Agriculture and Biotechnology, 21-22 Jan 2022, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
For more, see https://waset.org/ecological-agriculture-and-biotechnology-conference-in-january-2022-in-amsterdam
6. ICAELS 2022: International Conference on Agricultural, Environmental and Life Sciences, 28-29 Jan 2022, Sydney, Australia.
Other Topics of Interest
1. Why we need to invest in conflict resolution for better biodiversity outcomes
For more, see https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/why-we-need-invest-conflict-resolution-better-biodiversity-outcomes
2. US agricultural water use declining for most crops and livestock production
3. The biggest trees capture the most carbon: Large trees dominate carbon storage in forests
Access the full paper at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2020.594274/full
4. Fire and biodiversity in the Anthropocene
For more, see https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6519/eabb0355.abstract
5. Why indigenous voices must be heard in the global debate about biodiversity
For more, see https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/why-indigenous-voices-must-be-heard-global-debate-about-biodiversity/
6. Spatial variation in biodiversity loss across China under multiple environmental stressors
For more, see https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/47/eabd0952.abstract
6. Pushing the outer limits of what can be done with the plant—Chinese Strategy
For more, see https://hemptoday.net/pushing-the-outer-limits-of-what-can-be-done-with-the-plant/
7. Researchers identify genetics behind deadly oat blight
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-genetics-deadly-oat-blight.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://www.pnas.org/content/117/39/24243
8. Why investors are betting on biodiversity
For more, see https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-investors-are-betting-biodiversity
9. Researchers compile the world’s largest inventory of known plant species
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-world-largest-species.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00702-z
10. Plant evolves to become less visible to humans
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-evolves-visible-humans.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the abstract at https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31655-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.Elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982220316559%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
11. Have you got what it takes to contribute to ‘sustainability’? Here are some tips
12. Smartphone app might help when picking groundnuts/peanuts
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-11-smartphone-app-peanuts.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Also https://news.uga.edu/smartphone-app-helps-with-picking-peanuts/
13. Better than money? In-kind payments incentivize farmers to conserve agrobiodiversity
Access the abstract at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837719315091?via%3Dihub
14. ‘Forest foods’ drive risks of next global pandemic