Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Ketahanan Pangan : sebuah ketidak pastian

Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News

Rising populations are expected to place an increasing strain on the global food system

More than 600 scientists gathered in the Netherlands for a global food security conference, described as the first of its kind.

Organisers said science could help end uncertainty surrounding efforts to meet the food needs of future generations.
They added that, until now, there were many policy debates on food security but there was no scientific forum for researchers to share knowledge.
The next food security conference will be held in the US in 2015.
"A really key message from the conference for us is that we have got lots of estimates about needs of population growth etc, but at the moment we are so uncertain of the exact numbers - the uncertainty is really very high," said conference co-chairman Ken Giller, professor of plant production systems at Wageningen University.
"We talk about the current population being seven billion, moving to 9.2 billion in 2050 and the estimate is that we need to increase production 70% or more.
"But there are many different ways of addressing that. If we don't know what the problem is then we can't get started in addressing them."
Appetite for change
Prof Giller said there was "unprecedented interest" among the scientific community when details of the conference was first announced.
"We did anticipate about 250-300 people , but we actually ended up with more than 900 abstracts being submitted," he told BBC News.
"The conference was basically sold out - we had 600 people and that was all we could accommodate."
He explained that the conference was designed to create a forum where representatives from the different branches of science could come together and discuss and debate the issues of global food security.
"We pulled together a science committee with the real aim to make the conference broad and to include all the main disciplines," he said.
"We had people on the science committee from economics, nutrition and we had people dealing with food waste, which is a very important topical issue."

The combination of poor harvests and rising demand has increased price volatility in global grain markets

Prof Giller said that current estimates suggested that 30-40% of the food produced was wasted and not eaten.
Other themes that were discussed at the conference included:

Nutritional security,
Sustainable intensification of food production systems,
Novel ways of feeding nine billion,
Agricultural production as feedstock for renewables.

The organisers hope that the outcomes from the four-day event in Noordwijkerhout, South Holland, will help focus the scientific world's contribution to the UN global policy system.
One of the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" by 2015, which included the target of halving - between 1990 and 2015 - the proportion of people suffering from hunger.
Assessments suggest the target is "within reach". However, a 2013 report on the progress of the MDGs warned that one in eight people remained chronically undernourished.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced that he wants to build on the MDGs, replacing them with a suite of Sustainable Development Goals that will run from 2015-2030.
He said one of his priorities was to "adopt globally agreed goals for food and nutrition security, mobilise all key stakeholders to provide support to smallholder farmers and food processors and bolster the resilience of communities and nations experiencing periodic food crises".
Prof Giller said this presented a "wonderful opportunity for science to get directly engaged in policies and help advise governments".

More Science & Environment stories

RSS

Extension sought for badger cull
The original targets for culling badgers are changed as new, more accurate information on population numbers becomes available.
Higgs boson wins Nobel physics prize
Plane noise 'link' to heart disease

Features & Analysis

Cursed country
The nation that is too rich for its own good
'I escaped hell'
Indian women face up to sexual abuse
Back handers
Bribery and corruption in the classroom

BBC Future

Are you fit enough to be a space tourist?

What it takes to go into space

What it takes to have the right stuff Read more...

Programmes

Click Watch
The technology to help keep your teeth whiter than white and you away from the dentist’s drill

Monday, October 7, 2013

A genetic solution saved the French wine industry

by Steve Savage on 3 October 2013

Grapes by Steve Savage.

The mid to late 1800s was a very difficult time for the European wine grape industry. New pests associated with native North American grape species made their way to the Old World via transport between the continents. I recently wrote about how a fungal disease called downy mildew nearly destroyed the industry until it was saved by the accidental discovery of an effective chemical fungicide.
In this post I’m going to talk about an insect pest that was introduced to Europe in the same era. It was a a root feeding relative of aphid called phylloxera.
Native American grapes are quite tolerant to phylloxera, but when it started attacking the roots of the European Vitis vinifera grapes, it began debilitating and finally killing the vines. The aphid may have arrived in the 1850s, but was first recognized in 1863. This was an extremely trumatic economic and social crisis. More than 1 million hectares of vines were killed and many more debilitated before a solution was finally found. In this case the ultimate solution was found via genetics.

The genetic-based technology solution

1888 drawing of what is now classified as Daktulosphaira vitifoliae Phylloxera

1888 drawing of what is now classified as Daktulosphaira vitifoliae from Wikimedia Commons.

The solution to phylloxera that was ultimately applied seems obvious in hindsight. Since the North American grape species had always tolerated this pest, why not use them as “rootstocks” and graft the revered European varieties on top of them?
Grafting of desired varieties onto the roots of less desirable, but either more hardy or already established versions of the same crop was not a new idea. That had been practiced for thousands of years for many tree and vine crops. The ancient Hebrew and Christian scriptures are full of literary images based on the concept of grafting. It was an ancient, practical solution – but what it amounted to was a rather dramatic “genetic modification” of the roots of millions acres of European grapes (and eventually grapes around the world).
This idea of grafting onto foreign, low quality grapes was hard to swallow for much of the French wine community of the day. Their questions included:

Will treasured, traditional varieties like Pinot Noir grafted on this inferior sort of grape still make a classic red Burgundy worthy of each specific appellation in that district?
Will this new reality mess with the quality that was traditionally achieved with complex blend of varieties in a region like Bordeaux?
Will this new pest eventually overcome this solution?
Should wine made from grapes grafted on American rootstocks be labeled as GMO?

Ok. They didn’t ask the last question in the 1800s, but there was a long-running and eventually meaningless debate about whether pre-Phylloxera wines were better.

An ironic modern rejection of a genetic save for grapes

Flash forward to modern times. There is a nematode pest which spreads a grape disease called Fanleaf Virus. Once the soil on a given site has been contaminated with that small, roundworm parasite and the virus, if you plant vines there, even after ten years with no grapes, after a few years the vines decline and die. This is actually a problem nearly as old as Phylloxera, but fortunately it does not spread easily. Once people understood how it works, it has been mainly limited to certain areas in France, some other European countries, and a few places in California. The sad part is that there are significant hectares of vineyard sites in premium wine growing districts that can’t be used to make great wine because of this issue. For many crops, one can just move away from such problems, but for wine the unique combination of climate and soil can create conditions which are legitimately important for quality. The term “Terroir” is used to describe that essence of place. Fanleaf virus and its vector severely compromise the Terroir wherever they occur.
With the advent of biotechnology there was the possibility of a better solution for Fanleaf contaminated sites that never existed before (there were some nematode resistant rootstocks but they were undesirable for other reasons). A rootstock was developed which was resistant to the virus using the same approach that saved the Hawaiian papaya industry. With that genetic solution, high quality grapes could be successfully grown on on compromised sites in a way directly analogous to how American grape rootstocks saved the crop from Phylloxera in the 1800s.
One might imagine that with the tremendous esteem for terroir in the wine French wine industry, this means of rehabilitating highly valued vineyard sites would be eagerly embraced by the wine industry. Unfortunately that was not the case. There were some modest field tests of this rootstock being conducted by a French governmental agency in 2010. There was a great deal of public controversy about this, little industry defense, and ultimately activists destroyed those trials on August 15, 2010. Their stated concern was that this new rootstock could “genetically contaminate” the rest of the grape crop. Let me explain why that fear was irrational to an absurd degree…
As this post describes, back in the late 1800s, the entire French and European grape crop was replanted on American rootstocks which differ from the Vitis vinifera grapes by probably hundreds of genes or versions of genes. No one has ever needed to worry about “genetic contamination” from those millions of acres of genetically “foreign” rootstocks even though they have been present for over 100 years. If those industry-saving American rootstocks (which are normally only underground) ever happened to get the chance to flower and generate pollen, it still wouldn’t matter because grapes are never grown from seed. They are always grown from cuttings or buds. That is also why you can plant blocks of different grape varieties side by side with no issue of “contamination”. So why would rootstocks with ONE very useful gene inserted by genetic engineering suddenly be a contamination risk? There was absolutely no risk.
As far as I can tell, the grape industries in France and elsewhere were sufficiently intimidated by the magnitude and ferocity of the irrational response to have decided to simply live with some of their best vineyard sites being compromised. If someone in those industries knows differently, please let me know.

Virus-resistant transgenic papaya helps save Hawaiian industry

tion had dropped to only 26 million

pounds as PRSV spread throughout

the region. Since then, the transgenic

varieties have enabled farmers to

reclaim infected areas and in 2001,

Puna produced 40 million pounds of

papaya. The resistance has held up

remarkably well and remains stable

after 5 years of extensive plantings.

Hawaii also exports papaya to

Canada and Japan. The transgenic

papaya was recently deregulated in

Canada, which is a relatively small

market for Hawaii. The main chal

lenge is deregulation of transgenic

papaya in Japan, where Hawaii sells

about 30% of its papaya. Presently,

nontransgenic papaya must also be

produced in Hawaii to satisfy the

Japanese market, but this is increas

ingly difficult due to the disease

pressure. Exporters face added ex

penses to guard against the acciden

tal shipment of transgenic papaya

to Japan. In December 2000, Japan’s

Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry

and Fisheries approved line 55-1,

and the Ministry of Health, Labor

and Welfare is reviewing a recently

submitted petition for deregulation.

Anticipated approval of transgenic

papaya in Japan will allow Hawai

gated and established

in a field trial in

Waimanalo on Oahu

in April 1992. By De

cember 1992, it was

evident that line 55-1

was resistant under

field conditions.

From the 1992 field

trial, two cultivars

were developed and

designated ‘SunUp’

and ‘Rainbow’. ‘Sun

Up’ is homozygous

for the coat protein

gene while ‘Rainbow’

is an Fl hybrid of

‘SunUp’ and the non

transgenic ‘Kapoho’.

Unfortunately, by Oc

tober 1994, PRSV had spread through

out much of Puna, causing HDOA to

abandon rouging efforts to slow the

spread of PRSV. The race was on to

move the transgenic papaya line to

commercialization. A 1995 field trial in

Puna conclusively showed

that ‘SunUp’ and ‘Rainbow’

were resistant under pro

longed and heavy disease

pressure.

The U.S. Department of

Agriculture’s Animal Plant

Health Inspection Service

(APHIS) deregulated transgenic line

55-1 in November 1996, and the U.S. En

vironmental Protection Agency deregu

lated it in August 1997. The consultation

process with the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration was completed in Sep

tember 1997. Licenses to commercialize

the transgenic papaya were obtained by

the Papaya Administrative Committee

in Hawaii by April 1998. A celebration

was held to mark the debut of the trans

genic papaya on May 1, 6 years after

PRSV was discovered in Puna and after

the first field trial of line 55-1 was initi

ated. The transgenic fruit is currently

sold throughout the United States.

In 1992, Puna produced 53 million

pounds of papaya, but by 1998 produc

The experience in Hawaii shows

that transgenic virus resistance is

an excellent approach for controlling

viral diseases in horticultural crops.

CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE, VOLUME

, NUMBER

Two varieties of papaya resistant to papaya ringspot virus

have been developed using biotechnology: SunUp,

left,

and Rainbow,

right.

They have performed well for Hawai

ian growers, even under prolonged and heavy disease

pressure.

Courtesy of R. Manshardt

http://CaliforniaAgriculture.ucop.edu

•

APRIL- JUNE

2004

ian growers to expand their transgen

ic papaya markets and will eliminate

excessive costs associated with segre

gating trans-genic and nontransgenic

fruits.

The experience in Hawaii shows

that transgenic virus resistance is an

excellent approach for controlling vi

ral diseases in horticultural crops. This

industry was fortunate to have a po

tential product already under devel

opment when PRSV was discovered in

the main growing area of Puna. There

are many reports that virus-resistant

transgenic plants are being developed

in diverse crops, but few have been

commercialized. The papaya story

shows that this approach can provide

a stable and safe option for virus pro

tection that can be essential for the

success of specific horticultural crops.

D. Gonsalves is Director, Pacific Basin

Agricultural Research Center, USDA-

ARS, Hilo, Hawaii.

Reference

Gonsalves D. 1998. Control of papaya

ringspot virus in papaya: A case study.

Annu Rev Phytopathol 36:415–37.

ies (see sidebar, page 96). The latter ap

proach avoids the task of transforming

many varieties of a particular tree crop

and in the future may be used to regu

late quality and productivity traits.

Nutrients, consumer qualities.

though more difficult technically and

therefore not close to market, there

are many potential opportunities for

enhancing the nutritional value or con

sumer appeal of horticultural products

through biotechnology. In addition to

modification of ripening, projects to

increase the content of vitamins, miner

als or nutraceuticals in horticultural

products are in progress (Grusak and

Della Penna 1999). The development of

Golden Rice with enhanced beta

carotene (pro-vitamin A) in the grain (Ye

et al. 2000) demonstrated the potential

for biotechnology to increase nutritional

value. Whether such products will have

sufficient consumer appeal in fully de

veloped markets to drive their commer

cialization remains to be seen.

Floriculture, ornamental plants

Since floricultural and ornamental

plants are grown for aesthetic or other

nonedible purposes, there may be less

potential for public concern about GE

varieties than there has been with bio

tech food crops.

Flower color.

Several ornamental

plants, including carnation, rose and

gerbera, have been engineered for mod

ified flower color. Research has focused

on the manipulation of either anthocya

nins (red and blue colors) or carotenoids

(yellow and orange colors), with the in

tent of creating a wider range of flower

colors than occurs naturally, as well as

to produce natural dyes for industrial

purposes (Lu et al. 2003). Florigene is

selling Transgenic Moon

series carnations engineered for dark vi

olet-purple color around the world. The

varieties are developed in Australia and

flowers are produced primarily in South

America for marketing in the United

States and Japan.

Floral scent.

Putting the scent back

into flowers that have “lost” this trait

over years of traditional hybridization

and selection, or creating new fragrances

in plants, has considerable potential and

appeal. Research on genes controlling the

different biochemical pathways for vari

ous floral fragrances is being conducted

on wild plants and on crops such as snap

dragon, petunia and rose (Vainstein et al.

2001).

Plant size.

Currently, growth-

regulating chemicals are applied to

ornamental plants to inhibit gibberel

lic acid (GA) synthesis and reduce plant

height during crop production. Many

newly introduced ornamental species are

receiving particular attention via conven

tional breeding for dwarf plants because

their natural habits do not fit into market

ing systems requiring compact plants.

The manipulation of GA metabolism via

biotechnology has the potential to pro

duce ornamental and flowering plants

with reduced-height phenotypes (Clark et

al. 2003). The development of lawn grass

es that require significantly less frequent

mowing is another obvious application.

Early experiments suggest that expression

of genes controlling height can be applied

to many plant species.

Leaf life.

Engineering of plants to

delay leaf senescence (yellowing) is also

being pursued in ornamental crops. For

years, ornamental breeders have selected

new cultivars of plants with more attrac

tive “stay green” phenotypes. Cytokinins

are plant hormones well known to delay

the loss of chlorophyll in leaves; using

biotechnology, targeted expression of

genes involved in cytokinin synthesis is

now possible. When a gene promoting cy

tokinin biosynthesis is inserted into plants

in conjunction with a regulator (promot

er) that turns the gene on only when the

leaf starts to senesce, leaf life is extended

in transgenic plants exposed to drought,

nutrition and pathogen stress (Gan and

Amasino 1995; Clark et al. 2004).

Ethylene sensitivity

. As in fruit ripen

ing, manipulation of ethylene synthesis

or sensitivity has applications in the orna

mental plant industry. Ethylene accelerates

floral and foliar senescence, and chemical

methods have been developed to miti

Simply the diversity of crops utilized in horticulture slows

the adoption of new technologies. For example, as many

as 60 distinct cultivars of iceberg lettuce alone may be

grown throughout the year.

D. Gonsalves and S. Ferreira

Papaya ringspot virus causes small, darkened

rings on the surface of fruit, as well as foliar

damage.

eucalyptus

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Ketahanan Pangan : sebuah ketidak pastian

Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

More Science & Environment stories

Extension sought for badger cull

Higgs boson wins Nobel physics prize

Plane noise 'link' to heart disease

Top Stories

Features & Analysis

Cursed country

'I escaped hell'

Back handers

Most Popular

Shared

Read

Video/Audio

BBC Future

What it takes to go into space

Programmes

Click Watch

BBC links

Monday, October 7, 2013

A genetic solution saved the French wine industry

A genetic solution saved the French wine industry

The genetic-based technology solution

An ironic modern rejection of a genetic save for grapes

Further reading

Virus-resistant transgenic papaya helps save Hawaiian industry

About Me

Blog Archive

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

Related Stories

More on This Story

Related Stories

Related Internet links

Share this page

Top Stories

Features & Analysis

Most Popular

BBC Future

Programmes

Services

Monday, October 7, 2013

A genetic solution saved the French wine industry

The genetic-based technology solution

An ironic modern rejection of a genetic save for grapes

Further reading

Share: