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Agnet Oct. 5/05
EU Court overturns Austrian law to ban GM
Greenpeace demands more transparency on GMOs in Russia
Biotechnology: major potential for profitability
The corn next door: Can organic and biotech crops coexist?
Gene specialists come out against moratorium
Cotttech – a new face in cotton research
Tobacco biotech options weighed
Plant calls in backup to fight pests
Horizontal gene transfer: plant vs. Bacterial genes for antibiotic resistance scenarios—what’s the difference?
Environmentally friendly grass seed production
The next big oilseed crop
Characterization of Cylindrocarpon Species, the cause of black foot disease of grapevine in California
Development of an RT-PCR for High Plains virus indexing scheme in New Zealand post-entry quarantine
Chesapeake Bay day: Coordinating research to improve farm practices, Bay health
Karnal bunt; criteria for releasing fields from regulation
Plant health - harmful organisms
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EU Court overturns Austrian law to ban GM
October 5, 2005
EuropaBio
Luxembourg, UPPER Austria Region has failed to win its case at the EU Court of First Instance on the region©ˆs draft law to ban planting GMOs. The court found against the Region on all four accounts. The Court said the Member State had failed to show that the measure was scientifically justified. The Court said a deviation from EU law was not warranted in this case, and that the arguments used to invoke the precautionary principle lacked substance. The actions were dismissed in their entirety and the costs to be paid by the region.
¯We are satisfied that EU law, which Member States including Austria only recently put in place, has been upheld,©˜ says Simon Barber, Director of the Plant Biotechnology Unit at EuropaBio ? the EU Association for bioindustries.
¯Today©ˆs ruling confirms that Member States may not abuse safeguard procedures to prohibit the use of safe, licensed GM products in their territory.©˜
Link to Court Decision
http://curia.eu.int/jurisp/cgibin/form.pl?lang=EN&Submit=Rechercher$docrequire=alldocs&numaff=T35/04&datefs=&datefe=&nomusuel=&domaine=&mots=
Greenpeace demands more transparency on GMOs in Russia
October 5, 2005
Agence France Presse
MOSCOW - The global environmental group Greenpeace was cited as calling on Russian authorities Wednesday to ensure more transparency in the use of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in consumer food products.
Irina Nevrova, an expert from the Russian branch of Greenpeace was quoted as saying at a press conference in Moscow that, "The state committee on consumer products refuses to provide us with a list of companies using GMOs," in violation of current Russian legislation.
One of six soya-based products sold in Russia, including sausages, cheese and bread, is known to be genetically modified, according to official data from the consumer committee cited by Greenpeace.
Biotechnology: major potential for profitability
September 26, 2005
BusinessWorld
"Biotechnology is a field where the Philippines can compete globally," says Dr. Saturnina Halos. Ms. Halos is one of the country's foremost DNA experts, and is acknowledged to have contributed much of the technical content and analysis in the National Biosafety Framework for the Philippines.
Her company, Arnichem Corp., produces the biofertilizer Vital-N, which is one of the products currently leading the way in a much-overlooked yet rich field. Vital-N works on a simple principle: "We try to augment the existing soil with our technology; a delivery system for a natural product. We have a microbe [from bacterium called azostirillum] which is asleep - dormant - until it comes into contact with water. When this happens, it wakes up and does three things: it produces growth hormones, gets nitrogen from the air, and makes it available to the plant, and solubi! lizes nutrients from the soil. In addition, it protects the plant from soil pathogens which cause disease."
As with any successful biotechnology product, there is an innovation that makes Vita-N unique. There are similar products across the world, but none use dried, dormant microorganisms (isolated from Philippine soil) as their active ingredient. "In its natural state, the microorganisms is difficult to handle, but we are able to come up into contact with a technology that puts it to 'sleep' until it comes up into contact with the water; then, it starts being active again - metabolizing, breeding. Otherwise it's 'sleeping'. Our technology makes it 'sleep' for a long time…that's what's novel about our technology. It's a very competitive technology" Ms. Halos says proudly.
The corn next door: Can organic and biotech crops coexist?
October 5, 2005
Truth About Trade
Amy Norton
In 2000, public officials in Boulder County, Colo., were faced with calls from organic farmers, environmentalists, and others to ban genetically modified (GM) crops. GM opponents worried that pollen drifting from transgenic corn fields could "contaminate" their organic cousins.
County commissioners weren't comfortable with an outright ban, but they decided to appoint a panel that would draw up a "good neighbor" policy to help organic and GM growers peacefully coexist on the county's large stretch of public land. Scientists at Colorado State University conducted a pollen drift study and concluded that a buffer zone of 150 feet could ensure a less-than-1% inadvertent, or adventitious, presence of GM pollen or other materials in non-GM corn crops.
Those involved in forging the coexistence plan - which county officials believe to be the first such effort in the United States - say things have gone smoothly so far, with no disputes over buffer zones or GM-tainted organic corn. It offers, they say, proof that organic and GM farms can be good neighbors. "GMOs [genetically modified organisms] are highly contentious here," Robert Alexander, an official with Boulder County Parks and Open Space, says of the organic-friendly region. "Coexistence is possible. We're doing it."
Organic Certification At Risk?
But there's no consensus on the necessary ingredients for coexistence, and a panel at the June Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) conference in Philadelphia took up the issue. Many scientists and farmers believe coexistence is a fairly simple matter, achievable through neighborly communication and a certain level of tolerance for the adventitious presence of GMOs in organic crops. Others contend that organic and non-GM conventional growers are unfairly burdened with the responsibility for protecting their crops from what they regard as contamination.
At issue is organic certification, which is bestowed by 56 US Department of Agriculture (USDA)-accredited certifying agents across the country, and for which some consumers will pay a premium. These organizations ensure that growers follow national standards for organic production and handling.
"We are not categorically opposed to the use of biotech in agriculture," says Mark Lipson, an organic grower and policy director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) in Santa Cruz, Calif. But, he adds, US regulators have "taken coexistence for granted," and he sees a need for protections for non-GM growers. Lipson argues that biotech firms should be held liable for economic injury to organic farmers when seed commingling or pollen drift allow GMOs into their crops. According to USDA standards, organic farmers should not lose their certification due to adventitious presence of GMOs, as long as they take "reasonable steps" to prevent such commingling.
However, that rule is murky, and a few farmers in a 2002 OFRF survey said they lost certification due to GMO presence, according to Bob Scowcroft, the group's executive director. That survey, of 1,034 US organic farmers, also found that 8% reported some "economic impact" in the last growing season that they attributed to GM farming - the cost of testing their crops for GMOs, for example, or loss of organic markets due to actual contamination or buyers' fears of it. Though that figure is small, Scowcroft says, the survey results are a sign of a looming problem, as concern about GM contamination was a nonissue in earlier OFRF surveys.
Some state legislatures apparently feel the same way. Bills were floated in several states this year that would hold seed companies liable for economic damages to non-GM farmers whose crops were found to contain GMOs, including a measure in California that will be taken up again in 2006 and one in Vermont that is still alive.
Bad Neighbors Can Foster Innovation. But Drew Kershen, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, says such measures lack legal footing. It's the organic farmers who are aiming for a price premium, he says, and to hold biotech firms responsible for their market loss would be a "significant reversal of the laws as they have been." Kershen says coexistence essentially boils down to organic buyers having some tolerance for adventitious presence of GMOs. Organic certification, he points out, covers the processes growers use, and does not guarantee a "pure" final product.
Kershen points to a coexistence study by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture, which concluded that a roughly 160-foot separation between corn fields and 160 to 1,300 feet between oilseed rape, depending on the species, should keep the detectable levels of GMOs in those crops below 0.5%. If buyers will accept such levels, Kershen says, then coexistence should be relatively easy to achieve.
Fred Yoder, a past president of the National Corn Growers Association, says the key to coexistence is quite literally to be neighborly; when farmers communicate with each other, they can, for instance, vary their planting dates to avoid the issue of pollen drift. "We can handle (pollen drift) a lot better than people think," explains Yoder, noting that he and his own organic neighbor have a "great relationship." He says, "We can coexist just fine."
For less neighborly sorts, though, conventional corn breeding may soon lend a hand in the form of hybrid that shuns all pollen but its own. The small Nebraska firm Hoegemeyer Hybrids is set to market the corn, dubbed PuraMaize, for the 2006 growing season. Tom Hoegemeyer, who stresses that he is far from anti-GMO, says he saw a need for such a "niche" product when consumers, particularly in Europe, reacted negatively to the advent of transgenic crops in the 1990s.
The corn strain takes advantage of natural traits seen rarely in certain corn varieties native to Central America. Scientists have long known there are genes that affect corn pollination, Hoege-meyer notes, and developing the discriminating corn was "just a matter of perseverance."
Rex Bernardo, an agronomy professor at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, agrees that PuraMaize could help GM and organic corn crops live side-by-side, and could help growers in exporting to GM-wary markets in Europe and Japan, for instance. He points out, though, that cross-contamination can occur at several points between field and supermarket - via equipment, for instance, or at local elevators that take grain from many sources.
Enter Biopharmaceuticals
Coexistence could get thornier as the business of biopharmaceuticals takes off. Sacramento, Calif.-based Ventria Bioscience, which is using rice to grow lactoferrin and lysozyme proteins to be used in products for diarrhea and dehydration, found that opposition could come from unexpected places when beer giant Anheuser-Busch objected to the firm's plans to grow its rice in Missouri.
Citing concerns that the pharmaceutical rice could contaminate commercial rice grown in the region, which the brewer uses to flavor its beer, the beer giant threatened to boycott Missouri rice, causing a stir among local farmers. This was despite the fact that unlike corn and canola, rice is self-pollinating, and despite the company's closed production system, Scott Deeter, Ventria's CEO, points out.
In April, Ventria and Anheuser-Busch struck a "compromise" in which the former agreed to plant 120 miles away from Missouri's rice belt. But that was too late for Ventria to get the necessary permits to grow its rice in the state this year. Instead, the company planted in North Carolina, on a few acres where it already had USDA approval.
But the company is still moving its headquarters to Maryville, Mo., and plans to plant its rice in the state next year. Deeter downplays any opposition the company has gotten from local farmers and other citizens - first in California, and now in Missouri - and says the Missouri Farm Bureau is "one of our biggest supporters." And he says the Anheuser-Busch conflict is an example of the neighborly cooperation everyone agrees is necessary for coexistence. "On the bright side," he says, "we did reach an agreement."
Gene specialists come out against moratorium
October 4, 2005
Swissinfo
The Gen Suisse Foundation, a group of Swiss scientists, was cited as warning that if voters accept a moratorium on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, research could suffer, and that delaying the use of GM plants would also undermine teaching in Switzerland's universities.
The story explains that Swiss voters are being asked on November 27 whether to accept a five-year moratorium on GMOs.
Ernst Hafen, who will take over as the president of Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology in December, was quoted as saying, "Switzerland cannot afford to stick its head in the sand. Ten of Europe's best 50 biotechnology researchers are Swiss. We should not hinder their projects or they will start heading abroad."
The genetics specialist pointed out that even safe tests of GM plants in a controlled environment are difficult to carry out because of protests from associations opposed to the use of modified organisms.
For Hafen, current legislation restricting the use of GM plants is sufficient and there is no need for a further moratorium.
Klaus Ammann, head of Bern University's botanical garden, was cited as warning that those backing the moratorium weren't all lily-white either, adding, "Some of them are fundamentalists who want to kill off genetic engineering and spread irrational fears."
Ammann was further cited as saying that the idea of biological farming in developing countries was a pipe dream, adding, "These nations already use modern technology for farming when they can afford it. But because they often can't, it's up to rich countries like Switzerland to make sure their research and development is as competitive as it can be."
Cotttech – a new face in cotton research
October 5, 2005
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
http://www.csiro.au/index.asp?type=mediaRelease&id=187cottTech&style=mediaRelease
Innovative research approaches that generate commercial outcomes for the cotton industry are the target of the new face of cotton biotechnology research – CottTech.
CottTech, a joint venture between existing leaders in cotton research including CSIRO, Cotton Seed Distributors Ltd (CSD) and the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC), will build upon the existing capacity of the award winning CSIRO cotton breeding team.
With new research and development investment cotton researchers in CottTech will undertake a suite of new cotton biotechnology projects to raise the level of cotton research in Australia.
“CottTech will target key issues which have been identified as priorities by the industry” says CRDC Executive Director Mr Bruce Finney.
“All the partners in CottTech have previously supported research and development in these areas, but CottTech will allow us to channel new investments into some highly innovative areas of plant breeding research,” Mr Finney says.
CSIRO Plant Industry Chief, Dr Jeremy Burdon says that one of the features of much existing cotton research is it provides regular but step-by-step gains to cotton growers.
“CottTech will concentrate on the fundamental science and allow researchers to be more creative and original in their research,” Dr Burdon says.
“So, rather than delivering gains on top of an existing platform, research under CottTech seeks to raise the whole platform to a significantly higher level – one that will provide vastly improved outcomes for growers well into the future.”
CottTech aims to remove constraints on production and ultimately deliver beneficial traits faster through improved breeding techniques.
Tobacco biotech options weighed
October 5, 2005
Kansas City Star
Bill Graham
A St. Louis firm — Chlorogen Inc. — is, according to this story, developing ways to make tobacco leaves produce proteins for medical research and treatments by altering the chloroplast DNA in the plant cells.
The story explains that the chloroplasts produce proteins, but genetic transfer to other plants is prevented because chloroplasts are not involved in cell or plant reproduction.
Pharmaceutical tobacco is grown and harvested differently than smoking tobacco, so there would be no mixing of the two.
The story notes that startup Chlorogen is attracting venture capital and partners such as Sigma-Aldrich Corp. and Dow AroSciences LLC for research and development.
Keith A. Gary, program development director for the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute Inc., was quoted as saying, "Chlorogen would be a welcome addition to the expanding life sciences environment in the Kansas City regio."
Plant calls in backup to fight pests
October 5, 2005
MSNBC
Bjorn Carey
Mustard plants often fall prey to hungry spider mites. Now, thanks to a little genetic tweaking by scientists, they can call for backup to fight off leaf-munching pests.
When under attack by hungry pests, some plants release chemicals that call out to other insects, such as predatory mites, to come eat the pests. The mustard plant Arabidopsis thaliana doesn't naturally produce these distress chemicals — called terpenoids — but strawberry plants do.
So, scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands took the gene responsible for producing terpenoids in strawberry plants and inserted it into Arabidopsis.
To see if their Franken-plant worked, they planted equal numbers of modified and regular Arabidopsis plants and let a bunch of spider mites dine freely. As the spider mites munched, the researchers introduced predatory mites to the garden and stepped back to observe the feeding frenzy.
And sure enough, more predatory mites went to the rescue of the modified plants — 388 to 197. Not only that, but researchers discovered that the plants were also producing a second, unintended predatory mite attractant, in some cases in greater quantities than the intended one.
Previous attempts at introducing terpenoid encoding genes to plants have yielded disappointing results. Modified plants in this study, however, produced 25 times more predatory mite attractant than those from previous attempts, most likely because the researchers inserted the gene directly into the mitochondria, the cell's power plant. Since terpenoids aren't available commercially and are difficult to make in a lab, these scientists suggest that inserting this gene, or one like it, into crop plants could be a good way to protect them from pests.
Some scientists aren't convinced that this type of genetic modification is a good idea. Since the plant would constantly produce these terpenoids, predatory mites would constantly be attracted to the plant and wouldn't know when prey is actually available.
This study was detailed in a recent issue of the journal Science.
Horizontal gene transfer: plant vs. Bacterial genes for antibiotic resistance scenarios—what’s the difference?
October 5, 2005
ISB News Report
C. Neal Stewart, Jr. and Ayalew Mentewab
The advent of agricultural biotechnology has raised many biosafety concerns over the past decade. One of the more interesting concerns has been the potential for horizontal gene transfer (HGT).
The movement of a transgene from plant to microbe could pose a significant risk, especially if an antibiotic resistance gene, originally from a bacterium, could be transferred to a pathogenic bacterium, causing new antibiotic resistance problems for human health. These concerns have prompted regulators and companies alike to look askance at the use of antibiotic resistance genes in transgenic plants.
Researchers have expended much energy and resources into developing alternative transgenic plant production schemes such as herbicide tolerance, positive selection1, and marker-free selection2. All these alternatives have prominent drawbacks. After all, approximately 70% of all transgenic plants have been produced using the neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII) gene from Escherichia coli for good reason: it works, especially in most dicot species.
Besides alternative selection technologies, research has also focused on numerous technologies to remove markers using site-specific recombination3. While site-specific transgene removal might well be the ultimate solution to minimizing exogenous DNA in transgenic plants, it is far from routine in today’s laboratory. Thus, most researchers and smaller companies still use antibiotic selectable markers to produce transgenic plants for at least two reasons: 1) the high efficiency of using antibiotic selection; and 2) intellectual property constraints and technology availability of other techniques. Thus, new, and perhaps safer, selectable markers using established and proven selection schemes would be attractive for many plant biotechnologists.
We recently described a plant gene that confers kanamycin resistance to transgenic plants4. In this article we will discuss the relevance of this new antibiotic resistance gene to discussions of HGT biosafety, public acceptance and regulatory concerns, and its comparison to nptII. Many people contend that nptII is safe, but others have recently argued that if HGT occurred one trillion-fold less often than current risk assessment literature presumes, HGT could still have negative impacts5. Thus, the concern over HGT, especially of antibiotic resistance genes, perhaps warrants a closer look.
There are dozens of ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters in Arabidopsis thaliana, and the discovery of a unique function of the ABC transporter Atwbc19 was quite accidental. We performed microarray experiments in which A. thaliana was exposed to the explosive chemical, trinitrotoluene (TNT)6. Atwbc19 was one of several upregulated genes revealed, and we decided to perform additional experiments to assess the opportunity to use this gene in transgenic plants for potential explosives detection and remediation6. We noticed that a T-DNA insertional knockout mutant did not grow in media containing kanamycin, so we decided to produce transgenic plants with the ABC transporter, with and without an nptII cassette, to test whether Atwbc19 could be used as an nptII substitute. We found that its conferred resistance to kanamycin (and only kanamycin) was similar to nptII in transgenic plants, thus leading to the characterization of the first plant gene endowing resistance to antibiotics4. The initial experiments were in tobacco, but we are far enough along in experiments to produce transgenic Brassica species to conclude that it is effective in this genus as well.
The availability of the Atwbc19 gene could enable efficient and safe (with regards to HGT) production of transgenic plants. After all, this gene has presumably been in plants for eons, and there is no evidence that it has been transferred to bacteria during the course of evolution. Bacteria, like all organisms, have ABC transporters, but database searches have yielded no ABC transporter gene hits with plant-like codon use patterns in bacteria. Indeed, this illustrates one conceptual hurdle in the entire plant-to-microbe HGT argument: there simply are not many examples of plant-like genes found in bacteria, indicating that HGT from plants to microbes is quite rare. The inverse is true, however; that is, there are well documented examples of bacteria-like genes (and indeed entire microbial symbionts) being co-opted into the plant nuclear, chloroplast, or mitochondrial genome. And this is no surprise really—after all, Agrobacterium tumefaciens and its relatives naturally transform plants inserting bacterial DNA7.
So, this begs the question, how serious is the threat of HGT from transgenic plants to bacteria? Transgenic plant-to-microbe HGT has been shown to occur under experimental conditions when the bacteria already contained a form of the plant transgene (experimental tricks—see reference 7 for a discussion), but gene transfer from transgenic plants to bacteria has never been shown occurring in the field7. Nonetheless, there is a lack of data on the real rates of HGT between transgenic plants and microbes, and hence prestigious groups around the world, such as WHO, FAO, and the NAS, are urging researchers to produce transgenic plants without antibiotic resistance markers8. Does the availability of the plant Atwbc19 change anything, or should it be grouped, biosafety risk-wise, with nptII and other selectable markers of bacterial origin?
While the absolute risk of HGT is unknown, we believe there are at least four reasons why Atwbc19 would carry relatively less risk than nptII and other antibiotic resistance genes of bacterial origin. First, Atwbc19 is very specific for kanamycin. Unlike nptII, it does not confer resistance to geneticin, neomycin, or other aminoglycoside antibiotics4, which are used clinically more often than kanamycin. Second, at 2.2 kb, Atwbc19 is approximately 2.75 times larger than nptII; thus the chances of it being integrated intact into a bacterial recipient would, at least, be that much lower. Third, unlike genes of bacterial origin, Atwbc19 has plant codon usage. Thus, if it were to be introgressed into a bacterial genome, it would likely be expressed less than a bacterial gene. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even if Atwbc19 were transferred into bacteria and were expressed, it might not lead to an antibiotic resistant phenotype. This particular factor is not mentioned in the HGT literature. Our hypothesis is that Atwbc19 is targeted to the vacuole membrane of the plant cell, and its mode-of-action involves the active transport of kanamycin into the vacuole where it is sequestered4. While our data are equivocal with regards to precise targeting, this mode-of-action is consistent with published data on other ABC transporters. If this were, indeed, the mode-of-action, we would expect that Atwbc19 would not confer kanamycin resistance to bacteria since they lack a prominent central vacuole for sequestration of toxins. The same is true for mammalian cells. We have unpublished preliminary data showing that kanamycin resistance is not conferred to Escherichia coli when the gene is placed under the gal promoter, and we are following-up these findings with formal experiments with this and other bacterial species and mammalian cell cultures.
References
1. Reed J et al. (2001) Phosphomannose isomerase: an efficient selectable marker for plant transformation. Vitro Cell Dev Biol-Plant 37, 127-132
2. de Vetten N et al. (2003) A transformation method for obtaining marker-free plants of a cross-pollinating and vegetatively propagated crop. Nat Biotechnol 21, 439-442
3. Baszczynnski CL et al. (2003) Site-specific recombination systems and their uses for targeted gene manipulation in plant systems, pp157-178 in Stewart CN Jr (ed) Transgenic Plants: Current Innovations and Future Trends. Horizon Scientific Press: Wymondham, UK
4. Mentewab A Stewart C N Jr. (2005) Overexpression of an Arabidopsis thaliana ABC transporter confers kanamycin resistance to transgenic plants. Nat Biotechnol 23, 1177-1180
5. Heinemann JA Traavik T (2004) Problems in monitoring horizontal gene transfer in field trials of transgenic plants. Nat Biotechnol, 22, 1105-1109
6. Mentewab A, Cardoza V and Stewart CN Jr. (2005) Genomic analysis of the response of Arabidopsis thaliana to trinitrotoluene as revealed by cDNA microarrays. Plant Sci 168, 1409-1424
7. Broothaerts W et al. (2005) Gene transfer to plants by diverse species of bacteria. Nature 433, 629-633
8. Davison J (2004) Monitoring horizontal gene transfer. Nat Biotechnol 22, 1349
Environmentally friendly grass seed production
October 5, 2005
ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
View this report online, plus any included photos or other images, at www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr
Under the right circumstances, grass seed farmers in Oregon's Willamette Valley can make a profit—and help wildlife to thrive—during the rainy fall and winter seasons, according to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and cooperators.
From October to May, the valley averages 37 inches of rain, which flows over the region's grass seed fields into seasonal channels. Western pond turtles, Chinook salmon, redside shiners, red-legged frogs and many other aquatic creatures thrive in the vibrant channels, with nearby trees and brush supporting even more wildlife.
ARS researchers at the Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit in Corvallis, working with Oregon State University (OSU) scientists, are determining which species use the channels and how farmers manage these fields to preserve natural resources.
Nearly all the fish found in the channels are native to the Willamette Valley.
Scientists believe that's because land use there has changed little over time. Today's grass seed fields are similar to the wet prairie grasslands that covered the region before settlers introduced agriculture.
The ARS scientists discovered that many fish take shelter in the seasonal drainages. Agronomist Jeffrey Steiner observed that some even reproduce and find nursery habitats there. Agronomist George Mueller uses Geographic Information System tools and satellite images to determine which conservation practices are being used in areas thriving with fish and wildlife. Hydrologist Gerald Whittaker develops computer programs for calculating economical combinations of conservation practices.
Many of these practices preserve water quality. According to ARS plant physiologist Stephen M. Griffith, no-till farming—which doesn't disturb soil—also maintains water quality, boosts seed yields and saves farmers nearly $80 per acre, compared to conventional tillage.
Mark Mellbye, an OSU extension agronomist, works with farmers using conservation practices such as planting wildlife buffers and maintaining drainage and field border vegetation.
According to Steiner, many local farmers expressed interest in conservation and allowed the scientists to conduct research on their fields.
Read more about the research in the October 2005 issue of Agricultural Research magazine, available online at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/oct05/grass1005.htm
ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief in-house scientific research agency.
The next big oilseed crop
October 4, 2005
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mikkel Pates, Agweek Magazine
FARGO, N.D.—Technology Crops International, a global specialty crop production company based in North Carolina, soon will start looking growers for a brand-new specialty seed crop in 2006, cuphea, that has been under development by Procter and Gamble Chemicals for 20 years.
The story says that TCI, which has staff in Carrington, and the Fargo, N.D., area, will hold meetings for farmers in December and January and is looking to write contracts for the 2006 season.
Only 100 acres of the crop were grown in the United States in 2005.
Andrew Hebbard, TCI's chief executive officer, was quoted as saying, "This is a specialty crop that literally has the potential to be a major new oilseed crop."
The story explains that cuphea (pronounced koo- FEE-ah) produces a tiny oilseed that contains lauric acid and other natural fatty acids.
Modified lauric acid acts as a surfactant and has applications in household soaps, detergents, shampoos and toothpastes. A so-called "C-12" fatty acid, lauric acid is soluble in water and improves sudsing and cleansing properties of these products. Lauric acids are used in such well-known consumer brands as Tide, Oil of Olay, Head Shoulders and Crest.
The world market for lauric acid is 4.5 million tons. The United States consumes about a third of that, or 1.5 million tons, with a value of some $500 million in 2004.
Characterization of Cylindrocarpon Species, the cause of black foot disease of grapevine in California
October 1, 2005
Journal of Plant Disease
Black foot is a recently identified but worsening disease in California vineyards. Roots of symptomatic grapevines show black, sunken lesions. In cross section, the base of the trunk appears necrotic. Aboveground, leaves of infected vines appear to be scorched by water stress, and the entire vine becomes stunted, and frequently dies. Young vines are primarily affected by the disease. Because diseased plants must be removed, the disease causes substantial economic losses due to replanting costs. Species of Cylindrocarpon have been found associated with the disease. To clarify which Cylindrocarpon species are causing the disease in California, 31 Cylindrocarpon isolates associated with the disease were characterized based on DNA divergence, morphology, and pathogenicity. Based on DNA divergence, this study identified two species present in California, Cylindrocarpon destructans and C. macrodidymum. The morphology of these isolates was in agreement with published descriptions of both species. We found that C. macrodidymum isolates were reliably distinguishable from C. destructans isolates in culture, by a unique orange–dark brown colony color on 2% malt extract agar, and genetically, by a species-specific DNA marker. Each species caused typical black foot disease symptoms on grapevine rootstock 5C. This is the first report of C. macrodidymum in California.
Elsa Petit and Walter Douglas Gubler, Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, Davis 95616. Plant Dis. DOI: 10.1094/PD-89-1051. Accepted for publication 25 May 2005.
Development of an RT-PCR for High Plains virus indexing scheme in New Zealand post-entry quarantine
October 1, 2005
Journal of Plant Disease
High Plains virus (HPV) causes a potentially serious economic disease of cereals and is of quarantine importance for New Zealand. HPV is transmitted by the wheat curl mite Aceria tosichella, and neither the virus nor its vector is present in New Zealand. Cereal seeds imported to New Zealand are required to be certified HPV-free, as the virus is a regulated pest. A quarantine virus indexing scheme for HPV using specific procedures and reliable molecular methods of detection was developed to ensure that infected seed lines are not released from quarantine. A sample of 50,655 sweet corn seeds was taken from an imported commercial line and germinated in containment. HPV was detected, and results suggest the presence of a population of the virus. It is recommended that quarantine virus indexing scheme inspections be carried out when seedlings consist of at least five to six leaves. This allows symptoms to fully develop. In field-grown conditions, more symptomatic plants may be observed as a result of more conducive environmental conditions and also the spread of other virus diseases including Barley stripe mosaic virus. The protocol is recommended in HPV testing for quarantine purposes or as a diagnostic tool for evaluating the spread of HPV where it is already present.
B. S. M. Lebas, F. M. Ochoa-Corona, D. R. Elliott, Z. Tang, and B. J. R. Alexander, Plant Environmental Laboratory, Biosecurity New Zealand, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, P.O. Box 2095, Auckland 1015, New Zealand. Plant Dis. DOI: 10.1094/PD-89-1103. Accepted for publication 7 June 2005.
Chesapeake Bay day: Coordinating research to improve farm practices, Bay health
October 5, 2005
ARS News Service
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Department of Agriculture officials signed an agreement in Maryland today to enhance research coordination to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States.
USDA officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Chesapeake Bay Program Office and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Water Quality Program, which includes Bay-area state universities.
The signing was held at the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville (MD) Agricultural Research Center, operated by the Agricultural Research Service, USDA's chief in-house scientific research agency.
"The purpose of this agreement is to strengthen cooperation in a collaborative effort to fulfill the commitments of the Chesapeake 2000 agreement of the Chesapeake Bay Program, especially the 'Keystone Commitments,'" said Merle Pierson, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics.
At the event--designed to show research solutions that can reduce bay pollution from farms--Maryland Agriculture Secretary Lewis R. Riley spoke about the role of farmers in the bay cleanup.
One of the many displays on exhibit described another boost to bay research:
selection of the Choptank River watershed as one of 12 ARS research watersheds chosen nationally for the new USDA Conservation Effects Assessment Program (CEAP).
"Both the EPA agreement and the CEAP project reflect an intensifying collaborative effort to build on the bay research that BARC and the universities have engaged in for about two decades now, working with EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey," said ARS Beltsville Area Director Phyllis Johnson.
Johnson announced plans that include research to process manure into fuel and safer fertilizers. Other plans announced included growing perennial grasses for fuels. These grasses are considered bay-friendly because they do not require annual planting, which can cause soil to erode into the bay. They also require less fertilizer, reducing the potential for nutrient pollution.
"We would also like to partner with other organizations to start a genetics program for aquatic vegetation to help meet the goal of having 185,000 acres of submerged aquatic vegetation in the Chesapeake," Johnson said. "We are discussing this with the University of Maryland at College Park and the Eastern Shore, as well as the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science at Horn Point."
Tours and exhibits at BARC displayed the bay-related work of many of the center's 320 ARS researchers.
Karnal bunt; criteria for releasing fields from regulation
October 5, 2005
[Federal Register: (Volume 70, Number 192)]
[Page 58084-58086]
[DOCID:fr05oc05-21]
This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER contains notices to the public of the proposed issuance of rules and regulations. The purpose of these notices is to give interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rule making prior to the adoption of the final rules.
[[Page 58084]]
7 CFR Part 301
[Docket No. 04-134-1]
AGENCY: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, USDA.
ACTION: Proposed rule.
SUMMARY: We are proposing to amend the Karnal bunt regulations regarding the requirements that must be met in order for a field or area to be removed from the list of regulated areas. The proposed changes would allow a field to qualify for release after 5 cumulative years of specified management practices, rather than 5 consecutive years as the current regulations provide, and reorganize the manner in which those management practices are described. These proposed changes would clarify the existing regulations and provide growers in regulated areas with greater flexibility in their planting decisions. DATES: We will consider all comments that we receive on or before December 5, 2005.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by either of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and, in the ``Search for Open Regulations'' box, select ``Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service'' from the agency drop-down menu, then click on ``Submit.'' In the Docket ID column, select APHIS-2005-0080 to submit or view public comments and to view supporting and related materials available electronically. After the close of the comment period, the docket can be viewed using the ``Advanced Search'' function in Regulations.gov.Postal Mail/Commercial Delivery: Please send four copies of your comment (an original and three copies) to Docket No. 04-134-1, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3C71, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. Please state that your comment refers to Docket No. 04-134-1.
Reading Room: You may read any comments that we receive on this docket in our reading room. The reading room is located in room 1141 of the USDA South Building, 14th Street and Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC. Normal reading room hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 690-2817 before coming. Other Information: Additional information about APHIS and its programs is available on the Internet at http://www.aphis.usda.gov.FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Vedpal Malik, Agriculturalist, Invasive Species and Pest Management, PPQ, APHIS, 4700 River Road Unit 134, Riverdale, MD 20737-1236; (301) 734-6774.
Plant health - harmful organisms
October 5, 2005
European Commission, Health and Consumer Protection
The complete document of the following is available for download at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/plant/organisms/index_en.htm
Harmful Organisms: Section available in 10 language versions
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