Synopsis: Domenii: Agribusiness:

#Use microbes, not pesticides, to boost crop yields Iowa State university Original Studyposted by Fred Love-Iowa State on September 9 2013.

and around crops could pay huge dividends for farmers in the near future thanks to advances in genetic sequencing.

A 21-member team organized by the American Academy of Microbiology established a set of recommendations on how advances in microbiology can be harnessed to improve agriculture.

and pesticides says team member Gwyn Beattie a professor of plant pathology and bacteriology at Iowa State university.

Reaching those goals would drastically cut input costs for farmers and produce a range of environmental benefits.

The sheer complexity involved in making sense of the virtually countless microbes that interact with crops made such an ambitious goal seem outlandish in the past.

When crops are optimized with the right genetics and colonized by the right microbes both organisms can flourish.

but it turned up in an earlier survey of genes involved in leaf senesce says Su-Sheng Gan professor of horticulture at Cornell University.

In the current transport and storage-based food system senescence after harvest whittles away at fruit and vegetable quality.

Gan envisions applications that will produce leafy greens that stay fresh floral bouquets that last longer and crops that keep their nutrients with an extended shelf life and less postharvest loss.

Manipulating this pathway also holds promise for bigger harvests and healthier plants. Much of the progress plant breeders have made in improving plant yields is actually due to delaying leaf senescence Gan says.

and seeds so senescence limits the yield of many crops. His lab group is already working with other genes in the salicylic acid pathway including a master regulator gene with promising results.

When they switched the gene off using molecular tools soybean yields were increased by up to 44 percent t

and indeed promoted by agriculture#says Hanotte. A research group in China independently discovered and reported the same findings with local Chinese and North american breeds.

#Gene protects beer crop from nasty fungus Original Studyposted by Ron Hohenhaus-Queensland on August 5 2013 Finding the gene that gives barley resistance to leaf rust could benefit people who rely on the crop

Leaf rust is a fungal disease that could destroy almost a third of the nation s barley crop,

This will result in much lower chemical use reduced crop losses and a more reliable grain supply.

Hickey says the crop disease could also leave Australian beer drinkers thirsty because the country's primary use of barley was to make beer as well as stock feed.

#To beat stem rust, wheat crops get new gene University of California Davis rightoriginal Studyposted by Pat Bailey-UC Davis on July 30 2013uc DAVIS (US)# Scientists

have found a gene in wild wheat that could make commercial wheat varieties resistant to a new strain of stem rust.

By transferring this gene to commercial wheat varieties wheat breeders will have a distinct advantage in controlling the epidemic the researchers say.

since 1999 threatening important wheat production areas of the world#says co-author Jorge Dubcovsky a wheat geneticist at University of California Davis and a Howard hughes medical institute investigator.#

About 90 percent of the wheat varieties grown worldwide are susceptible to Ug99. Previous resistance genes that had proven effective for fighting the disease for 50 years are ineffective against this new race.

Scientists are now looking for new sources of resistance to protect the global wheat crop which millions of people depend on for food.

They then inserted the gene into a wheat variety that is susceptible to the diseases engineering a resistance to Ug99.#

It is supported by the US Department of agriculture#s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Additional researchers from UC Davis Department of Plant sciences the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory and Kansas State university also contributed to the study.

Source: UC Davisyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license

Agronomists sometimes try to crossbreed species such as barley and wheat in hopes of creating new crops.

That can be done if the different species are related closely and share the same number of chromosomes

Among crop plants pollination means food.##Understanding this molecular back-and-forth at all the different levels and stages will be useful to either engineer the process

Since 1996 farmers worldwide have planted more than 1 billion acres (400 million hectares) of genetically modified corn and cotton that produce insecticidal proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt for short.

Bt proteins used for decades in sprays by organic farmers kill some devastating pests but are considered environmentally friendly and harmless to people.

Bruce Tabashnik and Yves Carri##re in the entomology department at the University of Arizona s College of Agriculture and Life sciences together with visiting scholar Thierry Br##vault from the Center

One billion acres#When Bt crops were introduced first the main question was how quickly would pests adapt

##Now with 1 billion acres of these crops planted over the past 16 years and with the data accumulated over that period we have a better scientific understanding of how fast the insects evolve resistance and why.#

#Analyzing data from 77 studies of 13 pest species in eight countries on five continents the researchers found well-documented cases of field-evolved resistance to Bt crops in five major pests

Three of the five cases are in the United states where farmers have planted about half of the world s Bt crop acreage.

but in the best cases effectiveness of Bt crops has been sustained more than 15 years. According to the paper both the best and worst outcomes correspond with predictions from evolutionary principles.#

#The factors we found to favor sustained efficacy of Bt crops are in line with what we would expect based on evolutionary theory#says Carri##re explaining that conditions are most favorable

Pink bollwormplanting refuges near Bt crops reduces the chances that two resistant insects will mate with each other making it more likely they will breed with a susceptible mate yielding offspring that are killed by the Bt crop.

#Same pest same crop same Bt protein but very different outcomes.##He explained that in the Southwestern US scientists from the EPA academia industry

One of the paper s main conclusions is that evaluating two factors can help to gauge the risk of resistance before Bt crops are commercialized.#

or this pest will probably evolve resistance quickly to this Bt crop.##Prevent resistance? Although the new report is the most comprehensive evaluation of pest resistance to Bt crops so far Tabashnik emphasizes that it represents only the beginning of using systematic data analyses to enhance understanding and management of resistance.#

#These plants have been remarkably useful and in most cases resistance has evolved slower than expected#Tabashnik says.#

#I see these crops as an increasingly important part of the future of agriculture. The progress made provides motivation to collect more data

and to incorporate it in planning future crop deployments.##We ve also started exchanging ideas and information with scientists facing related challenges such as herbicide resistance in weeds and resistance to drugs in bacteria HIV and cancer.#

#But will farmers ever be able to prevent resistance altogether? Tabashnik says he doesn t think so.#

Graphene consists of a single atomic layer of carbon, arranged in a honeycomb lattice. ur first Science paper,

If cow milking recalls a bucolic image of a farmer strolling out to the barn with a bucket and stool,

With this robotic milker, the farmer needn't come any closer to the action than a readout on a smartphone,

That why we still talk about agriculture as being different from industry. Chasing cows, making them wait

so something more was needed to ease the life of the farmer. Robotic milking is based on the idea that

The Astronaut 4 is one of a range of robotic farming systems made by Lely, including robotic cowshed cleaners and forage pushers.

and works on the principle that instead of the farmer or the robot controlling the milking,

Levy even claims that the cows learn how to use the system faster than the farmers do.

As for the farmer, aside from filling the hoppers, collecting the milk and maintenance, most of the work is supervising the system by means of a remote dashboard on a computer

It may be more Bill gates than Farmer Giles, but at least the cows always get milked on time

#FLOW-AID helps farmers save water without sacrificing yields Wee already seen gadgets such as Koubachi and Flower power,

It designed to let farmers in drought-stricken regions know when and how much water to apply to their crops,

so they don run their irrigation systems unnecessarily. FLOW-AID was developed by a group of 11 European companies and research institutes

Multiple devices are installed at key locations in a farmer field. Each device incorporates an aboveground control/communications unit,

a farmer can access their network of FLOW-AIDS over the internet, to check the moisture

it can additionally advise users on how often fertilizer should be applied this stops farmers from wasting money by over-fertilizing,

and AEO Sound applications are used for image and audio processing, with batch processing of crop rotation and color correction all possible.

#Ethiopia Agriculture ministry rolls out specialized phone service for farmers The Ethiopian government has rolled out a new phone service that farmers can call to get information on crops in their native languages.

crop failure or pestilence remains a stubborn problem for farmers and for wider regional food security. One issue for small hold farmers in the developing world is access to information and according to the United Nation development and humanitarian news website, IRIN,

African farmers often have less access to technical knowhow than those in other nations, which is one reason why the continent tends to produce less food despite its natural resources.

Populous Ethiopia has one of the fastest growing GDPS on the continent after years of famine and civil war.

The nation now has one of the largest"agricultural extension"systems in the world after major powers such as China and India.

but generally it means the educating farmers on how to apply scientific research and new farming methods.

The nation has some 60,000 agricultural extension officers. The 8028 phone service is a new component of that.

Farmers can request targeted information via SMS or Interactive Voice Response. The project, still in its pilot phase, began in July

and according to a government source has had already calls from some three million farmers. It is run

"Farmers can'pull'practical, real-time advice available in their regional language by calling 8028 as often as they like,

"The hotline administrator can'push'customized content (such as in cases of drought, pest and disease) to callers based on crop,

when farmers first register to use the system.""Given the dozens of languages spoken, targeted information remains important,

Getting targeted information to farmers is a growing concern. In Colombia big data has been helping farmers with targeted information on

whether or not to plant crops, and when. Those who took the advice saved some $3. 8 million collectively i

#Super-tough glass based on mollusk shells In the future if you drop a glass on the floor

Called wastage grocery shelves are invaded constantly by everything from fake corn flakes to counterfeit honey selling under false labels to adulterated wines

Even during America recent urban renaissance streetcars, apartment buildings and farmers markets, oh my! the centrifugal force in job growth has reversed not.

These include rooftop garden loral therapy, art classes making realistic representations of everyday objects, music therapy with bongos sounding ike a heartbeat.

#Explosives and Pesticides Can Be detected by Using Bee venom Scientists from MIT have discovered that by coating carbon nanotubes in bee venom,

and fellow chemical engineers coated one-atom-thick tubes of carbon with protein fragments found in bee venom,

This is certainly a novel approach for using the proteins found in bee venom. It seems there are a number of potential uses for the poison,

They can even contact the farmer, if they feel moved. A provision of the federal food safety law passed last year requires that all players in the country food supply chain be able to quickly trace from

and other information the farmer chooses to share, such as the harvest date. here been a very rapid sea change in consumer behavior,

said Elliott Grant, the chief marketing officer for Harvestmark. ith very high-profile food recalls, cellphones and iphones,

but it also allows the consumer to send a comment to the farmer, Grant said. ou can click a button

and tell the farmer hese are the greatest strawberries Ie ever hador whatever...It about using technology to put people back in touch with the people who grow their food.

That new for Phillip Bauman, a 42-year-old watermelon farmer in Washington state. Bauman bought the Harvestmark system for his Pasco farm about three years ago

and tests have demonstrated that even the sensitive honeybee is unaffected, ##Davis said. The two##real reasons##nobody has moved ahead with SBSP,

exciting tech giants like Netflix and inspiring a whole new crop of innovative startups. What is reactive programming?

self-irrigating crops, and even aterlesscities. The earth atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs,

Submissions ranged from self-filling water bottles, to extreme dehumidification, to a large-scale water sources for greenhouse drip irrigation, to emergency water for lifeboats, to self-filling canteens for the military,

Moisture is harvested out of the air to irrigate crops through an efficient system that produces large amounts of condensation A turbine intake drives air underground through a network of piping that rapidly cools the air to the temperature of the soil where it reaches 100%humidity

and pumped to the roots of crops via sub surface drip irrigation hosing. Developed by Joe Ellsworth in Seattle,

Some of the planned uses are for forests, camping, fire suppression, agriculture, livestock, and human consumption.

Is it possible to add a water extracting ground spike next to every plant or tree in our garden?

#Precision agriculture moves farmers into the high tech age The U s. has seen record-setting drought in recent years.

So, the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has joined forces with America beer brewers to change how farmer irrigate their crops.

the convergence of digital technology that allows farmers to apply just the right amount of fertilizer and water on their fields.

Humans have practiced a rather crude form of agriculture for millennia: we douse fields to give them as much water

farmers can use precisely the right amount of resources on every square foot of a field.

what good for the farmer is good for the environment, writes Lisa Park, a spokeswoman for TNC.

The Conservancy first started working with farmers in Georgia while trying to protect freshwater mussels in the Flint River.

In Idaho, the nonprofit is collaborating with Millercoors to support farmers who upgrade their irrigation systems to new precision agriculture systems.

Farmers have begun installing new sprinklers nozzles, and computer-controlled irrigation covering thousands of acres that conserve millions of gallons of water each day. s a brewer, we know that the area we can have the biggest impact in reducing water usage is within the agricultural supply chain,

Farmers and the environment profit. Yet the central technology in this effortariable rate irrigation (VRI) asn a commercial endeavor delivered directly to farmers clamoring for the technology.

It took almost a decade of academic research before an unusual alliance of NGOS and local and state government agencies sought to commercialize the VRI technology in the private sector.

A successful grant-funded pilot project caught on among other farmers who are now applying it across acres in a dozen states,

Change in agriculture comes slow. Yet the promise of precision agriculture is to find the right mix of profit

(or dying) and the new farmers are looking for new and better ways of doing things

#Robobees will pollinate crops instead of real bees As soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops.

Honeybees pollinate nearlyone-third of the food we eat but they have been dying at unprecedented rates because of a mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).

The researchers believe that as soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops,

Honeybees alone contribute more than $15 billion in value to U s. agricultural crops each year. But Robobees are not yet a viable technological solution.

the tiny bots have to be able to fly on their own andtalk to one another to carry out tasks like a real honeybee hive.

and the threat it poses to agriculture were part of the original inspiration for creating a robotic bee,

Will robot bees eventually be able to operate like honeybee hives to pollinate commercial crops? Ma:

You could replace a hive of honeybees that would otherwise be working on a field of flowers.

We need to feed more people with limited agricultural land and resources. We need to make better use of land, light and logistics for an increasingly urban population.

This includes a greater emphasis on urban agriculture such as vertical farming which, properly designed and planned, could provide the sustainable means to improve food supply we need.

Ideally, urban agriculture fits neatly alongside or within existing buildings in a self-contained and sustainable manner without competing for resources.

They can use greenhouses in order to take advantage of the sun s energy, or grow indoors with the help of artificial lights.

and energy and improve crop yield. It takes advantage of the vertical space of city buildings rather than turning over wide expanses of land to agriculture and uses advanced greenhouse technology:

hydroponics or aeroponics, and environmental controls that regulate temperature, humidity and light to produce vegetables, fruits and other crops year-round.

In large cities such as New york, Chicago, Tokyo and Singapore, these ideas are taking root. Singapore has taken local urban farming to a high level Skygreens has built the world s first commercial vertical farm in large three-story greenhouses, providing a sustainable source of fresh vegetables.

The cost of growing Vertical farming s biggest limitation is energy consumption. Considerable energy is required to power a closed, indoor greenhouse facility s artificial lighting, heating and cooling

and hydroponic or aeroponic growing systems. The amount of energy required per unit of product is an important factor for ensuring

and wind turbines with greenhouses to provide self-generated renewable electricity on-site. But the single technology that will be key to making vertical farms possible is lighting.

Evidence is emerging that specific wavelengths of light have distinct effects on crop yield, quality, and even pest and disease resistance.

There is potential for these multifunctional techno-greenhouses built around LED grow lights to increase the quality of the food we eat

long-established industries and they do not come much larger or older than agriculture. Farmers can be terrible managers,

so it is no surprise that they are nervous about a new idea called prescriptive planting,

It could be the biggest change to agriculture in rich countries since genetically modified crops. And it is proving nearly as controversial

It also plunges stick-in-the-mud farmers into an unfamiliar world of ig dataand privacy battles. Monsanto prescriptive planting system, Fieldscripts, had its first trials last year

It is as if a farmer can know each of his plants by name. Prescriptive planting is catching on fast.

to beam advice on seeds and fertilisers to farmers in the field. A farm-supply cooperative

Farmers who have tried Monsanto system say it has pushed up yields by roughly 5%over two years,

The seed companies think providing more data to farmers could increase America maize yield from 160 bushels an acre (10 tonnes a hectare) to 200 bushelsiving a terrific boost to growersmeagre margins.

Farmers might be expected to have mixed feelings about the technology anyway: although it boosts yields, it reduces the role of discretion and skill in farmingheir core competence.

However, the bigger problem is that farmers distrust the companies peddling this new method. They fear that the stream of detailed data they are providing on their harvests might be misused.

Their commercial secrets could be sold, or leak to rival farmers; the prescriptive planting firms might even use the data to buy underperforming farms

and run them in competition with the farmers; or the companies could use the highly sensitive data on harvests to trade on the commodity markets,

to the detriment of farmers who sell into those markets. Looking a gift horse in the mouth In response to such worries, the American Farm Bureau,

the country largest organisation of farmers and ranchers, is drawing up a code of conduct, saying that farmers own

and control their data; that companies may not use the information except for the purpose for

which it was given; and that they must not sell or give it to third parties. The companies agree with those principles,

though so far their contracts with farmers do not always embody them. Also, once data have been sent and anonymised,

farmers might be said no longer to own them, so it is not clear what rights to them they still have.

For this reason and others, some Texan farmers have banded together to form the Grower Information Services Cooperative,

to negotiate with the data providers. Another worry is that, since the companies have not yet made the data fully ortable farmers may become locked into doing business with a single provider.

To assuage all these concerns the Climate Corporation has set up a free data storage service for farmers,

which others cannot access without the farmerspermission. New niche data-management firms are entering the market,

But its success depends on service providers persuading users (farmers or patients) to trust them. If the users think they are taking a disproportionate share of the risks

But this isn just a greenhouse: Toshiba plant factory will be a high-tech facility. Itl include optimized lights set to a wavelength to grow perfect plants

restaurants and convenience stores, focusing on cities where urban growth often prevents fresh vegetables from being readily available.

#Top 15 emerging agriculture technologies that will change the world Below are 15 emerging technologies related to agricultural and natural manufacturing under four key areas of accelerating change:

Sensors help agriculture by enabling real-time traceability and diagnosis of crop, livestock and farm machine states.

and potentially from producing meat directly in a lab. Automation will help agriculture via large-scale robotic

and maintain crops at the plant level. Engineering involves technologies that extend the reach of agriculture to new means, new places and new areas of the economy.

Of particular interest will be synthetic biology, which allows efficiently reprogramming unicellular life to make fuels, byproducts accessible from organic chemistry and smart devices.

Crop sensors: Instead of prescribing field fertilization before application, high-resolution crop sensors inform application equipment of correct amounts needed.

Optical sensors or drones are able to identify crop health across the field (for example, by using infrared light).

Scientifically viable in 2015; mainstream in 2018; and financially viable in 2019. Infrastructural health sensors:

With satellite imagery and advanced sensors, farmers can optimize returns on inputs while preserving resources at ever larger scales.

Further understanding of crop variability, geolocated weather data and precise sensors should allow improved automated decision-making and complementary planting techniques.

predict, cultivate and extract crops from the land with practically no human intervention. Small-scale implementations are already on the horizon.

A natural extension of urban agriculture, vertical farms would cultivate plant or animal life within dedicated or mixed-use skyscrapers in urban settings.

including year-round crop production, protection from weather, support urban food autonomy and reduced transport costs. Scientifically viable in 2023;

or figuring out whether the fruit at the farmer market is ripe. Consumer Physics will offer both Android and iphone apps,

The best configuration, a honeycomb lattice with a 50 nanometer coat of alumina, is less dense than waterthat is,

Reaping the Benefits of Cover crops (Op-Ed) Margaret Mellon is a senior scientist for food and the environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS.

Farmers planting crops that can't be sold doesn't sound like a sensible proposition does it?

But it turns out that an increasing number of farmers are doing just that: buying planting and tending to so-called cover crops.

No farmers can't sell cover crops but they do reap benefits from them including increased yields of cash crops like corn and soybeans.

Use of cover crops can also help farms survive the droughts expected to become more common in the era of climate change.

Cover crops which can be many species of grains grasses and legumes are planted usually in the interval between the harvesting and planting of cash crops.

Sending their roots down into bare soil cover crops can increase soil carbon provide slow-release nitrogen

and prevent erosion. But a cover-crop/cash crop system is complex. If not managed properly cover crops can deprive cash crops of water

or even reduce yields. Although they make sense in theory many have wondered how cover crops would work in the real world.

Now a new survey of commercial farmers has confirmed that cover crops increase yields in corn and soybeans the most common crops in the U s. Moreover cover crops were especially effective under drought conditions.

The North Central Sustainable agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and the Conservation Technology Information center conducted the survey of more than 759 commercial farmers from winter 2012 through spring 2013.

Farmers who responded reported average increases of 11.1 bushels of corn per acre and 4. 9 bushels of soybeans per acre over prior harvests.

In percentage terms the extra bushels represent an average 9. 6-percent-greater yield in corn planted after the planting of cover crops compared with crops not preceded by cover crops.

The increase in soybeans was 11.6 percent. That's pretty impressive. The growers reported yield information from fields comparable in conditions and rotation except for the cover crops.

And the advantages for cash crops planted after cover crops were even greater in states hit hard by drought.

The states most affected by the severe 2012 drought were Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Missouri Nebraska and South dakota.

The 141 respondents from those states reported an average corn yield of 11.3 bushels per acre

which represented an 11 percent increase in crops grown after cover crops compared with those grown without them.

Respondents from the drought-affected states reported even greater benefits in soybeans: an average increase of 5. 7 bushels per acre or 14.3 percent higher yields after cover crops.

The farmers responding to the survey grew cover crops on an estimated 218000 acres in 36 states mostly in the Mississippi river basin.

Not surprisingly drought-related impacts varied across the country. But the results were solid: Farmers enjoyed better corn yields after cover crops in all but one of the states hardest hit by the drought.

Farmers expected to pay for the ecosystem services provided by cover crops and were willing to pay median costs of $25 an acre to purchase seeds and $15 an acre for cover-crop establishment (aerial distribution of seed and the eventual killing of the plants at the end of the growing season).

Farmers interested in cover crops need to decide which species to use how and when to plant them

and whether to plant single or multispecies mixes. If the wrong decisions are made cover crops might not deliver on their potential benefits

or may even be detrimental. The survey respondents reported a long list of challenges including cover-crop seed availability increased insect potential

and the risk of cover crops using too much soil moisture. Despite the challenges the surveyed farmers had increased steadily their use of cover crops over the last decade.

Last winter they reported planting cover crops on an average of 42 percent of their acreage

and planned to increase their cover-crop acreage this coming winter. The complexity of the system may explain the correlation between yield increases

and experience using cover crops. Growers with more than three years of experience working with cover crops saw a 9. 6 percent increase in corn yields

whereas growers with one to three years of experience reported a still respectable but lower 6. 1 percent boost in corn.

A complete drought tolerant package would include appropriate crop choices and specially bred varieties of crops as well as a drought tolerant system.

The crop-centered approach to drought was discussed by my colleague Doug Gurian-Sherman in hisrecent report High and Dry.

In addition to highlighting the availability of crops like sorghum and alfalfa that are inherently more drought tolerant

and might be used more often in U s. agriculture Doug also discussed the success of conventional corn breeders who have increased drought tolerance at a steady pace of 1 percent per year over decades.

Genetic engineering has yet to play an important role in drought tolerance. Only this year did agricultural biotech company Monsanto introduce its first drought tolerant seed variety Droughtgard.

According to the Monsanto website the variety has produced a five-bushel (or about 4 percent) yield advantage in field tests against competitor hybrids.

However successful crop genetics might be new plant varieties cannot compensate for the deficiencies in systems.

The fundamental requirement for combating drought is to keep moisture in the soil. Cover crops can do that and so much more.

This article was adapted from Cover crops Dramatically Increase Corn Yields specially In Drought Conditionson the UCS blog The Equation.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

This article was published originally on Livescience. com S

< Back - Next >

Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011