and is made from crop plants such as maize (corn) and sugarcane, putting vehicles in competition with hungry mouths.
The work identifies a potentially cost-effective way of converting grass or crop waste directly into fuel,
Moreover, the process is much more climate friendly than manufacturing ethanol from maize, and produces higher-energy fuels that are interchangeable with current petroleum products.
which is a much more efficient feedstock than maize; LS9 says that the shift from sugars to biomass as a feedstock would reduce greenhouse gases even further.
maize leaves and stalks, and municipal waste to sugars are getting cheaper. At a national US ethanol conference in Orlando, Florida, last week, biotech companies Novozymes and Genencor launched new generations of enzymes that they claim will cut the enzyme-related production costs of cellulosic ethanol
or early 2012 at a total cost of under $0. 53 per litre roughly on a par with that of'corn'ethanol produced from sugar-rich maize cobs.
Business watch New biofuel standards have cleared the way for a continued expansion of maize (corn) ethanol production in the United states. The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) ruled on 3 february that ethanol made from maize decreases
The determination went against recent studies that suggest that ethanol made from maize may increase emissions owing in part to deforestation spurred by increased demand for the crop.
More than 30%of the US maize harvest went into producing 42 billion litres of ethanol in 2008-09 (see chart),
although maize production has in large part kept pace with the increased demand. The mandate requires refiners to produce nearly 57 billion litres of renewable fuels by 2015.
leaving open the possibility that the production of maize ethanol could expand even further. People Change at the NSF:
in plants such as sugar cane and maize (corn), which use a different type of photosynthesis, 110 out of 10,000 atoms are carbon-13.
Because sweeteners from sugar cane and maize have a higher proportion of carbon-13, the carbon isotope ratio of the final product will be skewed.
it smelled like freshly mown grass. It was disgusting. My student had to scrape inch-thick layers of mould off the top for analysis to work out
Proposals to focus research on maize (corn), rice and wheat would be broadened to include other crops such as beans and cassava.
including maize (corn) and rice, researchers can increasingly study crop species directly, rather than relying on a model plant.
and agricultural community that Arabidopsis research should continue to be funded. says Edward Buckler, a maize geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york. Â
Monsanto's MON 810 maize (corn), which is engineered to be resistant to the European corn-borer caterpillar,
Austria and Hungary to lift bans on growing MON 810 maize, but couldn't muster the majority vote of member states needed.
and on the approval of three other maize strains two insect-resistant varieties made by Syngenta and Pioneer,
Volunteer army catches interstellar dust grains: Nature Newsscientists say they have caught the first pieces of interstellar dust the fundamental building blocks of the Sun, Earth and the rest of the Solar system.
which launched in 1999 with the aim of catching pristine interstellar grains and bringing them back to Earth.
But analyses of these comet grains several years ago showed that they were forged in hot environments near the Sun
Stardust also captured some non-cometary grains. Before the encounter with Wild 2, Stardust opened another collecting tray to space.
The researchers hoped to catch 100 or so interstellar grains from the weak but continuous flux in open space.
The elements in these grains were forged in stars but coalesced into grains in the empty space between stars,
where they were mixed and rocked by supernova shock waves and cosmic rays. The grains were far harder to catch than the comet particles.
Not only was the flux much lower, but the interstellar particles were smaller than the comet grains
and were moving several times faster up to 30 kilometres per second. The Stardust researchers say that the interstellar grains nabbed by their spacecraft may provide a unique way to study the matter between stars.
It's kind of a grand thing, says Don Brownlee of the University of Washington in Seattle,
who adds that the researchers must conduct more tests to ensure that their particles are truly interstellar grains,
maize (corn) and cotton grown in the United states or about half the nation's cropland.
The fungus and its variants are now able to overcome at least 32 of around 50 resistance genes, according to Ravi Singh, a plant geneticist and pathologist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre.
They are also hesitant about buying its forthcoming Smartstax maize (corn), which incorporates eight genes conferring herbicide tolerance and insect protection.
and maize market by the world's number-two seed company Dupont, which owns plant-genetics firm Pioneer hi-bred International,
is flexing its muscles with the imminent release of its herbicide-tolerant, insect-resistant Viptera maize.
In the longer term, the three firms will also be vying to offer farmers drought-tolerant maize.
They then correlated this with data on how changes in climate had affected maize (corn) and wheat productivity in different Mexican states during the same time.
%cut yields of some crops, including maize (corn) and wheat, by 5-15%;%and increase the area burned by wildfires in the western United states by 200-400%.
China has a double-cropping system of growing wheat in winter and maize in summer.
and synchronize crop production with the climate by ending the cultivation of winter wheat and growing maize for more of the year,
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added that the floods would have a catastrophic effect on agricultural livelihoods, with extensive damage to standing crops 墉 such as maize (corn),
Grasshoppers that were exposed to spiders switched from eating protein-rich grasses to munching on several species of sugary goldenrod plants.
and less grass, changing the ratio of these species in the landscape. Second, the soil is receiving less nitrogen,
who presented the RNA transcriptomes (the whole set of RNA molecules present) of 700-850-year-old maize (corn) seeds at a conference there last week.
At the International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Copenhagen last week, Gilbert's team presented the first results of their efforts to coax RNA sequences from ancient maize samples from Chile and Arizona.
and RIBOSOMAL RNA are abundant in the maize kernels and that the mrna sequences correspond to known genes.
Gilbert plans to collect maize samples that span the plant's 6, 000-year history as a domesticated crop from across The americas,
says that ancient maize transcriptomes could help scientists determine how domestication influenced the nutritional content of these early crops.
After hearing about Gilbert's success in sequencing ancient RNA from maize, Allaby, Oliver Smith and their colleagues examined small regulatory RNA molecules in 500-year-old barley seeds from Egypt.
whose grains grow in rows of two, instead of the usual rows of six an adaptation to dry conditions.
The stones were coated also with several kinds of microscopic starch grains. Longo and her colleagues identified the grains based on their shape as belonging to the root of a species of cattail and the grains of a grass called Brachypodium.
The researchers also found grinding tools coated with cattail and fern residues at human sites in southern Moravia in the Czech republic and south of Moscow
Unlike Neolithic humans, who domesticated and cultivated grains such as wheat and barley, these hunter-gatherers relied on wild vegetation.
For example, once ground and cooked, the cattail grains contain nearly as much energy as domesticated cereals,
GM maize offers windfall for conventional farms: Nature Newsgenetically modified (GM CROPS can save farmers using conventional seeds even more money than those using the transgenic varieties,
assessed the effects of planting maize (corn) genetically modified to produce Bt toxin, which kills the European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis).
since the crop was introduced in 1996, US farmers in the key maize-growing states of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois,
Not only does Bt maize suppress the corn-borer population in fields planted with the GM crop
'lowering the pest population in conventional maize fields too. As a result, farmers planting non-GM CROPS benefit from fewer pests,
when they realise that they may unwittingly have eaten GM maize, for example, in breakfast cereals imported from South africa,
But an analysis of the phytoliths showed that they all came from domesticated grasses. Because the dung of grazing animals would be expected to contain a high proportion of wild plants,
or grains were stockpiled at the site. Experts in radiocarbon dating, who usually stick close to their laboratories,
While digging in the southeastern area of Tel Megiddo, Boaretto's Phd student Michael Toffolo unearthed a pottery storage jar full of grains of wheat.
For instance, wheat grains and pieces of charcoal are used often to date pottery shards found in the same spot.
it is all too easy to miss evidence that the grains or chunks of burnt wood found in a particular layer actually originated elsewhere,
500 micrometre-sized grains recovered from Hayabusa's capsule showed that almost all the dust was extraterrestrial
By contrast, yield rates for maize (corn), a developed-world crop with considerable commercial interest, are growing by more than 2%per year.
Fossilized plant remains at these sites show that the Maya were growing crops such as avocados, grass species and maize.
Producers of ethanol from corn (maize) starch got what they needed out of a tax package enacted by the US Congress last week:
Drought-tolerant maize gets US debut: Nature Newswhen the planting season arrives later this year,
announced plans to release a series of hybrid maize (corn) strains that can flourish with less water.
The seeds will compete with another maize strain unveiled last July by Swiss agribusiness Syngenta.
Pioneer says that field studies show its new hybrids will increase maize yields by 5%in water-limited environments
That compares with the 15%yield gain promised by Syngenta for its maize. Both companies,
Missouri, are also working on transgenic maize varieties, hoping to tap into a multibillion-dollar market (see Nature 466,548-551;
) In theory, drought-tolerant varieties could fill the gap left in maize supplies in recent years as stocks have been diverted for ethanol production.
but efforts to develop drought-tolerant maize are also under way in Africa and Asia. Working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other donors, international agricultural research centres have introduced already dozens of conventional drought-tolerant varieties into 13 of the most important maize-producing countries
in Sub-saharan africa. These new varieties now make up 15-25%of the 19 million hectares of maize planted in these countries each year
according to Marianne B ¤nziger, deputy director-general for research and partnerships at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico city.
A recent study by CIMMYT and its partners suggests that the new varieties could increase yields by 10-34%.
Last year, South africa was home to the first field trial for a transgenic drought-tolerant maize crop,
to expand its drought-tolerant maize programme. Within five years, we hope to have crops in Asia,
and cannot tell the difference between the desirable grasses that store carbon, sea lettuce that stores little carbon and algae attached to rocks.
In the African tropics, for example, it is likely that fish distribute grass seeds, and fish in North america and Europe probably also move seeds around.
which reintroduce nitrogen to the soil, have been shown to quadruple African maize yields in soils with no artificial fertilizer added.
Several research groups are working on fortified varieties of bean, rice, maize, sweet potato, cowpea, peanut, wheat, pumpkin and banana.
Global maize (corn) production, for example, is estimated to be about 3. 8%lower than it would have been in a non-warmed world the equivalent of Mexico not contributing to the maize market.
and maize has so far been shielded from yield declines because its crop-growing regions haven't warmed in summer over the past 30 years,
the 2010 climate-change programme awarded grants to researchers studying cereal crops such as maize (corn)
and oil and gas operations Ethanol subsidies The US Senate has voted to end costly federal subsidies for producing ethanol from maize (corn).
Nature Newswhen the US Department of agriculture (USDA) announced this month that it did not have the authority to oversee a new variety of genetically modified (GM) Kentucky bluegrass,
The grass, a GM variety of Poa pratensis, is still in the early stages of development by Scotts Miracle-Gro
The grass has been altered genetically to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate, which would make it easier to keep a lawn weed-free.
The grass can evade control because the regulations for GM plants derive from the Federal Plant Pest Act,
'Scotts took advantage of both techniques to construct the herbicide-resistant Kentucky bluegrass that put the USDA's regulatory powers to the test.
Switzerland, conducted the first field trials of maize (corn) containing engineered mini-chromosomes, and showed that the mini-chromosomes,
and Sangamo Biosciences in Richmond, California, announced that they had used enzymes called zinc-finger nucleases to insert a gene for herbicide resistance at a specific site in the maize genome (V. K. Shukla et al.
The Kentucky bluegrass decision drives this point home, he says: It really speaks to the importance of reviewing the regulatory process periodically to ensure that it is keeping up with the advances in technology.
Next in line will be Bt maize (corn also being developed by scientists at KARI, says Gichuki. Other crops undergoing confined field trials include virus-resistant sweet potatoes and drought-resistant maize,
he says. Kenya passed a biosaftey law in 2009 which allowed the commercial production of transgenic crops in principle.
For example, Kenya is suffering from a shortage of maize in part because a drought has destroyed large swathes of local farmers'crops.
Without the regulations, Kenya is unable to import the white variety of maize Kenyans like to eat as the majority of this is transgenic,
It has proved surprisingly economically stable compared with major grain crops such as rice, wheat and maize (corn:
Nature Newsthe perennial grass Miscanthus giganteus has all the makings of a biofuel superstar. It grows rapidly,
a company in Hayward, California, that is developing the grass as a biofuel crop. But from a research perspective it is underdeveloped so painfully.
Nature Newsgiant pandas don't digest bamboo by themselves. Microorganisms in their guts may help the endangered animals to subsist on plants
In the wild, they eat more than 12 kilograms of bamboo each day and little else. They have to eat so much because,
although bamboo contains proteins, sugars and fats among other nutrients, most of its calories are locked in hard-to-digest cellulose fibres that make up plant cell walls.
and 73%of the hemicellulose (a chemically similar fibre) in the bamboo they ate passed right through their digestive tracts
The microbial enzymes may help giant pandas to extract extra energy from the small amount of bamboo that they manage to process
and pseudo-thumbs, bones that allow them to grip plant stalks that help pandas to live on bamboo,
behind the United states. Farmers have planted vast tracts of GM maize (corn), soya and cotton with little public resistance,
No to French GM ban France's highest court has overturned a national ban on the cultivation of a genetically modified maize (corn) crop,
Many researchers are exploring ways to produce ethanol without using food crops such as sugar cane or maize (corn),
or maize not only detracts from food supplies, but also takes up huge areas of arable land.
In the case of maize, more energy is required for growing and harvesting the crop than can be gained from the ethanol produced.
grew 30.3 million hectares of GM soya, maize (corn) and cotton last year, a 19%increase on 2010.
It could also mean that oxygen atoms are being locked up somehow in the trace grains of dust
and his colleagues found ash of burnt grass, leaves, brush and bone fragments in sediments 30 metres inside the Wonderwerk Cave in the Northern cape province.
Next to receive a green light could be maize (corn) that is tolerant to glyphosphate and 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,
Most fuel ethanol is made by fermenting the sugars in grains or sugar cane, but cellulosic ethanol can be made from municipal waste, wood chips, grass,
and the stalks, leaves and stems of food crops. It is seen as a more sustainable biofuel
and Madre de dios tends to yield larger, coarser grains. To reduce miners exposure to mercury, non-governmental organizations have distributed retorts that can capture the toxic vapour.
Drought devastates US cropsa farmer inspects his drought-damaged maize crop in Illinois just one of several states affected by scarce June rainfall.
The USDA also cut its maize and soya bean estimates for the year on 11 july. The projected US maize yield is down 1. 3 tonnes per hectare to 3. 7 tonnes per hectare,
a total of 45 million tonnes less than was predicted in June. Estimates of total US soya bean production are also down by 4. 2 million tonnes to 83 million tonnes compared with June
The United states exports 53%of the world's maize and almost 43%of soya beans globally,
The price of maize last week hit a record US$8. 16 per bushel ($321 per tonne
The prices of soya beans and maize have passed the 2008 peak. But wheat, rice and oil prices have not matched their 2008 highs
The direct impact of the increase in maize and soya bean prices will be felt in net importing countries such as Mexico and China.
because people there tend to consume locally produced maize and are not major consumers of soya beans,
Researchers are investigating how certain crop varieties including sorghum and pearl millet which originated in Africa are able to withstand heat
Plant breeders are also working to improve the performance of maize under environmental stress using both conventional breeding and genetic modification.
S. Mccall/Getty Imagesus crops wilt in drought The most extensive US drought in more than half a century has seen prices for maize (corn)
including wheat, rice and maize. In this way, they were able to build models relating yield solely to inputs
around 94%of the soya beans and 88%of the maize (corn) grown in the United states is engineered genetically to resist herbicides, insect pests or both, according to the US Department of agriculture.
go. nature. com/hyzgdfthe US Department of agriculture predicted on 10 Â August that the nation s maize (corn) yields would drop to a 17-year low in 2012-13 (see chart),
The Food and agriculture organization of the united nations has suggested that the United states suspend biofuel production from maize, and US President Barack Obama unveiled an aid package for stricken farmers on 13 Â August 17-23 august NASA s Mars rover Curiosity will attempt its first drive on the red planet next week
and Chemical Toxicology, looked for adverse health effects in rats fed NK603 maize (corn), developed by biotech company Monsanto to resist the herbicide glyphosate
making this the first long-term study of maize containing these specific genes. About a dozen long-term studies of different GM CROPS have failed to find such stark health effects2.
An earlier test of NK603 maize in rats in a 90-day feeding trial the current regulatory norm sponsored by Monsanto showed no adverse effects3.
the government will press for a Europe-wide ban on the maize. The European commission has instructed the independent European Food safety Agency (EFSA) in Parma, Italy,
The 90-day trial of Monsanto s NK603 maize used in its authorization also used Sprague-Dawley rats,
arguing that experts involved in the authorization of the maize should not be involved. EFSA chief Catherine Geslain-Lanã elle dis  agreed
Maize cells produce enzyme-replacement druggrowing crops is simpler and cheaper than culturing mammalian cells,
decided to develop a way to manufacture the necessary enzymes in maize (corn). When human proteins such as enzymes are expressed in plant cells,
The engineered maize seeds produced proteins decorated with sugars that could be converted to human forms.
But there is a long way to go before maize-made drugs reach the market, says Kermode.
however, maize may one day become the go-to way to make complex protein drugs
and then allowed to regrow saplings or bamboo. FOREST & ENVIRON. DEPT, MEGHALAYAON a field survey last year, Gill and three FSI colleagues saw that parts of the Dibru Hills protected forest in Meghalaya had been illegally felled.
%In Africa, maize yields could drop by 10-20%over the same time frame. For some crops, improvements to heat resistance through conventional and transgenic breeding,
) GM study slammed A study claiming that rats fed Monsanto's genetically modified NK603 maize (corn) or its companion glyphosate-based herbicide,
but on the basis of modelling by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Texcoco, Mexico, the report suggests that farmers could boost domestic yields even in the face of global warming. 13-17 october The Society
Missouri, has applied to plant 700,000 hectares of genetically modified maize (corn) in the country, and the new president will have to decide in the next few months
this has forced Brazil to import some 1. 5 billion litres of maize (corn) ethanol from the United states over the past 2 Â years.
although it prefers grasses, will dine on many items including humans. But just how a pathogen typically associated with the great outdoors got into the three lots of injectable steroids prepared inside an admittedly filthy laboratory
In press reports, it has been described as occurring on grasses, but that is not the full story.
but only distantly related, fungi with multicellular dark spores that were causing disease in grains such as corn.
Most often the fungus shows up on grasses and other monocots plants often distinguished by flower parts in threes and parallel leaf venation such as pineapples, bananas and sugarcane,
has rejected the findings of a controversial paper published in September (see go. nature. com/3slkys) claiming that rats fed genetically modified maize (corn) showed adverse health effects,
For years scientists have worked to shrink the individual grains within material structures, because the boundaries between grains can arrest internal motion
and help resist deformation, like a series of tiny walls within a larger structure. The essence of the researchers strategy for this latest effort, says lead study author Yongjun Tian of Yanshan University in China,
the nanoparticles coalesced into tiny grains comprising numerous twin domains. The onionlike precursors, Tian explains,
but less hard than polycrystalline diamonds made of nanoscale grains. But Natalia Dubrovinskaia, a crystallographer at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, notes that measuring the properties of superhard materials is problematic
MON Â 810, an insect-resistant maize (corn; and Amflora, a starchy potato used in the paper industry.
wheat and maize (corn) on long-term unfertilized farmland had increased by about 16%in the same period."
The researchers trained two sets of monkeys to eat maize (corn) dyed one of those two colours
but eschew maize dyed the other colour. The scientists then waited to see how the groups behaved
Baby monkeys ate the same colour maize as their mothers. Seven of the ten males that migrated from one colour culture to another adopted the local colour preference the first time that they ate any maize.
The trend was even stronger when they first fed with no higher-ranking monkey around, with nine of the ten males choosing the locally preferred variety.
They are applied to crop seeds such as maize (corn) and soya beans, and permeate the plants, protecting them from insect pests.
imidacloprid and thiamethoxam should not be used where they might end up in crops that attract bees, such as oilseed rape and maize.
Monsanto will gain access to some Dupont patents covering disease resistance and maize (corn) defoliation.
The insecticide is applied most often as a seed dressing to crops such as maize and soya beans.
The European Food safety Authority in Parma, Italy, concluded in May that maize (corn) seeds treated with fipronil pose a high acute risk to honeybees. ips trial approved On 19 july, Japan s health minister,
that it is withdrawing all pending EU applications for new transgenic maize (corn), soya beans and sugar beet.
China s cordgrass plan is overkill On an island in Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze river in China,
or cordgrass, a fiercely invasive salt-marsh grass that is native to eastern North america. In 1979, the plant was introduced to China
The threat of cordgrass is especially acute on Chongming Island, home on its eastern end to the 24,000-hectare Shanghai Chongming Dongtan National Nature Reserve declared a region of international ecological importance by the Ramsar Convention, a global wetland-conservation treaty.
The reed parrotbill (Paradoxornis heudei) which nests on native reeds and is one of Chongming s best-known species was once abundant in the reserve, for example.
with more than half of its habitat now overtaken by cordgrass. The shrinking of mudflats also threatens the hundreds of thousands of migratory shorebirds that rely on the reserve as a stopover site.
The best way to get rid of cordgrass over a large area is to spray herbicides from a helicopter as has been done successfully in the western United states, Australia and New zealand.
After years of studying cordgrass in field experiments ecologist Li Bo at Fudan University and his colleagues found that
cordgrass-ridden area that will be subdivided into self-contained grids by mud dykes, with each grid being treated separately.
Since early July, researchers have been cutting down cordgrass to test how grid size topography and tidal patterns might affect eradication efficiency.
Conservation experts say that the cordgrass-eradication scheme given US$163 Â million by the Shanghai Forestry Bureau
The cordgrass"is certainly a problem, he says.""It s just a matter of whether one really needs to build such a massive,
when cordgrass can be killed with just half a metre of water. Crucially, they worry that a permanent barricade will cripple efforts to restore tidal habitats for birds.
For example, without the ebb and flow of tides, the sea bulrush (Scirpus mariqueter), a native intertidal grass bearing fruit and stalks that are key food sources for many birds
More fundamentally, the current plan will not even eradicate all cordgrass from the reserve, says Li.
During that time, the cordgrass grew beyond the proposed seawall borders by a few hundred metres.
Cordgrass"will continue to eat up the tidal flats and spread to other parts of the reserve
and could eradicate the cordgrass in the entire reserve while retaining natural tidal rhythms. But"factors other than conservation were likely to be involved in the decision-making process that led to the plan for a permanent sea wall,
In the meantime, the scheme will at least ameliorate the cordgrass infestation and will create more habitats for birds."
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