Saturday, October 19, 2013

Persaingan Keras antara 3 ras kuning Japan dan China and how Indonesia should Act

The competition among nation in securing resources for survival betwen among the japanese, korean and chinese have expand to the new frontier ' a sea bed'

China and Japan face off over Pacific Ocean rare earth rights

Asian foes both submit applications to trawl seabed

By Phil Muncaster, 6th September 2012

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Chancellor snubs infosec snubs, opens Blighty's kimono

BBC's Clangers returns in £5m 'New Age' remake

'What's that Baby Clanger? You're taking out the recycling?'

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Why a Robin Hood tax on filthy rich City types is the very LAST thing needed

203

Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate

WikiLeaker-in-chief Assange refuses to meet Benedict Cumberbatch

The Channel

Friday, October 18, 2013

Penggunaan UTC (Universal Time Coordination) dalam penentuan Waktu

Sekarang, ketika entri ini saya ketik, menunjukkan pukul : 00.43 UTC, sedangkan jam di Lap top menunjukkan pukul 7.58 WIB, sedangkan jam di HP saya menunjukkan pukul 07.54.
Jadi, selisih waktu antara UTC dengan WIB kurang lebih 7 jam.

Sebenarnya versi UTC ini kurang lebih sama dengan versi lama, yaitu GMT (Greenwich mean Time), akan tetapi, scientific community mengganggap GMT kurang memenuhu syarat ilmiah.

Sekian dulu dari redaksi.

Ini saya baca gara-gara harus nonton rutin program di NHK world, berhubung saya menjadi program monitornya. Sedangkan skedulnya dibuat dalam format UTC.

Untuk link lebih jelas silahkan baca sendiri....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Plant pests: The biggest threats to food security?

The threat posed to crop production by plant pests and diseases is one the key factors that could lead to "a perfect storm" that threatens to destabilise global food security.

Already, the biological threat accounts for about a 40% loss in global production and the problem is forecast to get worse, scientists warn.

BBC News has asked Dr Matthew Cock, chief scientist for Cabi, a UK-based agri-environment research organisation, to compile a list of the worst plant pests threatening crops around the world.

Illustration of a family during the Irish potato famine (Getty Images)

Throughout history, the impact of plant pests and diseases, such as potato blight, can devastate lives

Scientists can be difficult; we have so many ways in which things can be measured, analysed or compared that sometimes it seems as if we never agree on anything.
So when I was asked "which are the world's worst agricultural pests?' my answer was simply that the question cannot be answered.
How do we define a pest? What measure would you use? How would you value that measure? Not only do perceptions of the worst problems vary according to geography, they also vary from year to year.
It is an unfortunate fact too that despite a general consensus on the threats from pests and diseases to global production, actual monitoring and evaluation of damage caused globally is very poorly understood.
The following list is by no means definitive therefore, nor a serious attempt to prioritise the threats posed by different agricultural pests.
All we are trying to do is to raise awareness of the immense range of pests and diseases that threaten agricultural crops, the devastation they can cause, and the difficulties in controlling them.
Scientists working in the field may disagree with our nominations; if they do, I welcome them to join the debate and share their own ideas, add a comment to this article or visit Cabi's Plantwise blog.

Worst historical pest - the desert locust

Schistocerca gregaria: a pest since biblical times, they fly in unexpectedly, strip a field bare in an hour and consume a very wide range of crops.
Locust swarms may vanish for many years, only to break out of their endemic regions after periods of abnormally high rainfall.
Another nomination is human beings, Homo sapiens. This species could appear in several categories, but we include it just once here, for its sometimes accidental, sometimes purposeful habit of introducing pests to new habitats where they flourish through lack of natural controls.
A recent example of the latter was the deliberate introduction of witches' broom disease of cocoa, Crinipellis perniciosa, in Brazil. The motive was a social one - to weaken the political power of the powerful cocoa landowners, and it achieved its desired effect: production across the region fell 75%. Brazil went from being the world's third-leading cocoa producer to 13th place.

Hardest pest to control - South American rubber blight

South American rubber blight (Image: L.Gasparotto/Cabi)

The rubber tree is a native of South America but very little of the commodity is produced there. The principal reason is the fungus Microcyclus ulei has resisted all attempts to control it over more than 100 years.
In the 1920s, it notoriously defeated Henry Ford's attempts to grow rubber for car tyres in the eponymous Fordlandia, Brazil, losing him an investment (in today's terms) of $250m (£156m).
Also worth considering in this category is coffee wilt disease, Fusarium xylarioides. The disease spreads insidiously through the soil and on machetes used to prune the trees.
The only way to halt it is a scorched-earth policy of pulling up all trees in infected plots and then waiting a year before replanting - plus another four years until you get a full harvest again.

Most expensive pest to control - western corn root worm

Western corn root worm larvae (Image: CIMMYT/Cabi)

In terms of the amount of pesticides once used to control Diabrotica virgifera virgifera and the expense of developing a resistant GM-strain, this beetle is a strong contender.
Under control for many years now, maize has been one of the few crops to show steady yield increases and for this the resistant strain can take credit.
Now, though, there are signs that resistance is breaking down.

Pest of greatest human impact - potato blight

The Phytophthora infestans fungus caused the Irish potato famine (1845-1852), during which one million people died and a further million emigrated from Ireland, causing the population to decrease by about 24%.
Another candidate is coffee leaf rust, Hemilaea vastatrix, a fungus that devastated coffee production in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the 19th Century and famously led to a switch to tea drinking in the UK.
But tea picking requires more continuous labour than coffee, so the Tamil migrants from India that used to go home after the coffee harvest ended up settling in the country, which led to catastrophic sectarian strife over a century later.

Worst stored product pest - the Khapra beetle

This insect, Trogoderma granarium, is difficult to control because it feeds on a variety of dried materials.
It is resistant to insecticides and can go long periods without food.
Infestations can result in up to 70% grain damage, making products inedible and unmarketable.

Worst climate change threat - mountain pine beetle

Mountain pine beetle galleries in a tree stem (Image: William M. Ciesla/Cabi)

The cumulative effect of the current outbreak of Dendroctonus ponderosae in British Columbia, Canada, has killed 13 million hectares of lodgepole pine forest and released an estimated 270 million tonnes of carbon, converting the forest from a carbon sink to a large net carbon source.
Generally, climate change is likely to mean that many wood-boring pests of cold northern climes will become more destructive, since higher temperatures will increase winter survival and possibly enable an extra generation in the summer.
Ironically then, northern forests, seen as a bastion against climate change, will become more threatened by it.

Most imminent threat - wheat stem rust strain Ug99

Wheat stem rust (Image: David Mowbray/CIMMYT/Cabi)

The Puccinia graminis tritici strain of wheat rust was discovered in Uganda in 1998 and has subsequently spread across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
In fact, seven races of the Ug99 lineage have now been identified.
New resistant varieties that yield more than current popular varieties are being released and promoted, but a major effort is needed to displace current susceptible varieties with those that have durable resistance.

Most resilient pest - colorado potato beetle

Colorado potato beetle (Image: C. Trouve/SRPV/Cabi)

Leptinotarsa decemlineata is a strong candidate for this award, having managed in the space of about 50 years to develop resistance to 52 different compounds belonging to all major insecticide classes (including cyanide).
This beetle therefore has effectively beaten the chemists.
Wherever possible, biocontrol (control by natural enemies) should be part of the strategy because the predator-parasite can more easily keep up in this arms race, one which humans have so palpably lost.

Next steps

The above is at best a very partial list of serious agricultural pests. At any one time, because of weather conditions, mutation to a virulent form, or emergence of resistance to chemical control, a pest will surge into prominence unexpectedly.
What we need is better monitoring and recording of pests in order to alert authorities to take early action, something we at Cabi are very keen to promote through our Plantwise initiative.
Coffee wilt disease, mentioned above, is a case in point - regular monitoring and rapid action could have halted this disease at a cost of a few million dollars at the most.
Instead, we reckon it has now caused at least a billion dollars of lost earnings to African coffee farmers, and it is still spreading.

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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".

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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.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

China and Japan face off over Pacific Ocean rare earth rights

Asian foes both submit applications to trawl seabed

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Friday, October 18, 2013

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Plant pests: The biggest threats to food security?

Worst historical pest - the desert locust

Hardest pest to control - South American rubber blight

Most expensive pest to control - western corn root worm

Pest of greatest human impact - potato blight

Worst stored product pest - the Khapra beetle

Worst climate change threat - mountain pine beetle

Most imminent threat - wheat stem rust strain Ug99

Most resilient pest - colorado potato beetle

Next steps

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Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

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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

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