Agnet Dec. 5/03 -- II
Science
chief extols opportunities of GM
Monsanto
sees US bio-wheat approval within 2-3 years
Plant
pathologists express need for plant pathology-related microbial culture
resources
Applying
science by public vote
Japan to
tighten control on pesticides against terror attacks
Helping
stored alfalfa keep its protein
Latest
knowledge on plant cell-wall biology in new book
how to subscribe
Science
chief extols opportunities of GM
December 5, 2003
The Scotsman
Dan Buglass
http://www.business.scotsman.com/agriculture.cfm?id=1334612003
Paul Rylott of Bayer CropScience was cited as telling a meeting of the UK
Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, hosted by the Royal Society
of Edinburgh yesterday that genetically modified crops provide an exciting
opportunity for agriculture, adding, "An overview of UK farming makes it
clear that it is a patchwork. About two thirds of the land is down to grass and
of the arable land the same proportion is in cereals with a third down to a
range of break crops. That means the potential area of land that might be used
for GM crops is no more than 5 per cent."
Under stiff questioning from members of the ACRE committee, Rylott insisted that
farmers were more than capable of meeting any standards of husbandry needed to
grow GM crops.
Monsanto
sees US bio-wheat approval within 2-3 years
December 4, 2003
Reuters
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/12/05/rtr1171010.html
WASHINGTON -- Hugh Grant, the chairman and chief executive of Monsanto Co. was
cited as saying Friday that the U.S. government would likely take two to three
years to approve the company's proposal to commercialize genetically-modified
wheat, adding, "My guess is it's going to take two or three years to get
regulatory approval, " and that Monsanto intended to soon resubmit an
application for U.S. approval of its biotech wheat.
Plant
pathologists express need for plant pathology-related microbial culture
resources
December 5, 2003
American Phytopathological Society Press Release
http://www.apsnet.org
St. Paul, Minn. - Microbial culture collections have played a crucial part in
accelerating the progress of research in the biological sciences, but a
collection dedicated to plant pathogens is still needed, say plant pathologists
with the American Phytopathological Society (APS). While many collections of
relevance to plant pathology do exist, there is a need for a comprehensive
repository of plant pathogens for the preservation of materials used in plant
pathology research, said Kevin McCluskey, Research Assistant Professor,
Department of Microbiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
"Collections have a specific focus, and the long-term preservation of the
diversity of plant pathogens is one area that is generally overlooked," he
said.
Collections of plant pathogens have often been generated and maintained by
individual researchers, and when those individuals retire or change their
research emphasis, the collections may be neglected or discarded, said McCluskey.
"Resources have certainly been lost over the years, and this process is
continuing," he said. "A specific repository, dedicated to preserving
and distributing plant pathogenic organisms would be a valuable tool advancing
the goals of plant protection for the United States and the world," said
McCluskey.
More on this subject, including funding opportunities for collections, the
variety of collections in existence, and trends in organization, is available in
this month's APS feature article that can be found on the APS website at http://www.apsnet.org.
The American Phytopathological Society (APS) is a non-profit, professional
scientific organization dedicated to the study and management of plant disease
with 5,000 members worldwide.
Applying
science by public vote
December 2, 2003
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Henry I. Miller
Via AgBioView at www.agbioworld.org
'How can you tell whether a whale is a mammal or a fish?" a teacher asks
her third-grade class.
"Take a vote?" pipes up one of the pupils.
This idea might be amusing coming from a child, but it's a lot less funny when
applied by governments to the formulation of complex policies that involve
science and technology. And it's an approach that is becoming increasingly
common around the world.
Britons had their say during the summer, for example, on whether they want
biotechnology-derived (or gene-spliced) products in their fields and their food.
In order to gauge public opinion in advance of a decision scheduled later this
year on whether to allow commercial planting of gene-spliced crops, at great
expense the British government and local authorities sponsored a series of
public discussions around the country.
The head of the British debates' organizing committee, Professor Malcolm Grant,
called them a "unique experiment to find out what ordinary people really
think once they've heard all the arguments."
Mark Henderson, science correspondent for the Times, offered this view of the
U.K.'s half-million pound initiative: "The exercise has been farce from
start to finish. I'm not sure I want the man in the street to set Britain's
science, technology and agriculture policy. One of the six meetings ... spent
much of its time discussing whether the SARS virus might come from
(gene-spliced) cotton in China. It's more likely to have come from outer
space." Henderson went on to observe that the meetings were dominated by
anti- technology zealots, the only faction that was well-enough organized and
cared enough about the issue to attend.
The urge to make policy based on public opinion about such issues flourishes on
this side of the Atlantic as well. The National Science Foundation, whose
primary mission is to support laboratory research across many disciplines, is
funding a series of "citizen technology forums," at which average,
previously uninformed Americans come together to solve a thorny question of
technology policy.
At a time when federal budgets are under pressure and laboratory research
funding is tight, the National Science Foundation has seen fit to spend almost
half a million taxpayer dollars on this politically correct but dubious project.
Getting policy recommendations on complex technical questions like the safety of
biotechnology and nanotechnology from groups of citizen non-experts (who are
recruited by newspaper ads) is sort of like going from your cardiologist's
office to a diner, explaining to the waitress the therapeutic options for your
chest pain, and asking her whether you should have the angioplasty or just take
medication.
The first of these foundation-funded groups tackled regulatory policy toward
agricultural biotechnology and recommended that the government tighten
regulations for growing gene-spliced crops, including a new requirement that the
foods from these crops be labeled to identify them for consumers. They got it
wrong: Their proposals are unwarranted, inappropriate and contrary to the
recommendations of experts, including those within the government and in the
scientific community.
Science is not democratic. The citizenry does not get to vote on whether a whale
is a mammal or a fish or on the temperature at which water boils. Legislatures
cannot repeal laws of nature.
We should be wary of attempts to sample public opinion as a prelude to setting
public policy on highly technical subjects. The goal of policy formulation
should be to get the right answers -- in this case, that gene-splicing is
essentially an extension, or refinement, of less precise genetic techniques that
have been around for at least half a century; that gene-spliced plants can make
critical contributions to farmers, consumers and the health of the natural
environment; and that, except as science dictates in specific cases, the
products of gene-spliced organisms should be regulated no differently than
other, similar agricultural and food products.
The formulation of public policy toward science and technology can be difficult,
to be sure, but if democracy is to take public opinion appropriately into
account, good government must discount ignorance and prejudice. The 18th-century
Irish statesman and writer Edmund Burke emphasized the government's
responsibility to make such determinations. He observed that in republics,
"Your representative owes you, not only his industry, but his judgment; and
he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
Japan
to tighten control on pesticides against terror attacks
December 5, 2003
Xinhua via COMTEX
TOKYO -- The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries was cited as saying
Friday that Japan will tighten controls on pesticides in order to prevent them
from falling into the hands of terrorists.
The story says that the decision came after two Japanese diplomats were killed
last week in Iraq and terrorists warned that they had targeted Tokyo. The
ministry will also beef up security at agricultural dams to keep water stored
there from being tainted by foreign substances.
Helping
stored alfalfa keep its protein
December 5, 2003
ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
Cows will soon have a better chance of getting their needed protein. Scientists
with the Agricultural Research Service recently discovered an environmentally
friendly way to reduce the protein breakdown that occurs when forage crops like
alfalfa are processed into silage, the winter feed of many livestock.
Because it's high in protein, alfalfa is an ideal crop for livestock.
Unfortunately, when it's processed by storing and fermenting its clippings in
silos, up to 85 percent of alfalfa's protein breaks down into nonprotein
nitrogen, which can't be used as efficiently by the cows' bodies.
ARS plant physiologist Ronald Hatfield, agricultural engineer Richard Muck and
molecular biologist Michael Sullivan have found an answer to the problematic
breakdown of protein in--of all things--red clover and potato skins. The
scientists work at ARS' U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, Wis.
Red clover contains large amounts of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, or PPO.
When red clover is chopped up, its cells release the PPO. When the PPO is
exposed to oxygen, it reacts with caffeic acid naturally present in the clover
and forms o-quinone molecules. These molecules bind to the enzymes that cause
the breakdown of red clover's protein, thereby keeping more protein intact.
Alfalfa has significantly lower levels of PPO. So to take advantage of this
PPO-caffeic acid combination to protect alfalfa's protein, Sullivan and ARS
plant pathologist Deborah Samac "borrowed" the PPO gene from red
clover and inserted it in alfalfa plants. When the altered alfalfa plants were
chopped and treated with caffeic acid, they had 15 percent less protein
degradation after two weeks than did untreated alfalfa plants.
Caffeic acid is present in high concentrations in a variety of fruits and
vegetables, most notably potato skins, a common agricultural waste product. The
scientists are working with different potato processing plants to see how easy
it would be to extract large amounts of caffeic acid from leftover skins.
Read more about the research in the December issue of Agricultural Research
magazine, available on the World Wide Web at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/dec03/silage1203.htm
ARS is the USDA's chief scientific research agency.
Latest
knowledge on plant cell-wall biology in new book
December 4, 2003
Cornell University
The wall of a plant cell is no longer just a biological bulwark. It is a
critical component in science.
To update other biologists with fresh information about plant cell walls,
Jocelyn Rose, a Cornell University assistant professor of plant biology, has
edited a new book, The Plant Cell Wall, published by Blackwell Publishing.
"This book is especially appropriate given the recent completion of the
first plant-genome sequencing projects and our entry into the 'post-genomic'
era," said Rose, who joined the Cornell faculty as part of the university's
Genomics Initiative. "Such breakthroughs have given an exciting glimpse
into the substantial size and diversity of the families of genes encoding cell
wall-related proteins."
In his own laboratory, Rose and his colleagues focus on the structure, function
and metabolism of plant cell walls and also their pivotal role in fending off
pathogens. "Cell walls represent a major frontier in plant biotechnology,
reflected in their importance in a broad range of plant-derived products,
contributing to the food, fiber and material science industries," he said.
"In addition to their critical importance for plants, they influence so
many aspects of our daily life, such as structural materials in paper and wood,
fuel, clothing in the form of cotton and, of course, nutrition -- that all
important dietary fiber."
In the last few years, biological science has developed fresh analytical tools
used in molecular biology, biochemistry, spectroscopy, microscopy, immunology,
genomics and proteomics. They are used to investigate plant cell-wall structure
and function. The high resolution of these tools was impossible to imagine a few
years ago, said Rose. "But the emergence of plant-cell research has
resulted in a growing awareness of the critical role of plant cell walls in a
broad range of developmental events, adding strength and diversity to cell
wall-related scientific research." An overview of current knowledge on the
subject, the book examines the rapidly growing number of genes and proteins
responsible for plant cell-wall synthesis, restructuring, degradation and
wall-associated signal transduction. And it also addresses the following topics:
the composition and structure of plant primary cell walls, biophysical
characteristics of plant cell walls, molecules as probes for cell-wall analysis,
plant cell-wall biosynthesis, expansion of the plant cell wall, cell-wall
disassembly and plant cell walls in the post-genomic era.
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