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March 10, 2011
· Calif. leads nation in organic ag production
· Monsanto backing algae fuel startup firm
· Genebanks could be storing the wrong seeds
· Mexico OKs first GM maize pilot project
· Proteins eyed as raw material for biorefining
Calif. leads nation in organic ag production
(physorg.com)
–
The survey found that
The survey analysis was conducted by Karen Klonsky, a UC Cooperative Extension economist in UC Davis’ Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
Klonsky noted that, in terms of
organic production, the state is most prominent in fruits, vegetables, nuts and
berries, with lettuce and grapes being the highest-revenue organic crops. In
fact,
The survey also revealed that
Klonsky’s analysis examined data
from the 2008 Organic Production Survey, the first nationwide survey of organic
agriculture in the
“About one-third of the farms classified themselves as mixed operations with both organic and conventional production,” wrote Klonsky. “This implies that the organic market is an important opportunity for diversification for many conventional farms.”
She noted that the vast majority of survey respondents said they planned to maintain or expand their organic production, indicating that this subsector of agricultural remained financially healthy despite the nation’s economic downturn. There was no indication, however, that many producers who had both organic and conventional operations had plans to become entirely organic.
“This is an indication that organic continues to be a niche market, albeit a profitable one,” Klonsky said.
Monsanto backing algae fuel startup firm
(Fast Company) – Monsanto, the often-vilified agriculture giant, has made a deal that could actually do some good for sustainable development: The company this week formed a partnership with and made an equity investment in algae fuel startup Sapphire Energy (no word on the terms of the arrangement). What's going on?
Sapphire's main research is in what it calls "green crude," or an algae-based liquid that can be turned into diesel, gas, and jet fuel. Monsanto doesn't care about this; it's interest is in Sapphire's genetic research. The startup's genetic technology will be leveraged by Monsanto to isolate traits in algae (i.e. crop yield and performance) that could be applied to to corn, cotton, soybean, and other crops sold by Monsanto.
The partnership will benefit Sapphire, too. "Monsanto has always been at the forefront of agricultural technology developments and innovation," said Jason Pyle, CEO of Sapphire Energy, in a statement. "Through this collaborative partnership, we'll focus our leading-edge research agenda on some of the biggest questions facing both agriculture and energy. By leveraging our algae platform and tools to improve crop yield and enhance crop performance, Sapphire will be able to accelerate our ability to produce a renewable crude oil replacement and reduce our country's dependence on foreign oil."
Cash and research from Monsanto could give Sapphire a leg up on its many algae fuel competitors, which include Solazyme and Synthetic Genomics. This doesn't make it any easier to stomach Monsanto's latest moves in the world of genetically modified crops, but at least some of the company's money is going toward valuable clean energy research.
Genebanks could be storing the wrong seeds
(Crop Science
Society of America via newswise.com)
However, genebanks are modern institutions that were established after many of the old cultivars were no longer in use. The seeds stored for old cultivars were collected from numerous sources, many with little information concerning the seed. Therefore, genebanks could be storing seeds that do not genuinely represent the original cultivar.
Scientists at the
Mark van de Wouw, the author of the study, expressed his surprise by saying, “From my experiences with other genebanks I did suspect there might be a problem with the authenticity of the seeds that was sent out to users, but I did not realize the problem to be this large. Although current procedures in the genebank avoid to a large extent that new mistakes are being made, the level of mislabeling in the past has apparently been high. It is obvious that systematized efforts need to be made to check the authenticity of the heirloom cultivars in genebank collections.”
The full study is published in the March/April 2011 issue of Crop Science.
The full article is available for no charge for 30 days following the date of this summary. View the abstract at www.crops.org/publications/cs/abstracts/51/2/736.
Crop Science is the flagship journal of the Crop Science Society of America. Original research is peer-reviewed and published in this highly cited journal. It also contains invited review and interpretation articles and perspectives that offer insight and commentary on recent advances in crop science. For more information, visit www.crops.org/publications/cs
The Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), founded in 1955,
is an international scientific society comprised of 6,000+ members with its
headquarters in
CSSA fosters the transfer of knowledge through an array of programs and services, including publications, meetings, career services, and science policy initiatives. For more information, visit www.crops.org.
Mexico
(AFP)
The Agriculture Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it had approved the project to grow GM yellow corn developed by the US biotech giant Monsanto on one hectare (2.5 acres) of land in the northern Tamaulipas state.
"It is the first permit to be issued for the pilot phase," the ministry said, adding that it had rejected three other similar requests.
The government has granted 67 permits for projects to grow genetically modified corn at the experimental stage, prior to the pilot stage, on more than 70 hectares (173 acres) of land in the north of the country since 2009.
The ministry said the pilot project would allow it to evaluate the costs and benefits of the technology under conditions of strict bio-security.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups have protested such projects, saying they open the door to the widespread planting of crops that could contaminate or drive out local varieties of corn.
Many here are sensitive about meddling with maize, the cultivation of which dates back to pre-Hispanic times, when mythologies held that people were created from corn.
Some fear
The tests are part of efforts to help the country return to maize self-sufficiency and keep food prices down.
GM crops, also including soya and cotton, are highly controversial, with critics underlining potential risks to health and the environment.
Proteins eyed as raw material for biorefining
(UCLA via RedAlert.org) – Two types of raw materials are currently used for biorefining and biofuel production: carbohydrates and lipids. Biofuels like ethanol are derived from carbohydrate raw materials such as sugars and lignocellulose, while biodiesels are derived from another raw material, lipid-rich vegetable oil.
In a study published online March 6 in the journal Nature Biotechnology, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science demonstrate for the first time the feasibility of using proteins — one of the most abundant biomolecules on earth — as a significant raw material for biorefining and biofuel production.
"Proteins had been completely ignored as a potential biomaterial because they've been thought of mainly as food. But in fact, there are a lot of different proteins that cannot be used as food," said James C. Liao, the Chancellor's Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA and senior author of the study. "These proteins were overlooked as a resource for fuel or for chemicals because people did not know how to utilize them or how to grow them. We've solved these problems."
"This research is the first attempt to utilize protein as a carbon source for energy production and biorefining," said Kwang Myung Cho, a UCLA Engineering research scientist and an author of the study. "To utilize protein as a carbon source, complex cellular regulation in nitrogen metabolism had to be rewired. This study clearly showed how to engineer microbial cells to control their cellular nitrogen metabolism."
In nutrient-rich conditions, proteins are the most abundant component in fast-growing microorganisms. The accumulation rate of proteins is faster than that of any other raw materials, including cellulose or lipids. In addition, protein does not have the recalcitrance problems of lignocellulose or the de-watering problem of algal lipids. Protein biomass can be much more easily digested to be used for microorganisms than cellulosic biomass, which is very difficult to break down.
Further, cellulose and lipids don't contribute to the process of photosynthesis. But proteins are the major component of fast-growing photosynthetic microorganisms.
The challenge in protein-based biorefining, the researchers say, lies in the difficulties of effectively converting protein hydrolysates to fuels and chemicals.
"Microorganisms tend to use proteins to build their own proteins instead of converting them to other compounds," said Yi-xin Huo, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. "So to achieve the protein-based biorefining, we have to completely redirect the protein utilization system, which is one of the most highly regulated systems in the cell."
Liao's team created an artificial metabolic system to dump reduced nitrogen out of cells and tricked the cells to degrade proteins without utilizing them for growth. Proteins contain both ammonia and carbon; Liao's team took away the ammonia and recycled it back for the growth of the algae they worked with. Algae with rich ammonia fertilizers grow quickly and were used only as a carrier to assimilate carbon dioxide and produce protein, which results in more CO2 fixation and growth. With this strategy, expensive photo-bioreactors can be eliminated.
"Today, nitrogen fertilizers used in agriculture and biofuel production have become a major threat to many of the world's ecosystems, and the nitrogen-containing residuals in biofuel production can eventually turn into nitrous oxide, which is about 300 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas," Liao said. "Our strategy effectively recycles nitrogen back to the biofuel production process, thus approaching nitrogen neutrality.
"Growing algae to produce protein is like putting the interest back into the principal," he said.
According to Liao's team, the culture area needed to produce 60 billion gallons of biofuels (30 percent of the United States' current transportation fuel) based on the new technology could be as little as 24,600 square kilometers — equivalent to 1.9 percent of the agricultural land in the U.S.
"Developing large-scale systems is our next step," Huo said. "Harvesting of the protein biomass economically is a bottleneck of advancing our technology."
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