Veggie is a deployable plant growth unit capable of producing salad-type crops to provide the crew with appetizing nutritious and safe fresh food
since growing food in space may greatly improve long-duration spaceflight. Veggie can support a variety of studies used to determine how plants sense
#Nutrient-rich forests absorb more carbonthe ability of forests to sequester carbon from the atmosphere depends on nutrients available in the forest soils shows new research from an international team of researchers including IIASA.
The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change showed that forests growing in fertile soils with ample nutrients are able to sequester about 30%of the carbon that they take up during photosynthesis. In contrast forests growing in nutrient-poor
-poor forests spend a lot of energy--carbon--through mechanisms to acquire nutrients from the soil whereas nutrient-rich forests can use that carbon to enhance biomass production.
Until now scientific models to predict forest carbon sequestration on a global scale had considered only the amount of nitrogen in the soil
or the ph of the soil which is related to the availability of nutrients. The new study includes both those factors as well as nitrogen availability in an analysis synthesizing data from 92 forests in different climate zones on the planet.
Tropical rainforests had the poorest nutrient availability and the lowest efficiency for carbon sequestration the researchers found.
For one thing plants in nutrient-poor soils devote more energy to locating nutrients. When plants are in nutrient poor conditions they send out more roots
and produce chemicals that can help dissolve nutrients from the soil. This takes energy though
Furthermore the study showed that nutrient-rich ecosystems also generally have more stable ground organic material
#Endemic in pork industry: Will new tests prevent it? Pork products cost about 10 percent more than they did last year according to the U s. Bureau of Labor Statistics
and economists expect the prices to continue rising because of diarrhea viruses currently devastating the pork industry.
That's why researchers at the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Kansas State university have developed new tests they hope will mitigate the spread of these viruses.
Enteric disease in pigs has turned into a huge huge problem and we're developing all kinds of new tests to address the old problems
The researchers hope the tests will stop the spread of these diseases before they become endemic.
The plants were modified genetically to increase their production of starch and sugars which contributes to the increase in ethanol production.
and sugars in the tobacco leaf are in fact higher. Traditional tobacco growing allows the plant to develop
or animals solasenol (used to produce vitamins E and K) and xanthophylls (an additive in chicken feeds).
http://www. nrs. fs. fed. us/pubs/45688. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Northern Research Station.
and developed a chemical defence mechanism designed to prevent vandalism--a self-defending surface composed of several sandwich-like layers of plastic.
and a bird that has claws on its wings and a stomach like a cow. The research published today in Current Biology the shows that Indonesia Australia
This mercury of anthropogenic origin together with naturally occurring mercury enters the food chain. A heavy metal mercury is a powerful endocrine disruptor that can inhibit the production of hormones for reproduction.
Skuas are migratory birds that feed essentially on penguin eggs and chicks as well as fish. These formidable predators which live for up to 25 to 30 years accumulate mercury in their tissues.
Scientists grow longer lasting saladresearchers at the University of Southampton have helped to produce salads with a longer shelf-life.
They worked with Vitacress one of the biggest producers of packaged salads to understand what keeps salad leaves fresh for longer.
and within Vitacress'own practises to produce salads with a longer shelf life. Before they reach our supermarkets baby salad leaves undergo rigorous processing that includes harvesting transportation washing sanitization removal of excess water and packaging.
Only the most robust leaves can survive this process without being bruised and damaged. This makes growing salad crops with'processable'leaves extremely important for the packaged salad industry as it reduces waste
and increases shelf life. Lead researcher on the project Professor Gail Taylor from the University of Southampton says:
Developing high quality nutritious sustainable salad leaves is really important for Vitacress; it's a key part of their business.
Professor Taylor and colleagues together with Vitacress used funding from an Industrial Partnership Award (IPA) from the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to work out the genetics of processable salad leaves
so that this information could be used by industry in salad crop breeding programs. First they identified
what it was about certain salad leaves that gave them a longer shelf life. They found that smaller tougher leaves with lots of small cells packed closely together lasted longer.
In the course of the project the researchers also made the unexpected discovery that using less water
when growing salad improves its shelf-life which has added environmental benefits. We were able to show that
if you reduce water use in intensive salad production by about 20 percent you actually develop smaller tougher leaves with stiff cells walls
Ruminants produce more of the gas per amount of converted feed than other herbivores. The only other animal group that regularly ruminates like ruminants are camels.
They too regurgitate food from the forestomach in order to reduce it in size through renewed chewing.
However if one compares methane production with the amount of converted feed then it is the same in both groups.
Lower metabolism--less feed--less methanethe modified calculation of the methane budget may be important for those countries with lots of camels--like the dromedaries in the middle East and in Australia or the alpacas and llamas in various South american countries.
The lower metabolism of camels could explain why they thrive particularly in areas with a shortage of food--desert and barren mountain regions.
#Chips with olestra cause body toxins to dip, study findsaccording to a clinical trial led by University of Cincinnati researchers a snack food ingredient called olestra has been found to speed up the removal of toxins in the body.
The Kellogg Company purchased the Pringles brand in 2012. Olestra is a fat that passes through the body
Half of the participants consumed 12 Pringles a day made with vegetable oil and the other half consumed 24 Pringles a day made with olestra.
According to the results the half who ate the olestra chips had a PCB rate of decrease of 8 percent an eightfold increase in the rate of removal prior to the study compared with those who ate the chips with vegetable oil who had a 1 percent
Water is used also to dampen the ground to prevent the buildup and spread of dust.
but arid regions that are inhospitable to most food crops. But there is one valuable plant that thrives at high temperatures and in poor soil:
or food or energy sometimes leads to creative solutions said Lobell who is a coauthor on the new study.
The article based on research conducted over 25 years at the Kellogg Biological Station in southwest Michigan further reports that Midwest farmers especially those with large farms appear willing to change their farming practices to provide these ecosystem services in exchange for payments.
and six coauthors associated with the Kellogg Biological Station which is part of the Long term Ecological Research Network.
Their next step was to add tomatidine to the diet of mice. They found that healthy mice supplemented with tomatidine grew bigger muscles became stronger
We are interested now very in the possibility that several food-based natural compounds such as tomatidine
or even simply incorporated into everyday foods to make them healthier. In an effort to accelerate this research
However microbes--known as thermoduric--can survive pasteurization according to South dakota State university dairy science professor Sanjeev Anand.
His work is supported also by the Dairy Research Institute and the Midwest Dairy Food Research center.
As the colony expands the layers form a biofilm that feeds and protects the organisms.
Milk cheese milk powder and environmental samples were collected from 10 dairies in eastern South dakota and three processing plants outside the state.
South dakota's dairy industry produces 1. 8 billion pounds of milk and 232 million pounds of cheese producing a total economic impact of $1. 28 billion a year.
which Anand describes as intervention prior to pasteurization or in combination with it. At this early stage of investigation the team has developed a method
which when combined with pasteurization has been relatively successful in dealing with vegetative cells of thermoduric sporeformers to a large extent and spores to a less extent he reports.
or batch pasteurization and is being adapted to a continuous processing system. If successful he says we will have integrated an process at pilot scale to share with industry.
Researchers at the U s. Department of energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory who are co-authors on this paper conducted critical radiotracer studies that support the new theory that plant sugars play a dominant role in regulating branching
while working on her degree at the University of New Haven conducted an essential experiment to verify that sugars play a key role in apical dominance and the regulation of plant bud growth.
if sugars produced in leaves via photosynthesis move downward through plants in greater quantities when shoot tips are removed
and quickly enough to trigger bud growth farther down. To trace the sugars the scientists first had to add a radioactive tag to these molecules.
The tag they used was a positron-emitting isotope of carbon carbon-11 incorporated into carbon dioxide.
When they administered this labeled CO2 to plant leaves the plants incorporated the radioactive carbon into sugars via photosynthesis. The scientists then tracked the labeled sugars throughout the plant using detectors placed along the plant stem.
The time taken for the 11c-labeled sugars to move between two detectors on upper and lower regions of the stem was used to calculate sugar transport speeds.
The scientists also monitored how much sugar accumulated at different positions including where previously dormant buds began to sprout in response to clipping the plants'apical shoots.
We found that upon decapitation of the plant there is a rapid increase in sugar delivery to the buds
which promotes bud outgrowth Babst said. The sugars move about 100 times faster than auxin a plant hormone previously believed to regulate bud growth.
This finding supports the idea that sugar--not auxin--is the key signaling molecule for this immediate response to clipping.
Auxin plays a secondary role later in the process Babst said. The Brookhaven experiment further supports the idea that the demand for sugar in intact actively growing apical shoots limits the availability of this nutrient to the rest of the plant
thus normally keeping lower branch bud growth in check. Only a few labs in the world have the capability using the carbon-11 radioisotope to do the type of experiment that we did to see rapid changes in carbon allocation immediately following a treatment such as shoot tip removal Babst said.
Ben's work was critical for this study said Christine Beveridge of the University of Queensland Australia who was the lead author on the paper.
His finding that sugars move at 150 cm per hour along the stem is amazing.
and sorghum--where because the buds and shoot tips are inaccessible without damaging the plant
#Kitchens are source of multi-drug resistant bacteriaafter handling raw poultry hands of food preparers
The spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria has been associated with the hospital setting but these findings suggest that transmission of drug-resistant E coli occurs both in the hospital
and 144 from private households) after preparation of various meats (i e. poultry beef/veal pork lamb game
The researchers found that none of the cutting boards used in preparing beef/veal pork lamb game
They also found that the meat's country of origin did not play a factor in the presence of bacteria on any of the surfaces.
and food production such as metalworking fewer people were regularly doing tasks that were very strenuous on their legs.
and allowed for people to specialise in tasks other than food production. Macintosh said: In Central europe adaptations in human leg bones spanning this time frame show that it was initially men who were performing the majority of high-mobility tasks probably associated with tending crops and livestock.
#Spring allergies linked to specific food allergies, says specialistthe Midwest's high tree pollen count is primarily birch and oak bad news for carrot celery and almond lovers.
if certain foods make your mouth water but it is unhealthy if foods make your nose run
or your gums and throat itch says Joseph Leija MD allergist who performs the Gottlieb Allergy Count the official allergy count for the Midwest.
The spring allergy count in the Midwest is high in birch and oak which usually triggers reactions to carrots celery almonds apples peaches and pears in those with sensitive systems.
And ragweed allergies are linked also to allergies to bananas cantaloupe cucumber zucchini and chamomile tea.
While many people experience minor reactions to certain foods that are basically harmless others have extreme reactions.
However most people in North america would have to more than double their consumption of these foods known as pulses to reach that target said the researchers at St michael's Hospital.
The study led by Dr. John Sievenpiper of the hospital's Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre was published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Dr. Sievenpiper said that by eating one serving a day of pulses people could lower their LDL (bad) cholesterol by five per cent.
Pulses have a low glycemic index (meaning that they are foods that break down slowly) and tend to reduce
or displace animal protein as well as bad fats such as trans fat in a dish or meal.
We have a lot of room in our diets for increasing our pulse intake to derive the cardiovascular benefits Dr. Sievenpiper said.
Pulses already play a role in many traditional cuisines including Mediterranean and South Asian. As an added bonus they're inexpensive.
because their diets are poorer and cholesterol levels are higher and benefit more markedly from a healthier diet.
Some study participants reported stomach upset such as bloating gas diarrhea or constipation but these symptoms subsided over the course of the study.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by St michael's Hospital. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Forests provide essential ecosystem services for people including timber food and water. For those struggling with the after-effects of deforestation the main hope lies in rebuilding forest resources through ecological restoration.
#Food quality will suffer with rising carbon dioxide, field study showsfor the first time a field test has demonstrated that elevated levels of carbon dioxide inhibit plants'assimilation of nitrate into proteins indicating that the nutritional quality of food crops is at risk as climate change intensifies.
Findings from this wheat field-test study led by a UC Davis plant scientist will be reported online April 6 in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Food quality is declining under the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that we are experiencing said lead author Arnold Bloom a professor in the Department of Plant sciences.
In food crops it is especially important because plants use nitrogen to produce the proteins that are vital for human nutrition.
Wheat in particular provides nearly one-fourth of all protein in the global human diet. Many previous laboratory studies had demonstrated that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide inhibited nitrate assimilation in the leaves of grain and non-legume plants;
however there had been no verification of this relationship in field-grown plants. Wheat field studyto observe the response of wheat to different levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide the researchers examined samples of wheat that had been grown in 1996 and 1997 in the Maricopa Agricultural Center near Phoenix Ariz.
While heavy nitrogen fertilization could partially compensate for this decline in food quality it would also have negative consequences including higher costs more nitrate leaching into groundwater
and EPOC laboratories (OASU CNRS Universitã Bordeaux 1) and published in the journal Nature changes the order for global carbon footprints.
study showswildlife fences are constructed for a variety of reasons including to prevent the spread of diseases protect wildlife from poachers
At the same time people kill wild animals for food trade or to defend lives or property and human activities degrade wildlife habitat.
and standardized approaches to meat preparation can prevent spread of diseases without the need to separate cattle from wildlife by fencing.
while using less water seem like a dream for a world with a burgeoning population and already strained food and water resources.
In other areas you may want to concentrate on food productivity. Plants have evolved to outcompete other plants--for example shading out other plants
or using water and nutrients liberally to the detriment of neighboring plants. However in an agricultural setting the plants don't need such competitive measures.
and conserve water and nutrients so we have been looking at what leaf arrangements would best do this.
According to Long The Food and agriculture organization of the united nations predict that by 2050 we will need 70 percent more primary foodstuffs to feed the world than we are producing today
and optimization we have the potential to greatly expedite the development of new types of agricultural plants that can tackle some of the greatest challenges facing society today related to the need to produce more food in a more variable and uncertain climate system
and US Forest Service in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecosphere last week but outlier project sites with good grouse habitat may yield clues to successful management scenarios.
FWS must decide on the grouse's protection status by the end of FY 2015.
and limiting the spread of nonnative species. Accomplishing those goals certainly wouldn't hurt sage grouse
if ESR treatments had improved conditions for grouse in these vast burned areas. The average ESR project encompasses 4 square miles.
The study and another tracking the recovery of mountain big sagebrush (A. tridentata subsp. vaseyana) at high elevation suggest that climate may play a role in the failure of big sage germination and establishment in hotter locations.
#New approach to detecting changes in GM foodsdoes genetic manipulation causes unintended changes in food quality and composition?
are modified genetically (GM) foods less nutritious than their non-GM counterparts or different in unknown ways?
Despite extensive cultivation and testing of GM foods those questions still linger in the minds of many consumers.
We look for diverse food experiences Hoekenga says. So we think that establishing the range of acceptable metabolic variability in food can be useful for examining GM varieties.
The process was expensive and the chemistry methods can't yet be used in official safety assessments Hoekenga acknowledges.
study suggestsbe sure to pick up a watermelon--or two--at your local grocery store. It could save your life.
Participants also had to refrain from taking any medication for blood pressure or making any significant changes in their lifestyle particularly related to diet and exercise during the study.
(and possibly flavoring) and a heater that vaporizes the nicotine to be inhaled by the user.
or vaporizer pens for individuals who vaporize other substances such as herbs marijuana marijuana oils and hashish waxes.
and the nicotine dose that an individual user may receive varies with the brand battery charge level e-juice
The safety of many of the inhaled flavorings in the e-cigarette liquid is known also not;
heating these flavorings could create new chemicals and byproducts. We don't know how safe it is to breathe second hand vapor.
The potential health benefits of dark chocolate keep piling up and scientists are now homing in on
what ingredients in chocolate might help prevent obesity as well as type-2 diabetes. They found that one particular type of antioxidant in cocoa prevented laboratory mice from gaining excess weight
The report appears in ACS'Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry. Andrew P. Neilson and colleagues explain that cocoa the basic ingredient of chocolate is one of the most flavanol-rich foods around.
That's good for chocolate lovers because previous research has shown that flavanols in other foods such as grapes
and tea can help fight weight gain and type-2 diabetes. But not all flavanols which are a type of antioxidant are created equal.
Cocoa has several different kinds of these compounds so Neilson's team decided to tease them apart
The scientists fed groups of mice different diets including high-fat and low-fat diets and high-fat diets supplemented with different kinds of flavanols.
They found that adding one particular set of these compounds known as oligomeric procyanidins (PCS) to the food made the biggest difference in keeping the mice's weight down
if they were on high-fat diets. They also improved glucose tolerance which could potentially help prevent type-2 diabetes.
Oligomeric PCS appear to possess the greatest antiobesity and antidiabetic bioactivities of the flavanols in cocoa particularly at the low doses employed for the present study the researchers state.
#First peanut genome sequencedthe International Peanut Genome Initiative--a group of multinational crop geneticists who have been working in tandem for the last several years--has sequenced successfully the peanut's genome.
Scott Jackson director of the University of Georgia Center for Applied Genetic Technologies in the College of Agricultural and Environmental sciences serves as chair of the International Peanut Genome Initiative or IPGI.
The new peanut genome sequence will be available to researchers and plant breeders across the globe to aid in the breeding of more productive and more resilient peanut varieties.
Peanut known scientifically as Arachis hypogaea and also called groundnut is important both commercially and nutritionally.
While the oil-and protein-rich legume is seen as a cash crop in the developed world it remains a valuable sustenance crop in developing nations.
The peanut crop is important in the United states but it's very important for developing nations as well Jackson said.
Globally farmers tend about 24 million hectares of peanuts each year and produce about 40 million metric tons.
Improving peanut varieties to be more drought-insect -and disease-resistant can help farmers in developed nations produce more peanuts with fewer pesticides
and other chemicals and help farmers in developing nations feed their families and build more secure livelihoods said plant geneticist Rajeev Varshney of the International Crops Research Institute for Semiarid Tropics in India who serves on the IPGI.
While peanuts were bred successfully for intensive cultivation for thousands of years relatively little was known about the legume's genetic structure because of its complexity according to Peggy Ozias-Akins a plant geneticist on the UGA Tifton campus who also works with the IPGI
Until now we've bred peanuts relatively blindly as compared to other crops said IPGI plant geneticist David Bertioli of the Universidade de Brasã lia.
The peanut in fields today is the result of a natural cross between two wild species Arachis duranensis and Arachis ipaensis
Because its ancestors were two different species today's peanut is a polyploid meaning the species can carry two separate genomes designated A and B subgenomes.
To map the peanut's structure researchers sequenced the genomes of the two ancestral parents
because together they represent the cultivated peanut. The sequences provide researchers access to 96 percent of all peanut genes in their genomic context providing the molecular map needed to more quickly breed drought-and disease-resistant lower-input and higher-yielding
varieties of peanuts. The two ancestor wild species had been collected in nature conserved in germplasm banks
and then used by the IPGI to better understand the peanut genome. The genomes of the two ancestor species provide excellent models for the genome of the cultivated peanut.
A. duranenis serves as a model for the A subgenome of the cultivated peanut while A. ipaensis represents the B subgenome.
Knowing the genome sequences of the two parent species will allow researchers to recognize the cultivated peanut's genomic structure by differentiating between the two subgenomes present in the plants.
Being able to see the two separate structural elements also will aid future gene marker development-the determination of links between a gene's presence and a physical characteristic of the plant.
Understanding the structure of the peanut's genome will lay the groundwork for new varieties with traits like added disease resistance and drought tolerance.
In addition these genome sequences will serve as a guide for the assembly of the cultivated peanut genome that will help to decipher genomic changes that led to peanut domestication which was marked by increases in seed number and size.
/The International Peanut Genome Initiative brings together scientists from the U s. China Brazil India and Israel to delineate peanut genome sequences characterize the genetic and phenotypic variation in cultivated
and at the University of California Davis. The project was funded by the peanut industry through the Peanut Foundation and by MARS Inc. and three Chinese academies (Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences Chinese Academy of Agricultural
A complete list of the institutions involved with the project and the other funding sources is available at www. peanutbioscience. com. In the U s. peanuts are a major row crop throughout the South and Southeast.
While they are a major economic driver for the U s. economy the legume is also crucial to the diets and livelihoods of millions of small farmers in Asia and Africa many of
While the sequencing of the peanut can be seen as a great leap forward in plant genetics
and genomics it also has the potential to be a large step forward for stabilizing agriculture in developing countries said Dave Hoisington program director for the U s. Agency for International Development Feed the Future Peanut
With the release of the peanut genome sequence researchers will now have much better tools available to accelerate the development of new peanut varieties with improved yields
and better nutrition he said. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Georgia. The original article was written by J. Merritt Melancon.
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