Agnet Dec. 11/03 -- III
Biotech
crops provide economic boost on the farm and beyond thefarm gate
Brazil court
overrules Parana on gene-modified soy, Estado says
Nippon paper
industries develops innovative recombinant DNA technology
Study
details challenges to U.S. soybean industry
Scientists
map what makes a root a root
Mustard-root
map breaks new ground tracking gene expression
Two charged
in alleged Fla. citrus scam
Propanil and
Fenamiphos; Use deletion and product cancellation order
how to subscribe
Biotech
crops provide economic boost on the farm and beyond thefarm gate
December 11, 2003
From a press release
WASHINGTON -- Plant biotechnology already is creating high-paying jobs and
economic value and will deliver even more value both on the farm and beyond the
farm gate in the years ahead, according to a study by University of Minnesota
professor C. Ford Runge.
"The vast stock of plant breeding and genomic research and development
knowledge that led to the biotech revolution will generate billions of dollars
in additional economic benefits for farmers and others in the agrifood value
chain and within public and private research communities," Runge said.
Four commercial biotech crops -- corn, soybeans, cotton and canola --
represented $20 billion in value in the United States in 2002, half of the total
$40 billion value of the four crops.
Runge, director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and
Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law,
released the study during a news conference at the National Press Club. He is
scheduled to present the study later today at the Fall Forum of the National
Conference on State Legislatures in Washington, D.C.
The study, "The Economic States and Performance of Plant Biotechnology in
2003: Adoption, Research and Development in the United States," is an
up-to-date effort to provide a detailed view of biotechnology's value at the
farm level and beyond the farm gate, where the crops -- and the research and
development that creates them -- generate additional jobs, income and investment
in the agrifood chain and public and private research community.
The U.S. Corn Belt and cotton-growing regions gained the most economic value
from planting biotech crops in 2002, led by Iowa ($3.8 billion), Illinois ($2.5
billion), Minnesota ($2.2 billion), Nebraska ($1.8 billion), Indiana ($1.3
billion) and South Dakota ($1 billion). Following these major corn and soybean
growing states, Missouri was next with $1 billion, followed by North Dakota
($689 million), Ohio ($619 million) and cotton-producing states Arkansas ($670
million) and Mississippi ($528 million).
"The economic impacts of plant biotechnology also are increasingly evident
beyond the farm gate and in individual states active in biotech research and
development," Runge said. "Beyond the more than $20 billion in biotech
crops grown in 2002, new plant biotech firms and research facilities are being
created throughout the United States. The number of agricultural and food
scientists are increasing as workers are attracted to the biotech sector's
above-average wages, and large number of individual states are reaping the
benefits of this investment and job-related activity."
"While 41 of 50 states had some type of biotech initiative by 2001, those
that have aggressively adopted and invested in biotechnology are reaping the
greatest rewards," Runge said. Corn Belt states with higher adoption levels
of biotech crops have a greater number of ag and food science jobs than those
with lower levels of adoption. For example, Iowa, one of the top five states in
crop biotech adoption, has 50 ag and food science jobs per 100,000 jobs, more
than lower adoption states. The average annual salary for these jobs in 2001 was
$52,310 -- more than one and a half times the U.S. average of $34,020.
In Wisconsin, where 56 of the 200 bioscience companies are dedicated to
agriculture, the study indicated there are 21,000 workers who account for $5
billion of the Badger state's economy.
In the past two years, field tests have been conducted on 100 new biotech crop
traits by 40 universities and 35 private sector companies -- from a new variety
of corn with an improved nutritional profile for use as an animal feed to a type
of wheat that can better withstand droughts. Runge said continued investment in
research and development -- along with more public education about the benefits
of biotechnology -- is key to achieving further gains from plant biotechnology.
"As consumer confidence grows, it will feed the demand for new biotech
varieties, increase the advantages of those willing and able to supply them, and
indirectly establish a base of support for continued public investments in plant
biotech," he said. "That translates directly into high social rates of
return in the form of educational and job opportunities."
The study is available at http://www.apec.umn.edu/faculty/frunge/plantbiotech.pdf.
Support for the study was provided by the Council for Biotechnology Information.
The results are those of the authors alone and not the University of Minnesota.
Brazil
court overrules Parana on gene-modified soy, Estado says
December 11, 2003
Bloomberg.com
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aaX.YotSl.wo&refer=latin_america
Brazil's Supreme Court, according to this story, suspended a law banning the
sales and cultivation genetically modified soybeans in Parana state, O Estado de
S. Paulo said.
The Federal Supreme Court unanimously voted to suspend Parana's prohibition on
the planting, trading and financing of gene-altered soybeans, the paper said.
The court said Parana state has overstepped its authority as President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva in October decreed that farmers who already had modified
seeds could plant them this year and sell them until 2005, Estado said.
Parana state Governor Roberto Requiao said he will maintain the ban on the
export of gene-altered soybeans in Paranagua Port, as the state does not have
the technology to separate the modified seeds from conventional ones, the paper
said.
Nippon
paper industries develops innovative recombinant DNA technology
December 11, 2003
Japan Corporate News Network
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=6114
Tokyo - Nippon Paper Industries (TSE: 3863) has recently announced that it has
successfully developed a new recombinant DNA technology called "SDI (Site
Direct Integration) System."
This new technology enables genetic exchanges in genetically-engineered products
to replace a new whole-gene with the already-existed gene without inducing
changes in a DNA.
Details will be presented at the 27th annual meeting of the Molecular Biology
Society of Japan held in Kobe, December 11.
Study
details challenges to U.S. soybean industry
December 8, 2003
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rob Wynstra
http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news2608.html
URBANA--The regional distribution of soybean production and processing capacity
in the world has shifted dramatically during the last decade. And, according to
a recent study co-authored by Peter Goldsmith, assistant professor of
agribusiness management in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
at the University of Illinois and National Soybean Research Laboratory Fellow in
Agricultural Strategy, this change will have several important consequences for
the U.S. soybean industry.
The other co-authors for the study were graduate assistant Ling Bi from the
College of Commerce and Business Administration at the U of I, Associate
Professor Jerry Fruin from the Department of Applied Economics at the University
of Minnesota, and Rodolfo Hirsch from Rabobank in Brazil. Funding was provided
by the U of I Campus Research Board.
"Since the early 1990s, the U.S. share of world soybean production has
declined from about 50 percent to less than 40 percent," Goldsmith said.
"During that time, Brazil's share increased to more 25 percent, and
Argentina's share rose to nearly 15 percent. Similar changes are underway in the
processing sector."
He notes that this shift has forced the world's largest soybean processors to
remap their global strategies.
"The dominant trend in processing plant location is a shift away from
mature markets, such as in the U.S.," Goldsmith said. "In those
markets, the plants tend to be older and smaller, the technology is more dated,
farmer suppliers are smaller, and regional production is flat. By investing in
the new growth areas, companies can employ the latest technologies, improve
economies of scale, and have access to growing supply base."
Goldsmith points out that this process is already underway in the expanding
production areas of Brazil and Argentina.
"The implication is that U.S. processing assets will be increasingly
focused on the domestic livestock industry and the growing market for
differentiated products, such as isolates, proteins, flours, isoflavones, and
oils," he said. "One major challenge will be to find opportunities for
growth in the livestock industry. For differentiated products, the challenges
will be to refocus on customer service and to find enough value to offset the
industry's maturing traditional market.
Another outcome of these changes is that soybean production and processing is
shifting to countries that have weak intellectual property right protections.
"This change is especially significant because of the widespread
availability of Roundup Ready technology," Goldsmith said. "The lack
of patent protection in Argentina and Brazil has already accelerated the switch
from traditional crops and pasture to soybean production. The increasing supply
of soybeans has further fueled the expansion of soybean exports, processing
investments, and soybean meal exports in those areas."
He adds that Brazil's government research system continues to invest
aggressively in soybean research and development.
"The combination of varieties adapted to low latitudes, the plentiful
availability of land, and the improving transportation infrastructure has
created a favorable environment for opening new land for soybean
production," Goldsmith said.
Goldsmith emphasizes that, in the long run, the incentives for soybean research
applicable to U.S. conditions may be dampened if the domestic market growth
prospects are dim and the developing countries where production is expanding are
unable to enforce intellectual property rights.
"Without growth in research, the risk of soybean diseases would then
increase and production performance would be affected," he said. "The
overlay of processing assets that depend on an abundant supply of soybeans would
in turn be at risk from weakening incentives to conduct soybean research."
Scientists
map what makes a root a root
December 11, 2003
University of Arizona
For the first time, scientists have figured out which of 22,000 genes are turned
off and on in all the different types of cells that make up the growing root of
a flowering plant.
The result is the first detailed map of when and where the genes are active in
roots of the plant Arabidopsis. The achievement offers biologists a new way to
explore how complex tissues and organs develop from a single cell, not only in
plants but in other organisms, the researchers said. The new information will
also contribute to more sophisticated methods for the genetic improvement of
crop plants.
"Each cell is defined by the different genes that are active within the
cell," said David Galbraith, a professor of plant sciences at the
University of Arizona in Tucson. "We are asking what makes a root a
root." The researchers used methods pioneered in his lab, including use of
a fluorescence-activated cell sorter, to isolate the different root cells.
Joanne Tornow, a program director with the National Science Foundation, which
funded the research, said, "The creation of the root map is a terrific
advance forward."
Galbraith and Georgina Lambert from UA will publish their findings in the
December 12 issue of the journal Science. Other authors on the paper include
Philip Benfey and Jean Wang of Duke University in Durham, N.C., and Kenneth
Birnbaum, Jee W. Jung and Dennis Shasha of New York University.
A fundamental question in biology is how cells multiply and organize themselves
to form discrete organs. While scientists knew some of the genes that were
turned on in a growing root, no one had yet pinpointed in which root tissues and
at what point in time all the genes switched on and off. Grinding up a root to
see what genes were activated -- which scientists call "expressed" --
gave an overall picture but didn't provide specifics.
When developmental biologist Philip Benfey heard David Galbraith give a seminar
on his fluorescence-activated cell sorter technology, Benfey realized that
Galbraith's technology might solve the problem. So the two teamed up.
Galbraith said, "It was a nice balance -- we wouldn't have done it without
their presenting the research problem, and they couldn't have done it without
this technology."
People from Benfey's lab brought samples of Arabidopsis thaliana, the lab rat of
the plant world, to UA so the two groups could work together. To distinguish the
various layers of the root, Benfey's team used a telltale green fluorescent
protein to highlight each of five different cell types within the roots.
Galbraith's fluorescence-activated cell sorting technology was then used to
select individual root cells characteristic of the different cell layers. In
addition, the researchers repeated the work using cross-sections of roots that
represented various stages of growth, a technique to tell whether the five cell
types expressed different genes at different times during development.
Once the researchers had separated a particular cell type of a particular age,
they used thumbnail-sized DNA microarrays, or "gene chips," to measure
the activity of about 22,000 genes, about 80 percent of the genes present in an
Arabidopsis cell. When genetic material from the cells are added to the gene
chips, the chips indicate which genes are activated.
The researchers did not expect to find so many Arabidopsis genes involved in
root development.
"To me one of the most surprising things was that almost half of the 10,000
genes expressed in the root showed dramatic levels of tissue-specific
expression," said Benfey. "I would have guessed perhaps 10 to 20
percent of Arabidopsis genes would have been so expressed."
Galbraith, whose forte is developing new technologies that other researchers can
adopt for their own research, said, "This work is an example of how
collaborative research can lead to great progress."
As a member of the UA's Institute for Biomedical Science and Biotechnology,
Galbraith anticipates more opportunities for such fruitful partnerships. He
said, "IBSB is designed to promote collaboration across disciplines."
Mustard-root
map breaks new ground tracking gene expression
December 11, 2003
National Science Foundation (NSF)
A new “gene expression” map is helping scientists track how a complex tissue
ultimately arises from the blueprint of thousands of genes.
Focusing on the root of a small flowering mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, a
research team led by Duke University biologist Philip Benfey created a detailed
mosaic of cells showing where and when about 22,000 of the plant’s roughly
28,000 genes are activated within growing root tissue.
The results, announced in the Dec. 12th issue of the journal Science, are the
first to demonstrate “this level of resolution of gene expression on a global
basis for any organism,” said Benfey. The work, he said, serves as “a proof
of principle” that similar approaches can be applied to other plant organs and
other organisms.
It also marks the first time researchers have tracked the vast majority of an
organism's genes as they are switched on and off as cells grow, continually
divide and ultimately differentiate to build specialized tissue.
The ability to track gene expression on this scale (with each cellular division
along a comprehensive front) is critical to answering one of biology's basic,
yet most puzzling, processes: How do distinct, yet coordinated organs and
specialized cells arise from the endless division of cells that initially seemed
quite similar? For example, how does this complex process with a simple name,
development, begin with a single, fertilized cell and ultimately yield a plant
with roots, leaves, buds and blooms?
The researchers also found that different types of root cells tended to express
particular sets of genes that were clustered together on the plant chromosomes.
Understanding these patterns of cell types and gene clusters, Benfey said, could
help biologists decipher the genetic machinery of development and eventually
lead to new ways to enhance crops.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the
independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education
across all fields of science and engineering.
Three years ago following an international effort, Arabidopsis became the first
plant to have its genome sequence completed. NSF, a key funder of the sequencing
effort, then launched "Arabidopsis 2010," a program to determine the
function of the all of the plant's genes in this decade. (It, too, is part of a
multinational effort.)
The gene-expression map announced in Science resulted from a $2.2 million 2010
project to apply “genomics approaches to finding transcriptional networks.”
(Using a gene's DNA as the template, the transcription process creates strands
of RNA, molecules that control the building of proteins and serve as catalysts.
A network of various biochemical factors, such as signaling hormones, can affect
this process.)
According to Joanne Tornow, a program director in NSF’s Division of Molecular
and Cellular Biosciences, “the creation of the root map is a terrific advance
forward.”
“The process should work with other plant tissues, although beyond the root it
may be more difficult to observe changes in gene expression over developmental
time,” said Tornow.
“But this lays the groundwork for looking at how various biological pathways
interlink in transcriptional networks,” she said. “There are still thousands
of genes in Arabidopsis, and we know almost nothing about their function. By
knowing when a gene is expressed and where it is expressed, we get clues about
the processes it is involved with and potentially its function as well.”
To develop the map, Benfey worked with colleagues at Duke, New York University
and the University of Arizona. In Science, they report, “High throughput
techniques allowed the harvesting, protoplasting (breaking down of cell walls by
enzymes), and sorting of approximately 10 million cells in about 1.5 hours.”
To track gene expression over time, they relied upon the fact that a root
cell’s advancing stages of development correlate to its distance from the root
tip’s growing point.
To track the lineage of individual cells as they developed into specific tissue,
they attached marker genes to genes characteristic of each of five different
cell types or tissues. The marker genes produce a tell-tale, and therefore
traceable, green fluorescent protein (GFP) when the gene they’re attached to
is activated.
Then, using methods invented by David Galbraith at the University of Arizona,
researchers moved quickly to sort, isolate and identify the
fluorescence-activated genes, which glow under ultraviolet light when the gene
they’ve marked is being expressed. They conducted the process during three
successive stages synchronously across five zones of cells and tissues in the
root.
To generate a visual map of 15 “subgrids,” the massive amount of data was
“digitally reconstructed” with the intensity of gene expression illustrated
along a color scale.
According to Benfey, “other genomic studies, in which whole tissues were
ground up and their global gene expression profiles determined, certainly
generated much useful information. However, critical information on the
mechanisms of development was lost. Development occurs at the single cell level,
and there’s a dramatic difference from one cell to the next, in terms of its
gene expression.”
Two
charged in alleged Fla. citrus scam
December 11, 2003
Associated Press
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Two men were, according to this story, arrested after
allegedly posing as Florida Department of Agriculture workers and charging
elderly residents $150 to cut down trees they said were infected with citrus
canker.
Cornelius Smith, 22, and Donovan Boyette, 26, were charged Monday with grand
theft and exploitation of the elderly. Officials said they cut down three trees
at one home and sprayed a substance on trees at another.
Propanil
and Fenamiphos; Use deletion and product cancellation order
December 10, 2003
[Federal Register: (Volume 68, Number 237)]
[Page 68901-68904]
[DOCID:fr10de03-77]
[OPP-2003-0200; FRL-7332-5]
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: In accordance with section 6(f)(1) of the Federal Insecticide,
Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), as amended, the Agency is issuing a
Cancellation Order announcing its approval for the voluntary product and use
amendments/cancellations submitted by: Agriliance, LLC; Dow AgroSciences, LLC;
and RiceCo, LLC, to voluntarily cancel all small grain uses (spring (hard red)
wheat, oats, spring barley, and durum wheat) of certain end-use and technical
products for the active ingredient propanil (3',4'-dichloropropionanilide),
effective July 28, 2003; and Bayer CropScience to voluntary cancel all
registrations for products containing the active ingredient fenamiphos (ethyl
3-methyl-4-(methylthio)phenyl-(1-methylethyl)phosphoramidate), effective May 31,
2007. In conjunction with the request for voluntary cancellation, Bayer
CropScience has also agreed to amend their existing fenamiphos product
registrations and implement interim risk mitigation measures.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For propanil: Carmen Rodia, Special Review and
Reregistration Division (7508C), Office of Pesticide
Programs, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue,
NW., Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: (703) 306-0327; fax number:
(703) 308-8041; e-mail address: rodia.carmen@epa.gov.
For fenamiphos: Tawanda Spears, Special Review and Reregistration
Division (7508C), Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental
Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20460-
0001; telephone number: (703) 308-8050; fax number: (703) 308-8005; e-mail
address: spears.tawanda@epa.gov.
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