AgriTech News Number 11, 15 January 2020

Research Results

1. Development of Functional Markers for Herbicide Tolerance:

A team of researchers from The University of Western Australia has discovered key genes in wheat that are associated with tolerance to the herbicide, Metribuzin. With the increasing use of herbicides to control weeds, it is important to develop herbicide tolerance in crops to avoid crop damage. To develop such tolerant crop cultivars, genetic knowledge of herbicide tolerance (such as Metribuzin tolerance in wheat) is needed. Roopali Bhoite and her colleagues investigated the gene effects for Metribuzin tolerance in nine crosses of wheat. Metribuzin tolerance was measured by a visual senescence score, and the wheat 90 K iSelect SNP genotyping assay was used to identify the distribution of alleles at SNP sites in tolerant and susceptible groups.

The study, published in BMC Plant Biology, identified several genes related to photosynthesis, metabolic detoxification of xenobiotics, and cell growth and development on different chromosomes governing Metribuzin tolerance. The simple additive-dominance gene effects for Metribuzin tolerance will help breeders to select tolerant lines in early generations, and the identified genes may guide the development of functional markers for Metribuzin tolerance. Tolerant genes could be introduced into elite wheat cultivars by natural introgression to enhance Metribuzin tolerance.

For more, go to Bhoite et al. BMC Plant Biology (2019) 19:457. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-019-2070-x.

Access the full article at

https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-019-2070-x

2. Plant Biodiversity Struggles in Wake of Long-term Agricultural Abandonment:

Farmlands that have been abandoned take decades to recover to their previous level of biodiversity or productivity. This is the conclusion reached by a team of researchers led by Forest Isbel, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Saint Paul, MN, USA. The team examined 37 years of data tied to plant biodiversity (i.e., number of different species) and plant productivity (i.e., biomass or amount of plants) related to 21 grasslands and savannas in Minnesota, USA and compared it to plots in nearby land that has not been significantly impacted by human activity.

The study found that local grassland plant diversity increased significantly over time, but did not completely recover. Plant productivity also did not significantly recover. Forest Isbel says that when taken at a global scale, fossil records indicate that plant species are going extinct at rates hundreds of times faster than the natural extinction rate. The amount of land being used for agricultural purposes has slowly been decreasing, leaving some 11 million square miles of old fields and recovering forests across our planet. The results of this study may throw light on what may be happening on all this abandoned land.

For more, go to

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191118152401.htm,

and

Forest Isbell et al, Deficits of biodiversity and productivity linger a century after agricultural abandonment, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2019). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-1012-1

3. Climate Change Affects Plant-Soil Feedbacks, with Consequences for Biodiversity and Functioning of Terrestrial Ecosystems:

Plants alter soil properties, which, in turn, influence plant performance, displaying a variety of effects on each other. These effects of plants on themselves, their offspring, and other plant species through influences on soil organisms and abiotic soil conditions are termed plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs). The interaction between plants and their associated soil biota can lead to complex feedbacks that regulate plant community dynamics and ecosystem processes. An international team of researchers (from Australia, Chile, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, UK, and USA) led by Francisco Pugnaire, Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Carretera de Sacramento s/n, La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain, investigated the responses of PSFs to climate change and their consequences for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and potential feedback effects to climate change.

This study revealed that climate change affected plant inputs into the soil subsystem via litter and rhizodeposits, and altered the composition of the living plant roots, with many symbionts, decomposers, and their natural enemies and their interactions. Several plant-soil interactions are species-specific, and they are considerably affected by temperature, moisture, and other climate-related factors. Researchers make a number of predictions concerning climate change effects on PSFs, and their consequences for vegetation-soil-climate feedbacks. For example, it is predicted that the role of PSF in succession might not be greatly altered by climate change, because the types of above- and below-ground biotic changes that occur during succession are relatively constant across regions with very different climates. However, how plant functional types exiting or entering successional pathways respond to climate change, and the role of PSFs in mediating this response are likely to be case-specific.

For more, go to https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/11/eaaz1834

4. Harvesting Genes to Improve Watermelons by Boyce Thompson Institute:

Cultivated watermelon, Citrullus lanatus, is the sweet, juicy red fruit enjoyed around the world. There are six other wild species of watermelon, all of which have pale, hard, and bitter fruits. A team of Chinese and US researchers, led by Shaogui Guo of National Watermelon and Melon Improvement Center, Beijing Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (North China), Beijing, have now taken a comprehensive look at the genomes of all seven species. They have created a resource that could help plant breeders find genes that provide resistance to pests, diseases, drought, and other stresses, and further improve fruit quality. Introducing specific genes into cultivated watermelon from the wild could yield high-quality sweet watermelons, which could be grown in more diverse climates, an important factor as climate changes.

The authors hypothesize that the fruit flesh coloration and sugar accumulation might have co-evolved through shared genetic components, including a sugar transporter gene. The study provides valuable genomic resources and sheds light on watermelon speciation and breeding history. Collectively, the findings shed important light on the evolution and domestication of watermelons, and they reveal genome bases underlying the formation of fruit quality traits in sweet watermelon.The resources generated in this study provide a genomic framework for future germplasm use and watermelon improvement.

For more, go to https://phys.org/news/2019-11-harvesting-genes-watermelons.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter

Access the full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-019-0518-4.pdf

Potential Crops/Technologies

1. Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Drones, and other IoT devices for Sustainable Agriculture:

Several countries, including India and USA, are coming up with various technologies that integrate the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence), drones, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices for sustainable farming systems. A few technologies that hold a lot of promise in the near future are described next.

Chris Adams and Larry Gut, entomologists in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University, are using large drones to release sterile insects as a sustainable and cost-effective way to disrupt the reproduction of codling moths in apple orchards. They are focusing on finding cost-effective controls of key pests and minimizing pesticide sprays.

A lighting sensor and a video sensor can show the distribution of the intensity of light in real-time and monitor the size of the plant. This would help determine the stage of plant growth. The health condition of plants, thus, could be obtained in real-time by the spectral analysis of the images of the plant. Data from the global positioning systems (GPS) and wireless sensor nodes (WSN) also served as powerful monitoring tools to supervise parameters and correlate between them. Geo-referencing methods that employed the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and drones were observed to have a positive impact on crop cultivation and pesticide control. Farmers can access data through mobile phones, so as to make decisions for implementing actions on their farms.

A South Korean company successfully built the country’s largest smart farm, inside an abandoned road tunnel.The indoor farm provided ideal conditions, with a steady temperature and artificial light and other needs, such as water, nutrients, etc., which were controlled by IoT devices. The company signed an agreement with the South Korean government to develop an indoor vertical farm, as an alternate solution to prevent damages to crops from extreme weather conditions. Foods produced from the farm were found to be healthier, as they had reduced insect infestations from having been in a closed environment.

For more, go to https://www.thehansindia.com/hans/opinion/news-analysis/how-it-communication-can-boost-sustainable-farming-in-india-575317

and

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-drones-sterile-insects-disrupt-orchard.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwlette

2. Genomic Gymnastics Help the Sorghum Plant Survive Drought:

A new study, led by UC Berkeley researchers, reveals how sorghum crops alter the expression of their genes to adapt and remain green under very dry conditions. Understanding how sorghum survives harsh conditions could help researchers design crops that are more resilient to climate change, a challenge that is being faced by sorghum breeders globally.

Peggy Lemaux, a cooperative extension specialist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (and a co-author of the paper that reports the study), says that learning how sorghum is able to be so drought-tolerant can provide insight that can help develop other plant species to survive droughts. A massive dataset, collected from 400 samples of sorghum plants grown during 17 weeks in open fields, revealed that the plant modulates the expression of a total of 10,727 genes, or more than 40% of its genome, in response to drought stress. The study showed the plant’s transcriptome under both normal conditions and drought conditions, over the course of a single growing season.

Researchers identified genotypic differences in core photosynthesis and reactive oxygen species scavenging pathways, highlighting possible mechanisms of drought tolerance and of the delayed senescence, characteristic of the stay-green phenotype. They also discovered a large-scale depletion in the expression of genes critical to arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis, with a corresponding drop in AM fungal mass in the plants’ roots. These findings have the potential to help develop drought tolerant crop cultivars.

For more, go to

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191203091015.htm

Access the full article at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1907500116

3. Helping Quinoa Brave the Heat:

As a healthy food, quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) has gained a lot of popularity outside southern America, and many farmers want to grow it. However, it is sensitive to heat, and plant breeders are trying to develop heat-tolerant quinoa cultivars. Researchers, led by Professor Kevin Murphy at Washington State University, have been working to develop more efficient methods for determining heat tolerance in quinoa. To conduct the research, hand-held devices are placed near the plant to measure the light they absorb and reflect. These measurements—though they involve complex math—are easy, cheap, and quick to take in the field, and they help in developing spectral reflectance indices. They are rapid measurements of the wavelength of the energy collected. In their latest study, Murphy’s team tested 112 genetically different quinoa plants. By exposing the plants to heat stress and taking leaf-greenness and seed yield measurements, eight varieties were identified for further testing, and on further testing, four were considered as potentially heat-tolerant lines. Further studies continue on these lines for yield and other traits.

For more, go to https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quinoa-brave.html

Access the full paper at

https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/cs/pdfs/59/5/1927

4. Minimizing Postharvest Food Losses:

Postharvest losses represent a significant problem along the supply chain, and it is important to store the various crops well, and to preserve them as long and as carefully as possible to avoid such loss. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) statistics, almost half of the world’s harvest (45%) of fruits and vegetables is lost on the way to the end consumer. Around the globe, considerable work on avoiding postharvest losses is going on.

Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology at TU Graz (German: Technische Universität Graz, short TU Graz), in cooperation with the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology and industrial partners, have successfully tested ecological methods that improve the storage of apples and sugar beet—representative examples for other types of fruit and vegetables. In a laboratory experiment, researchers infected organic apples with two of the most important putrefactive agents, then they were subjected to hot water treatment (HWT) and a biocontrol agent designed in the lab. This combined approach resulted in either killing the postharvest pathogens completely, or reducing the infection diameter to a maximum in about 60% of the apples treated in this way. Compared to the control group, apples that were only treated with hot water, the combined method showed 20% better results in the resistance of the apples to storage rot. Thus, the additive protective effect of the biocontrol agent—obtained from the apple microbiome of native organic apples for the control of the storage moulds—could be clearly demonstrated.

For more, go to https://phys.org/news/2019-11-minimizing-post-harvest-food losses.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter

News:

1. Engineered Bacteria Produces Bee-Free Honey:

Bee-free honey, now sold in the market, was accidentally developed in 1999 by Katie Sanchez, while she was making apple jelly. The main ingredients in ‘Bee Free Honey’ are apple juice, cane sugar, and lemon juice. However, now a team of 12 students from the Department of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at Israel’s the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology has developed bee-free honey produced by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which “learns” to make honey following reprogramming in a lab.

Students from six different disciplines—biomedical engineering, medicine, biotechnology and food engineering, industrial management and engineering, chemical engineering, and aerospace engineering—came together to create BeeFree. They plan to create sustainable BeeFree honey using engineered bacteria, which will process a nectar-like solution using secreted enzymes that mimic the honey stomach environment

For more, go to

http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=17855

 

2. Philippines Approves Golden Rice for Direct Use as Food and Feed, or for Processing:

On 18 December 2019, the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Plant Industry has issued a biosafety permit to the Philippine Rice Research Institute and International Rice Research Institute for the direct use of GR2E Golden Rice as food and feed, or for processing. After rigorous biosafety assessment, DA-BPI has found Golden Rice “to be as safe as conventional rice.” PhilRice Executive Director Dr John de Leon welcomed the positive regulatory decision. Through the beta-carotene of Golden Rice, 30-50% of the estimated average requirement of vitamin A can be provided for pregnant women and young children.

The Philippines now joins a select group of countries that have affirmed the safety of Golden Rice. A biosafety review by the Biosafety Core Committee in Bangladesh is currently under progress, based on an application that was lodged in November 2017.

For more, go to

http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=17900

and

https://www.irri.org/golden-rice

3. A New Portable DNA Sequencer, using Nanopore Sequencing Technology, Quickly and Accurately Diagnoses Wheat Viruses:

Diagnosis of any crop disease is crucial, but traditional methods rely on the expertise of pathologists, who in turn rely on the physical appearance of disease symptoms, which can be similar to the damage caused by other factors, such as nutrient deficiencies or environmental elements (or even other pathogens). Therefore, plant pathologists have been on the look out for newer techniques, given that there is no existing method for rapidly identifying unknown pathogens during an outbreak, as was made clear during the wheat blast fungus outbreak in Bangladesh.

A group of scientists in Kansas have developed a new technology that makes it possible to rapidly identify viruses in wheat fields with significantly higher accuracy. Their research, described in “Wheat Virus Identification Within Infected Tissue Using Nanopore Sequencing Technology,” published in the September 2019 issue of Plant Disease, is the first report of using the new portable DNA sequencing technology for wheat virus identification.

For more, go to https://phys.org/news/2019-10-portable-dna-sequencer-quickly-accurately.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-

4. Cereal killer’s deadly touch could lead to new wheat threat:

Scientists have uncovered the origins of the world’s deadliest strain of cereal rust disease, which threatens global food security. Researchers from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, together with partners in the US and South Africa, have solved a 20-year-old mystery. Their work shows that the devastating Ug99 strain of the wheat stem rust fungus was created when different rust strains simply fused to create a new hybrid strain.The study found half of Ug99’s genetic material came from a strain that has been in southern Africa for more than 100 years, and it also occurs in Australia.

Similarly, other crop-destroying rust strains could hybridize in other parts of the world, scientists infer from evidence in this study. The Group Leader at CSIRO, Dr Melania Figueroa, said that Ug99 was considered among the most threatening of all rusts, as it had managed to overcome many of the stem rust resistance genes used in wheat varieties and had evolved many variants. Pgt21 is a rust strain that was first seen in South Africa in the 1920s, and it is believed to have been carried to Australia in the 1950s by wind currents. “This discovery will make it possible to develop better methods to screen for varieties with strong resistance to the disease,” Dr Figueroa said.

For more, go to https://phys.org/news/2019-11-cereal-killer-deadly-wheat-threat.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter

Access the full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12927-7.pdf

Events

1. World Congress on Medical and Aromatic Plants, Khartoum, Sudan, 1-2 May 2020.

For more, go to http://conferencefora.org/Conference/7349/WCMAP/

2. 2020 International Conference on Soil, Plant, and Water Science (ICSPWS-2020), Maputo, Mozambique, 3-4 May 2020.

For more, go to http://conferencefora.org/Conference/7496/ICSPWS/

3. International Conference on Agricultural and Biological Science (ICABS) 2020, Winnipeg, Canada, 20-21 May 2020.

For more, go to http://iser.co/Conference2020/Canada/22/ICABS/

4. 840th International Conference on Environment and Natural Science (ICENS), Sydney, Australia, 24-25 May 2020.

For more, go to http://iastem.org/Conference2020/Australia/3/ICENS/