Soil Study

Battling the blight Bean blight's reach expands to both tropical and temperate regions of the world. Shree Singh, a professor at the University of Idaho, has spent his career researching ways to generate cultivars of common bean resistant to diseases. According to Singh, "Common blight is by far the most severe and widely occurring bacterial disease that adversely affects common bean production worldwide." Common blight is caused by two species of bacteria belonging to the Xanthomonas genus. It is a difficult disease to attack. The bacteria can move along with seeds and plant matter. "When contaminated seeds are planted, the bacteria can then go on to infect the germinating plant and spread further," says Singh. Infected plant matter left behind after harvest can also infect the next cycle of crops. Complicating matters further, different strains of the bacteria can exist on the same seed. In fact, "A single field in Wisconsin yielded more than...

The Fight Against Citrus Greening Disease A new study of the citrus greening bacterium's effects on its insect vector, the Asian citrus psyllid, reveals multiple changes within the insect. During the infection, the pathogen affects the 'good' bacteria living inside the insect and alters the psyllid's metabolism in ways that could help spread the pathogen further. Ultimately, the study may reveal weak points in the transmission cycle that could yield novel and highly specific targets for control strategies. These approaches could be more effective and environmentally friendly than large-scale pesticide use. The study appears in the journal PLOS ONE. "Our work in this area could not be timelier," said Michelle Cilia, an assistant professor at BTI and research molecular biologist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. "Last week, the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service lowered its already dire pr...

Increasing Production of Seed Oils Many plants store oil and protein in their seeds as energy sources needed for germination. The National Institute for Basic Biology's Drs. Masatake Kanai, Shoji Mano and Mikio Nishimura et al., in the process of studying the mechanism that controls the synthesis and degradation of oils in plant seeds, revealed that oils are actively synthesized only during the mid-phase of the seed formation process. The research group considered that by extending the period seeds synthesize oils, they should be able to increase their oil content in seeds. Therefore, using the model plant Arabidopsis, they extended the expression time of WRI1, a gene that activates oil synthesis. As a result, they were able to increase the oil content of the seeds to 140% as compared to wild-type. Also, while extending the oil synthesis phase, suppressing protein synthesis in the late-phase of seed formation increased the oil content of the seeds as compared to wild-typ...

More Efficient Water Management in Rice Crops The aim of the study was to quantify the water used in two different systems of rice crop, water-seeded system and dry-seeded system, during the first month of crop growth. This research was carried out in California (USA) along with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and 15 researchers from other universities and research centers of Italy, China, Egypt and United States. Results suggest that these two systems of water management show no differences regarding the total crop cycle. Rice is the third-largest global crop area (165m hectares) after wheat and corn, but it is the most important crop worldwide considering the large area and the amount of people who depend on their harvest. Globally, the cultivated area in China and India represents half of the total surface. Spain has the second largest rice area of the European Union with 115,000 hectares behind Italy. Rice crops usually grow under conditions of continuously...

In 2030, We Will have Local Protein on Our Plate The bulk of the protein on our plates originates in Brazil, because the protein fodder consumed by food-producing animals consists mostly of soy grown there. If the vision proposed by the ScenoProt project, coordinated by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), becomes reality, by 2030 our food production will no longer be dependent on a handful of large Brazilian companies. "This project seeks to increase Finland's self-sufficiency in protein production from the current less-than-twenty to sixty per cent. A similar change must take place in the whole of Europe, as soy cultivation destroys rain forest in Brazil, accelerating the climate change," says Principal Research Scientist Anne Pihlanto of Luke. New foodstuffs pave the way to a healthier diet Efforts are taken to increase self-sufficiency in protein protection by developing foodstuffs in which protein originates in new sources, such as insects a...

Lack of Sleep May Zap Cell Growth, brain activity, Study in Plants Suggests Albrecht von Arnim, a molecular biologist based in the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology, studied plants but said the concepts may well translate to humans. His team examined how protein synthesis--the process that determines how organisms grow and how cells renew themselves--changes over the course of the daily day-night cycle. He also explored whether any such changes are controlled by the organism's internal time keeper, the circadian clock. Proteins are newly created in every cell by translating messages made from the cell's own DNA, the genome. Von Arnim's findings, published in the journal Plant Cell, show not only that protein synthesis activity changed over the course of the day, but also that it was under the influence of the circadian clock. "When we misalign our behavior with our circadian clock, for example by creating jet lag, or by work...

Secrets of a Rice-Killing Fungal Toxin Mycotoxins are toxic compounds produced by fungi that are not directly involved in growth, development, or reproduction. These secondary metabolites typically colonize crops and are a real economic burden for farmers. TeA is known to be produced by at least three different plant pathogenic fungi, and is associated with spoiling of fruits, vegetables, and food-crops, as well as post-harvest decay. "Now that we know the gene responsible for biosynthesis of this harmful toxin," notes co-lead author Takayuki Motoyama, "after further testing we might be able to devise a way to regulate its expression and prevent destruction of important crops." When studying microorganisms like fungus, researchers have found that genes for many secondary metabolites are silent under laboratory conditions, which has made finding them especially difficult. The CSRS group led by Hiroyuki Osada has extensive experience studying secondary m...

Beneficial Natural Compounds in Tomato Scientists at the John Innes Centre have found a way to produce industrial quantities of useful natural compounds efficiently, by growing them in tomatoes. The compounds are phenylpropanoids like Resveratrol, the compound found in wine which has been reported to extend lifespan in animal studies, and Genistein, the compound found in soybean which has been suggested to play a role in prevention of steroid-hormone related cancers, particularly breast cancer. As a result of the research led by Dr Yang Zhang and Dr Eugenio Butelli working in Professor Cathie Martin's lab at the John Innes Centre, one tomato can produce the same quantity of Resveratrol as exists in 50 bottles of red wine. One tomato has also produced the amount of Genistein found in 2.5kg of tofu. Dr Zhang and Butelli have been studying the effect of a protein called AtMYB12 which is found in Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant found in most UK gardens and used as a mode...