Research Results
1. New genes control plant height, could lead to flood-proof crops
Plant height has been an important breeding objective in rice and wheat breeding. Plants with dwarf stems carry more grain without bending under their weight, and this has been a key characteristic contributing to the Green Revolution of the 1960s. Dwarf plants devote more resources to grain and are less likely to fall over in heavy wind or rain. However, tall plants are better at surviving long floods. Now, researchers have found two genes that together help control the height of rice plants.
Plant molecular geneticist Motoyuki Ashikari of Nagoya University, Japan, and colleagues have been studying rice varieties that survive long, deep floods by quickly growing taller, if need be, up to 25 centimetres per day. So-called “deep-water rice” is grown in delta areas, mainly in Southeast Asia where slow seasonal floods can reach 1 meter or more. Of the two genes thus identified, one accelerates the elongation of the stem and the other acts as a brake. The side effects of those mutations can include young plants that sometimes emerge from the ground too soon in drought-prone regions. If the system could be introduced in other plants, scientists say it could be useful in the breeding of many kinds of crops. If plant breeders or molecular biologists can control those two genes, they might be able to adjust plant height without having to modify gibberellic acid (GA) levels, perhaps even in crops other than rice, says Laura Dixon, a plant biologist at the University of Leeds. The two new genes could act as a simple “Dimmer switch” for plant height, says Susan McCouch, a rice biologist at Cornell University, who was not involved in the research.
For more, see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/new-genes-control-plantheight-could-lead-flood-proof-crops?utm_campaign=news_daily_2020-07-16%E2%80%A6 Access the abstract at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2501-8
2. Improving Duckweed—an incredible, radiation-fighting astronaut food—by changing how it is grown
Lemna species (known commonly as duckweed) grow as simple free-floating thalli on or just beneath the water surface. Most are small, not exceeding 5 mm in length, except L. trisulca, which is elongated and has a branched structure. It is commonly eaten in Asia, but in the U.S. it is considered a pest. Duckweed, one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, is the most proteindense plant on the planet; it also produces an abundance of important micronutrients. Two of those micronutrients are inflammationfighting antioxidants, zeaxanthin and lutein. During experiments, a NASA team headed by Barbara Demmig-Adams, Professor of Plant Ecology and Molecular Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, determined that under relatively low-intensity light—less than half as intense as midday sun on a clear summer day—duckweed accumulates more zeaxanthin than other fast-growing plants do in full sunlight, while still maintaining the same incredible growth rate and other nutritional attributes that make it the perfect plant for a space farm. While it is known that intense light makes duckweed and other plants produce zeaxanthin, plants quickly remove it from their leaves when light levels drop.
Due to the ionizing radiation in space, astronauts are susceptible to chronic inflammation and diseases caused by cellular oxidation. Zeaxanthin and lutein have been shown to fight radiation damage as well as eye disease, another common health problem that astronauts experience. At the same time, similar approaches could be taken with other crops which could benefit people across the world, not just astronauts. The project referred here used duckweed grown in sterile environments and used plants stripped of the microbes that normally occur in the water on which duckweeds float. Since researchers know that optimizing soil microbes can increase plant productivity, the next goal of the researchers will be to explore opportunities to further enhance duckweed productivity by experimenting with beneficial microbial communities.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-duckweed-incredible-radiation-fightingastronaut-food.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_camp%E2%80%A6%201 Also, see https://phys.org/news/2019-08-duckweed-world.html
3. Researchers develop gene regulation strategies for plants
A team of scientists from the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMCP), a mixed centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Valencia’s Polytechnic University (UPV), has developed two strategies based on trans-acting small interfering RNAs (syn-tasiRNAs) to modulate the level of silencing induced by a plant’s genes. The use of these strategies on crops of agronomic interest would allow for the fine-tuning of their gene expression to control when a crop comes to flower, and thus make it available on the market all year round, or at times when it is currently unavailable.
Gene silencing, mediated with ribonucleic acid (RNA) interference, is a mechanism for the regulation of gene expression that enables the selective activation or muting of genes at will, in both basic and applied studies. The study shows the usefulness of one of these tools, the syn-tasiRNAs, to improve the productivity of crops and increase their resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses. On the other hand, it has been verified that the progressive lowering of the degree of base-pairing between the 3′ end of the syntasiRNA and the 5′ end of its target RNA also induces a progressive decrease in the efficiency of the syn-tasiRNA. With these two strategies, it has been possible to, for example, generate Arabidopsis thaliana plants with a different flowering time, depending on the degree of silencing of the FT gene.
Thus, the modulation of the degree of silencing of the FT gene of a crop would make it possible to control when it flowers. New, high-throughput, syn-tasiRNA vectors were developed and functionally analysed, and that process should facilitate the precise control of gene expression in multiple plant species.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-gene-strategies.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter Access the full paper at https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/48/11/6234/5836195
4. Plants have hormones, too, and tweaking them could improve food supply
To counter crop losses due to biotic and abiotic stresses and to mitigate the negative effects of climate change, crop improvement scientists are working hard to develop crop cultivars that can withstand stressful conditions and thus yield more. A better understanding of how plants interact with their environment can help scientists to modify those processes to help crop plants to adapt. Pascal Falter-Braun at the Institute of Network Biology (INET), Helmholtz Center Munich, the German Research Center for Environmental Health, Munich-Neuherberg, Germany, and colleagues have been investigating this. Their studies have revealed that the information-processing network, driven by hormones, in plants belonging to genus Arabidopsis is carried out by more than 2,000 protein interactions, hundreds of which had not been identified before.
Many pathways are well understood; for example, the hormone ABA tells plants to close their pores and conserve water during drought, by directing a series of specific proteins to carry out cellular functions. To activate their defences against insects, for example, plants might have to shut down another hormone pathway, such as growth or water conservation. However, many other pathways need to be understood. Researchers found that a large majority of signalling proteins function pleiotropically in several pathways. Further studies focus on the hormone mechanisms that help certain plants quickly repopulate areas razed by forest fires. Although researchers have been working on genetically modified crop plants that resist drought or other stressors, none of the variations is close to being commercially available. Increasing the number of hormones called cytokinins and making the plants more sensitive to their changing levels, the study found, made the grasses more resistant to heat and salty soil.
For more, see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/plants-have-hormones-too-andtweaking-them-could-improve-food-supply/
Access the abstract at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2460-0
5. Fostering a sustainable use of phosphorus
Phosphorus, an essential element for the general health and vigour of crop plants, is critical to food security, ecosystem functioning, and human activities. The resilience of the phosphorus (P) cycling network is critical to ecosystem functioning and human activities. Sai Liang, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, China, and colleagues (including researchers from Austria and USA) have offered some suggestions on how to address this critical issue while protecting food security. They evaluated the evolution of the resilience of the P-cycling network in China over four centuries, as well as its underlying determinants. The results showed that changes in network resilience have shifted from being driven by natural P flows for food production to being driven by industrial P flows for chemical fertilizer production. Urbanization has intensified the one-way journey of P, further deteriorating network resilience. These findings can help in making necessary policy decisions for enhanced P-cycling network resilience in China.
To deal with the situation, the authors suggest as follows: (1) reduce food loss and food waste; (2) improve the farm-to-fork efficiency (that is, P productivity) in food supply chains; and (3) reduce fertilizer use. Possible measures could include setting guidance limits and standards for P fertilizer use, promoting advanced technologies to reduce food loss during food processing, and reducing food waste through education and public awareness campaigns. A potential measure to achieve the third of those objectives is to develop technologies to enhance fertilizer-use efficiency.
For more, see
Access the abstract at https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-0098-6
6. Researchers discover how plants distinguish beneficial from harmful microbes
Plants recognize beneficial microbes and keep harmful ones out, which is important for healthy plant production and global food security. In the past, how legume plants know their friends from their enemies has been an intriguing question, but now we know how they do it at the molecular level. Scientists have now discovered how legumes use small, well-defined motifs in receptor proteins to read molecular signals produced by both pathogenic and symbiotic microbes. These remarkable findings have enabled researchers to reprogramme immune receptors into symbiotic receptors, which is the first milestone for engineering symbiotic nitrogen-fixing symbiosis into cereal crops.
An international team of researchers from UK, Denmark, France, and New Zealand, led by Zoltan Bozsoki, Aarhus University, Denmark, has shown that pathogenic or symbiotic signalling molecules are recognized by plants through small molecular motifs on the receptors, Lysine motif receptors (LysM), which direct the signalling output towards either antimicrobial defence or symbiosis. All land plants have LysM receptors that ensure detection of various microbial signals, but how a plant decides to mount a symbiotic or an immune response towards an incoming microbe is unknown. The question to answer: if all land plants have LysM receptors, then why is that only legumes can differentiate between the pathogenic and symbiotic microbes? The long-term goal would be to transfer the unique nitrogen-fixing ability that legume plants have into cereal plants, so as to limit the need for polluting commercial nitrogen fertilizers and to benefit and empower the poorest people on Earth.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-08-distinguish-beneficialmicrobes.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter Access the abstract at https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6504/663
7. Genetic sequencing may have solved 200-year-old grapevine pest problem
The grapevine phylloxera aphid (Viteus vitifoliae), also known as the Great French Wine Blight, feeds only on Vitis species. It infests the root system and leaves of Vitis species, is cecidogenic (gall-forming), and inflicts considerable damage on grape leaves. It is known to cause significant grape yield reduction, and even vine death within 4–7 years of infestation. It arrived in Europe in 1860s from North America.
Claude Rispe and colleagues from Institut national de la recherche Agronomique, Oniris, Nantes, France, using a combination of genome sequencing, RNA and population resequencing, sought to understand what makes the species spread so effectively and which genes are involved in the attack on grapes. They found that phylloxera evolved > 2700 unique genes that resemble putative effectors and are active during feeding. Population sequencing revealed the global invasion began from the upper Mississippi River in North America, spread to Europe, and from there to the rest of the world.
The grape phylloxera genome reveals genetic architecture relative to the evolution of nutritional endosymbiosis, viviparity, and herbivory. The extraordinary expansion in effector genes also suggests novel adaptations to plant feeding and how insects induce complex plant phenotypes, for instance, galls. Finally, our understanding of the origin of this invasive species and its genome provide genetic resources to alleviate rootstock bottlenecks restricting the advancement of viticulture.
For more, see https://www.laboratoryequipment.com/566968-Genetic-Sequencing-MayHave-Solved-200-Year-Old-Grapevine-Pest-Problem/
Access the full paper at https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-02000820-5
Potential Crops/Technologies/Concepts
1. A biologist and a historian are looking for art to trace fruit and vegetable evolution
Plant geneticists seeking to understand the history of the plants we eat can decode the genomes of ancient crops from rare, well-preserved samples. However, this approach leaves significant gaps in the timelines of where and when many modern-day fruits, vegetables, and cereal crops evolved, and paints an incomplete picture of what they looked like. David Vergauwen, Art Historian, Amarant, and Ive De Smet, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Belgium, have used a unique approach to filling these gaps using art, which calls on museum-goers and art aficionados to help find paintings that could have useful depictions.
They considered that even though some of the genetic code for certain ancient plants may be available, there are often no well-preserved samples, so looking at art can help put these species on a time map and track down their evolution. “If you were interested in determining how a certain fruit or vegetable looked, and you used Picasso as a reference, you might get the wrong impression of its appearance,” says Vergauwen. Given this fact, how can one trace the evolution of our plant-based food through time? The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using historical paintings to map the history of modern fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds, and explain how the general public can contribute to such studies.
2. Keeping pinto beans away from the dark side: slow-darkening pinto beans can be a good alternative
The pinto bean is a variety of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), also known as “speckled bean”. Typically, pinto beans have a striking mottled pattern of dark and light brown, common in Mexico and the southern US. Pinto beans are good for us. They are nutritious, packed with protein and fibre. They also contain a host of micronutrients, such as B vitamins and folate. But they also need to look good. The mottling on pinto beans can darken after harvesting. While farmers consider pinto beans with darker colours to be older and thus not good for planting purposes, consumers also think that darker seeds are older, more difficult to cook, and less nutritious than lighter beans. Thus, darkening of beans affects their demand, as pinto beans are the most common type of dry bean grown and consumed in the United States.
Osorno and colleagues at the Department of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, USA, describe the process of developing a promising new variety of slow-darkening pinto bean. It turns out that a single gene—aptly named slow darkening or SD—controls how quickly pinto beans darken after harvesting. Researchers can breed this gene into new pinto bean varieties fairly easily, without creating a genetically modified organism (GMO). The SD pinto bean appears to show agronomic performance similar to regular pintos, according to Osorno, although there is the need to further improve on its bean size as well as yielding ability. Osorno believes these slow-darkening pinto beans can be a good alternative for the existing pinto bean value chain.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-pinto-beans-dark-side.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/csc2.20220
3. Breeding new rice varieties will help farmers in Asia
Consultations with several smallholder farmers throughout South and Southeast Asia revealed that development of shorter duration rice varieties (SDR), with only 100 days from sowing to harvest, tops their list of needs. In an article recently published in Crop Science, a diverse group of researchers from the International Rice Research Institute (comprising agronomists, physiologists, and breeders) report on the advanced high-yielding, earlier-maturing lines for tropical Asia.
The research team identified key agronomic traits for high yield in short-duration rice, which will assist future breeding efforts. Some of these new SDR breeding lines yielded 11-38% higher than the most popular short-duration variety. The results also suggest that slight changes in plant development to promote height, combined with efforts to increase leaf area around heading time, would improve the yield of short‐duration rice varieties in tropical Asia. Taken together, these findings indicate an enormous potential for developing improved short-duration rice varieties in the future.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-rice-varieties-farmersasia.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Access the full paper at https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/csc2.20183
4. Climate-smart plant breeding
Long-term changes in climatic factors, such as temperature, rainfall, and humidity, create extra pressure on agriculture, which produces food, next only in importance to air and water as essential to life. Breeding of climate-smart varieties needs to respond not only to climatic requirements, but also to the preferences of producers and consumers. So, what is expected of crop improvement scientists so that food (and concomitant nutrition) would still be available? What are the key traits to study for precise breeding and rapid adoption of climate-smart varieties? To which breeding objectives should a varietal improvement program respond?
The focus is usually first on the genotype, then the environment, and finally, the interaction between genotype and environment. Therefore, when comparisons are made between varieties, the impact of the climatic hazard is often underestimated. .
While the features to be considered for the environment are climatic data, those for the genotype are linked to genetic factors. Interactions between genotype and environment (G x E interactions) must be measured for better adaptability of varieties to the consequences of climatic variations. These climatic constraints affect the level of food availability in environments vulnerable to climatic variations. Tolerance to abiotic stresses and tolerance to biotic stresses would both be varied and affect agricultural production in new ways and new areas.
For more, see https://www.doriane.com/en/article/climate-smart-plant-breeding-objectives
5. Small-farm tech reduces deforestation, climate change
Johanne Pelletier, postdoctoral researcher, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, New York, and colleagues report that small farms in Zambia that use the latest hybrid seed for maize, along with improving health on neutral soils, help reduce deforestation and tackle climate change. “Scientists around the world are trying to reduce rapid deforestation and food insecurity, especially in the tropics,” said Pelletier. This kind of agriculture contributes to sustainable food production.
He said that deforestation is caused mainly by agricultural expansion in Africa, South America, and Asia. Hence it is important to learn how to produce enough nutritious food and other agricultural produce while we keep forests standing. “There are synergies to using a modern hybrid seed and good agronomic techniques to maintain healthy soils with stopping the degradation of tropical forests and halting climate change,” said Barrett, the paper’s senior author.
Access the abstract at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095937802030710X?via%3Dihub
News
1. Invasive alien species may soon cause dramatic global biodiversity loss
An increase of 20 to 30 % of invasive non-native (alien) species would lead to dramatic future biodiversity loss worldwide. This is the conclusion of a study by an international team of researchers, led by Franz Essl and Bernd Lenzner from the University of Vienna. Although it is not yet possible to precisely predict the spread and impact of alien species, expert assessments via standardized surveys are an important tool to obtain a better understanding of the causes and consequences of the spread and impact of alien species for the coming decades, according to Franz Essl. The study shows that even a small increase of alien species can cause massive global biodiversity loss.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-invasive-alien-species-globalbiodiversity.html
Access the full paper at https://phys.org/news/2020-07-invasive-alien-species-globalbiodiversity.html
2. The pandemic could strengthen the U.S. food system
The coronavirus pandemic has caused severe disruption of the US food system and affected even smaller operations like G. Flores, many of which have survived the runaway consolidation of farms, processors, and markets. Regional agriculture advocates argue that the same diversity that protects a 50-acre farm like G. Flores can also fortify the larger food system. Though it is far too soon for systematic data, reports from farmers, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) alliances, regional food researchers, and wholesalers across the country suggest a boom is under way for direct-to-consumer operations, as long as the farm enterprises are close enough to cities to take advantage of dense urban markets, says Nelson of the Farm Bureau Federation.
3. Claim that coconut oil is worse for biodiversity than palm oil sparks furious debate
Palm oil has a bad reputation, but is coconut oil worse? Several researchers argue that it is not so. For example, they note that the picture is almost exactly the opposite, judged by a different, more commonly used metric: Palm oil threatens 17 species per million hectares of the cultivated crop, versus 5.3 for coconut oil. Other critics take issue with different aspects of the study. In absolute terms, palm oil threatens five times more species than coconut oil, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and palm oil production is growing much faster.
For more, see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/claim-coconut-oil-worsebiodiversity-palm-oil-sparks-furious-debate
4. Changes in farming are urgently needed to rescue biodiversity, scientists say
An international team of more than 360 scientists from 42 countries, led by the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Westlake University in China, argue that agroecological principles should be integrated with the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to reduce threats to biodiversity and will be decided at the 15th Convention of the Parties meeting in China. Intensive farming, relying on excessive pesticides and fertilizer, has negative effects on biodiversity. At COP15, a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will be agreed, which has targets to reduce threats to biodiversity.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-farming-urgent-biodiversity-scientists.html
Access the full paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1262-y
5. Tastier and More Nutritious Vegetables: Bulgaria Improves Food Quality with IAEA Support
Bulgaria, one of the most biodiverse countries in Europe, has long been a major exporter of various food products. With gradually warming temperatures over the past decades, farmers have seen the yield and quality of key crops fall. Over the past 50 years, 76 crop varieties have been developed by Bulgarian specialists, following their participation in IAEA training and research in the use of
nuclear techniques for sustainable food production and food security.
For more, see https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tastier-and-more-nutritiousvegetables-bulgaria-improves-food-quality-with-iaea-support
6. Innovations in agriculture and food supply in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
In human history, the long-term expansion of populations has been limited by the availability of food and constraints of disease. The management of the current pandemic to date suggests hardly any impact on global food demand due to human population loss. The pandemic has focused attention on the critical importance of continued food production and distribution, and some of the approaches developed to ensure food supply might be retained in the longer term. Advanced technologies need to be adopted globally in each region to deliver local food production capability that can provide secure sources of food in future pandemics. (Note: In contrast, in India, a much larger area has been planted and higher production than in the previous year is expected; Indian farmers have planted a record 111.68 million hectares, which is 4.8% more than the previous year).
For more, see https://www.cell.com/molecular-plant/pdf/S1674-2052(20)30224-0.pdf
7. Food prices may increase steeply due to climate change
Food prices could increase, while farmers are paid less for their produce, as climate shocks deepen problems in SubSaharan Africa’s struggling food systems, an agricultural researcher says. Reacting to a recent report on resetting broken food systems being hit hard by climate change, Timothy Njagi, a research fellow at the Kenya-based Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development, says that this will worsen food and nutrition security, particularly for fresh foods which are easily perishable. The report calls for improving farming and rural livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa to tackle issues such as poverty, nutrition, and resilience. The report says that poverty, food insecurity, and vulnerability to climate change are most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa, and there is an urgent need for a quick strategy to rebuild fractured food systems.
For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-08-climate-steepen-foodprices.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
8. New Guinea has the greatest plant diversity of any island in the world, study reveals
New Guinea is home to more than 13,500 species of plant, twothirds of which are endemic, according to a new study; it has about 19% more species than Madagascar, which previously held the record. “It is a paradise teeming with life,” said lead researcher Rodrigo Cámara-Leret, a biologist from the University of Zurich. New Guinea, which is divided into the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua and the independent state of Papua New Guinea in the east, is the most mountainous and largest tropical island in the world, with snow-capped peaks reaching 5,000 metres high. “It is clear, in the context of the biodiversity crisis, that this (finding) represents a milestone in our understanding of the New Guinea flora and provides a vital platform to accelerate scientific research and conservation,” said Dr Peter Wilkie from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, who was involved in the study.
Access the abstract at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2549-5
Events
- ICABB 2021: International Conference on Agricultural Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 04-05 Feb 2021, Bangkok, Thailand.For more, see https://waset.org/agricultural-biotechnology-and-bioengineering-conferencein-february-2021-in-bangkok
- ICEA 2021: International Conference on Ecological Agriculture, 08-09 Feb 2021, Lisbon, Portugal.For more, see https://waset.org/ecological-agriculture-conference-in-february-2021-in-lisbon
- ICITAF 2021: International Conference on the Internet of Things in Agriculture and Forestry, 15-16 Feb 2021, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For more, see https://waset.org/internet-of-things-in-agriculture-and-forestry-conferencein-february-2021-in-dubai
- ICAB 2021: International Conference on Agricultural Biodiversity, 04-05 Mar 2021, Barcelona, Spain. For more, see https://waset.org/agricultural-biodiversity-conference-in-march-2021-in-barcelona
Other Topics of Interest
- The yield potential of wheat grown in controlled-environment vertical farms For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-07-yield-potential-wheat-grown-controlledenvironment.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campai%E2%80%A6 %201/3
- Sachet economy killing oceans, threatening biodiversity For more, see https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/08/02/sceht-economy-killing-oceansthreatening-biodiversity/
- Protecting Indigenous bush foods and medicines against biopiracy For more, see https://phys.org/news/2020-08-indigenous-bush-foods-medicinesbiopiracy.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily%E2%80 %A6%201/9
- Smaller fields, more biodiversity, research by Carleton professor shows For more, see https://capitalcurrent.ca/smaller-fields-more-biodiversity-research-bycarleton-professor-shows/
- Decline in plant breeding programs could impact food security For more, see https://news.wsu.edu/2020/08/07/decline-plant-breeding-programs-impactfood-security/. Access the full paper at https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/csc2.20227
- First food-grade intermediate wheatgrass released. For more, see https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/asoa-ffi080420.php
- Integrating climate change and biodiversity into the response to COVID-19: Green employment and growth. For more, see https://www.vivideconomics.com/casestudy/integrating-climate-change-and-biodiversity-into-the-response-to-covid-19-green-employment-and-growth/ For further details see https://www.vivideconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/200720-green-labournote.pdf
In the link provided, “-” is missing between carbon-atmosphere, the correct link is
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-
3. The Next Pandemic Could Attack Our Crops
The original blog has been moved to this new location
https://www.thechicagocouncil.