" I heard it through the AgLine"

April 22, 2011

 

 

·        Insects seen as answer to global malnutrition

·        Prenatal pesticide exposure tied to lower IQ

·        Syngenta snarled in ‘judicial hell hole’ defense

·        High-tech hydroponics coming to Calif. coast

·        New technique helps plant pathogen detection

 

 

Insects seen as answer to global malnutrition

 

VIENTIANE (AFP) – Serge Verniau is a man with a mission: to persuade the world to swap the chicken wings and steaks on their plates for crickets, palm weevils and other insects rich in protein and vitamins.

 

Verniau, the Laos representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is only half-joking when he says his dream is "to feed the big metropolises from Tokyo to Los Angeles, via Paris" with the small arthropods.

 

He plans to present the lessons drawn from a pilot project to the world at a conference on edible insects, probably in 2012.

 

"Most of the world's population will live in urban areas. Trying to feed the whole planet enough protein from cows won't work," Verniau told AFP.

 

It is not by chance that the dream was born in landlocked Laos, one of the world's poorest countries.

 

Almost one quarter of its population of six million people, and nearly 40 percent of children below the age of five years old, suffer from malnutrition, according to figures from the Laos government.

 

The typical rice-based diet provides insufficient nutrients for development -- a shortfall that could be filled by insects, highly rich in protein and vitamins.

 

Eaten as snacks, grilled or fried, they are already part of Laos cuisine, but most people do not know how to breed them, said Oudom Phonekhampheng, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the National University of Laos.

 

"They just take them in the wild and eat them, and then it is finished and destroyed. They have to think about the future," he said.

 

In a modest building in the suburbs of the capital, his department's laboratory collects scientific data on this new area of breeding.

 

Along with house crickets -- which are already widely farmed in neighbouring Thailand -- there are experiments in breeding mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants, which are appreciated for their larvae.

 

The students are trying out different foods for the insects in an attempt to reduce costs while maintaining quality, explains Yupa Hanboonsong, a Thai entomologist supervising the project for the FAO.

 

Up to now, the roughly 20 cricket farms operating in Laos have used chicken feed, like thousands of Thai farms, but it is expensive and must be imported.

 

Vegetables or waste left over from the production of the national beer, BeerLao, could be one solution, said Yupa, who hopes to "train the whole country."

 

Beyond the fight against malnutrition, this new economic activity can also generate revenue for farmers, added Yupa.

 

Phouthone Sinthiphanya, 61, seized the opportunity in 2007 to supplement his meager pension after a career in the tobacco industry.

 

The 27 cylindrical concrete vats, about 50 centimetres (20 inches) tall, installed in the garden of his house in Vientiane produce 67 kilos (148 pounds) of crickets every two months, he explains.

 

One kilo of live insects fetches 60,000 kips (7.5 dollars). The same quantity crushed sells for 50,000 kips.

 

"I worked for a tobacco company and then retired. My pension was not enough so I started farming insects," he said.

 

"Our customers are restaurants, villagers, markets," he said, adding that breeding the small creatures was "easy".

 

It requires little space or natural resources and only their singing might annoy the neighbours.

 

"Insect farming creates less damage to the environment. It is a green protein," said Yupa.

 

Proponents believe such nutritional and environmental advantages could be beneficial beyond Laos, particularly in other developing countries where people are used to eating cicadas and grasshoppers.

 

"You can make powder from crickets that is very rich in protein. It's low in fat and it can be added to biscuits in problem areas where food rations are distributed," said Verniau.

 

Nor has he given up hope of persuading sceptics in the West.

 

"When you look closely, a grey shrimp or a cricket, it has the same appeal," he joked.

 

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Prenatal pesticide exposure tied to lower IQ

 

(UC Berkeley via PhysOrg.com) -- In a new study suggesting pesticides may be associated with the health and development of children, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health have found that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides – widely used on food crops – is related to lower intelligence scores at age 7.

 

The researchers found that every tenfold increase in measures of organophosphates detected during a mother's pregnancy corresponded to a 5.5 point drop in overall IQ scores in the 7-year-olds. Children in the study with the highest levels of prenatal pesticide exposure scored seven points lower on a standardized measure of intelligence compared with children who had the lowest levels of exposure.

 

"These associations are substantial, especially when viewing this at a population-wide level," said study principal investigator Brenda Eskenazi, UC Berkeley professor of epidemiology and of maternal and child health. "That difference could mean, on average, more kids being shifted into the lower end of the spectrum of learning, and more kids needing special services in school."

 

The UC Berkeley study is among a trio of papers showing an association between pesticide exposure and childhood IQ to be published online April 21 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Notably, the other two studies – one at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, the other at Columbia University – examined urban populations in New York City, while the UC Berkeley study focused on children living in Salinas, an agricultural center in Monterey County, California.

 

The studies in New York also examined prenatal exposure to pesticides and IQ in children at age 7. Like the UC Berkeley researchers, scientists at Mt. Sinai sampled pesticide metabolites in maternal urine, while researchers at Columbia looked at umbilical cord blood levels of a specific pesticide, chlorpyrifos.

 

"It is very unusual to see this much consistency across populations in studies, so that speaks to the significance of the findings," said lead author Maryse Bouchard, who was working as a UC Berkeley post-doctoral researcher with Eskenazi while this study was underway. "The children are now at a stage where they are going to school, so it's easier to get good, valid assessments of cognitive function."

 

Organophosphates (OP) are a class of pesticides that are well-known neurotoxicants. Indoor use of chlorpyrifos and diazinon, two common OP pesticides, has been phased out over the past decade, primarily because of health risks to children.

 

The 329 children in the UC Berkeley study had been followed from before birth as part of the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), an ongoing longitudinal study led by Eskenazi. The new findings on IQ come less than a year after another study from the CHAMACOS cohort found an association between prenatal pesticide exposure and attention problems in children at age 5.

 

Researchers began enrolling pregnant women in the study in 1999. During pregnancy and after the children were born, study participants came to regular visits where CHAMACOS staff administered questionnaires and measured the health and development of the children.

 

During the visits, samples of urine were taken from the participants and tested for dialkyl phosphate (DAP) metabolites, the breakdown product of about 75 percent of the organophosphorus insecticides in use in the United States. Samples were taken twice during pregnancy, with the two results averaged, and after birth from the children at regular intervals between ages 6 months and 5 years.

 

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) was used to assess the cognitive abilities of the children at age 7. The test includes subcategories for verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed.

 

In addition to the association with overall IQ scores, each of the four cognitive development subcategories saw significant decreases in scores associated with higher levels of DAPs when the mothers were pregnant. The findings held even after researchers considered such factors as maternal education, family income and exposure to other environmental contaminants, including DDT, lead and flame retardants.

 

"There are limitations to every study; we used metabolites to assess exposure, so we cannot isolate the exposure to a specific pesticide chemical, for instance," added Eskenazi. "But the way this and the New York studies were designed – starting with pregnant women and then following their children – is one of the strongest methods available to study how environmental factors affect children's health."

 

While markers of prenatal OP pesticide exposure were significantly correlated with childhood IQ, exposure to pesticides after birth was not. This suggests that exposure during fetal brain development was more critical than childhood exposure.

 

Levels of maternal DAPs among the women in the UC Berkeley study were somewhat higher than average compared with the U.S. population, but they were not out of the range of measurements found among women in a national study.

 

"These findings are likely applicable to the general population," said Bouchard, who is currently a researcher at the University of Montreal's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. "In addition, the other two studies being published were done in New York City, so the connection between pesticide exposure and IQ is not limited to people living in an agricultural community."

 

The prenatal exposures measured in this paper occurred in 1999-2000. Overall, OP pesticide use in the United States has been trending downward, declining more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2009, and about 45 percent since 2001 in California. At the same time, the use of OP pesticides in Monterey County remained steady between 2001 and 2008, but declined 18 percent from 2008 to 2009. Several studies suggest that exposure to OP pesticides has gone down with declining use.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, people are exposed to OP pesticides through eating foods from crops treated with these chemicals. Farm workers, gardeners, florists, pesticide applicators and manufacturers of these insecticides may have greater exposure than the general population.

 

"Many people are also exposed when pesticides are used around homes, schools or other buildings," said study co-author Asa Bradman, associate director of the Center for Environmental Research in Children's Health (CERCH) at UC Berkeley.

 

The researchers recommended that consumers reduce their home use of pesticides, noting that most home and garden pests can be controlled without those chemicals. If pesticides are needed, they said bait stations should be used instead of sprays.

 

They also said that consumers should thoroughly wash fruits and vegetables; go beyond a quick rinse and use a soft brush, if practical. Consumers could also consider buying organic produce when possible as a way to reduce pesticide exposure from food, they said.

 

"I'm concerned about people not eating right based on the results of this study," said Eskenazi. "Most people already are not getting enough fruits and vegetables in their diet, which is linked to serious health problems in the United States. People, especially those who are pregnant, need to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables."

 

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Syngenta snarled in ‘judicial hell hole’ defense

 

(stltoday.com) EDWARDSVILLE • A Madison County judge, in a ruling filed Wednesday, revealed that a Chicago public relations firm recommended tying defense of a class-action lawsuit over water pollution with a campaign painting the local courts as a "judicial hellhole" friendly to frivolous lawsuits.

 

The revelations come in an order by Circuit Court Judge William Mudge on a range of issues submitted to him in the case accusing agribusiness company Syngenta, a producer of the chemical atrazine, of polluting area groundwater.

 

The judge ordered the release of previously undisclosed communications between the Jayne Thompson & Associates public relations firm and Syngenta. In the documents, the judge said, the public relations firm outlines a plan to portray the Madison County court system as a source of "jackpot justice."

 

Pro-business groups, including the American Tort Reform Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have in past years criticized Madison and St. Clair counties as being too plaintiff-friendly.

 

The ruling said the documents show, in part, a strategy to "enhance the public's perception of Syngenta and the herbicide it manufactures at the expense of the Madison County judicial system."

 

"The proposal actually outlines an aggressive public relations strategy to build upon or create a hostile attitude toward the Madison County judicial system," Mudge wrote.

 

The law firm Korein Tillery filed a class-action lawsuit against Syngenta and other atrazine manufacturers in 2004 in Madison County court. The suit, filed on behalf of local sanitary and water districts, accuses the companies of polluting groundwater with the weed killer used on area farm fields.

 

Syngenta has stood behind the product's safety, refuting studies about the herbicide's environmental and health effects.

 

The 13-page proposal from the public relations firm to a Syngenta senior communications manager was dated Oct. 3, 2005.

 

Neither Jayne Thompson & Associates nor attorneys for the firm or Syngenta could be reached for comment Wednesday evening.

 

Lawyers with Korein Tillery, who asked Syngenta to turn over the documents as part of pretrial discovery, leading to the judge's order, said in a statement the strategy was an example of large companies spending millions of dollars to subvert justice.

 

Stephen Tillery, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the case, said the companies were trying to "prevent the people of our region from exercising their right to seek damages for injuries caused by corporate misconduct, defective products, fraud and deceptive practices."

 

The judge ordered Syngenta to hand over the documents to the plaintiffs within 14 days. The next hearing in the case was rescheduled and has not yet been set.

 

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High-tech hydroponics coming to Calif. coast

 

(Lompoc Record.com) – It’s safe to say that California’s Santa Maria Valley has never seen anything like the Windset Farms greenhouse facility rapidly going up along Black Road west of town.

 

In fact, outside of Camarillo, which has a greenhouse operation owned by Howling Hothouse Group, few agricultural regions in the country can boast of similar facilities.

 

Two massive 32-acre greenhouses and a 174,000-square-foot processing facility and packing plant are under construction, with two more identical greenhouses planned. Once they’re in production, they will take valley agriculture beyond high tech.

 

When complete, the four 28-foot-tall greenhouses will give the facility 128 acres — 5.7 million square feet — of perfectly maintained hydroponic growing space.

 

Windset Farms, a Canadian firm based in Delta, British Columbia, grows a wide variety of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplants and endives in some of the most technologically advanced greenhouses available in the world.

 

The company operates three growing facilities — two in the rich Fraser Valley and a third in Las Vegas. The newest promises to expand the company’s production along the West Coast.

 

“This will be the most sustainable greenhouse in the world,” said Steve Newell, the 37-year old president and chief executive officer of Windset Farms.

 

Efforts on the new Santa Maria facility began two years ago when the company was looking to expand its markets on the West Coast. The Newells, who explored the business by working in some Dutch facilities, seriously considered Camarillo and some locations in Arizona, but settled on Santa Maria because of an abundance of water and workforce, and its friendly weather and business climates.

 

“You have enough light in the winter months to carry a crop through the entire year,” Newell said. “It’s nonstop, continuous production.”

 

The Santa Maria facility is the latest step in the company’s technological evolution that began when Newell and his brother John built their first greenhouse in 1996. Hel said the facility will have a carbon-neutral footprint, meaning it doesn’t add any greenhouse gases to the environment.

 

To call Windset Farms latest operation state-of-the-art might be doing it a bit of disservice. The Dutch-designed and built KUBO greenhouses merely frame a growing system that is both incredibly elaborate and highly computerized.

 

The new facility will recycle and reuse the water it purchases from the city; collect and recycle rainwater and condensation from outside and inside the greenhouses; collect and recycle carbon dioxide for both growing purposes and cogeneration of energy it uses for production.

 

Interior monitors will allow its carbon dioxide-injection, irrigation and air-handling systems to always deliver the perfect amount of water, air, fertilizer and CO2 to maintain optimum growing conditions. The high-tech greenhouses also allow the company to grow without using any pesticides.

 

Windset says its highly sophisticated hydroponic system allows it to grow 10 to 20 times as much food in the same area as traditional farming methods.

 

 “It’s very, very energy efficient and the most sustainable type of farming,” Newell said.

 

The new facility’s computerization reaches well beyond its greenhouses. Newell said all employees will be issued computerized identification that will track their location in the facility, which is important for “bio-security” — to avoid any potential contamination — and their productivity.

 

“We will know who’s doing what, when, where and how fast,” he explained. “It’s very motivating because it’s accurate and well-tracked.”

 

Newell said he expects to hire around 200 employees, ranging from production and greenhouse workers to senior management, to start, which is important to the city, as well.

 

“Because it’s greenhouse farming it will keep people employed year round, which is important to the community,” said Community Development Director Larry Appel.

 

Windset’s first two Santa Maria greenhouses will focus on growing its Allegro, Roma, Virtuoso beefsteak and Concerto grape tomatoes. Newell said plans for the second two greenhouses could include expanding crops to cucumbers and peppers.

 

He wants to plant the first crop some time in August or September and have the first tomatoes harvested and shipped seven to 10 weeks later. Newell said Windset Farms aims to get harvested vegetables to market within 48 hours.

 

The company’s products currently are available at Trader Joe’s, Costco, Sam’s Club and Walmart. The Santa Maria location will allow the company to more efficiently serve those retailers throughout the southwest and along the West Coast.

 

Newell was hesitant to talk about the total price tag for the Santa Maria facility, saying only that it was in the “tens of millions of dollars.” He did say the facility has nearly $5 million in water treatment and conservation systems alone.

 

The construction effort is both an international and local affair.

 

KUBO greenhouses is a Dutch corporation, and they are being built by workers from the Netherlands, Colorado and the Central Coast. Mountain High Greenhouse Construction of Pueblo, Colo., is one of Kubo’s  American building partners.

 

The architectural glass comes from PPG Industries’ Texas production facility. Some insulated pipe for the irrigation system is manufactured in Russia.

 

JW Design of San Luis Obispo is the general contractor with Urban Planning Concepts, Peak Electric, Knechts Plumbing and Heating, Titan Steel Construction, R.W. Scott Construction among the many local companies working the project.

 

Newell said the Santa Maria Valley and this property’s in-town location provided the best opportunity for his company. He said the Arizona sites were too hot, Camarillo water was too expensive and regulations for other Santa Barbara County locations were too restrictive.

 

“People in the area have been very welcoming and delighted to have us here. They’ve rolled out the mat for us in every way. People are great here,” he said. “It was a really good fit for what they (the city) were looking for and what we needed.”

 

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New technique helps plant pathogen detection

 

(USDA-ARS) – A new procedure devised by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and colleagues can improve polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods of detecting plant disease organisms.

 

PCR-based tests are prized tools for diagnosing plant diseases that can cause yield losses and diminished markets among other economic harm. But the test's ability to obtain a "genetic fingerprint" conclusively identifying a culprit pathogen hinges on there being a minimum number of its cells. Otherwise, the pathogen's genetic material can't be probed and multiplied in amounts necessary for detection, explains plant pathologist Norm Schaad, formerly with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.

 

Such diagnostic shortcomings can be especially costly when asymptomatic seed or plants intended for sale are certified as pathogen-free when, in fact, they are not, adds Schaad. He worked at the ARS Foreign Disease-Weed Science Research Unit in Frederick, Md., prior to retiring last year.

 

To tackle the problem, Schaad and colleagues Nikolas Panopoulos and Efstathios Hatziloukas devised a preliminary step called Bio-PCR. It uses growth-promoting agar or liquid media to increase the number of a target organism's cells in a sample prior to amplification of genetic material. In four to 72 hours, depending on the pathogen, the cells make thousands of new copies, enabling detection by direct PCR, according to Schaad.

 

Besides increasing sensitivity by 100- to 1,000-fold over conventional PCR methods, the enrichment technique stops substances called inhibitors from interfering with the action of a key enzyme, Taq polymerase.

 

Bio-PCR works best with fast-growing bacteria such as Ralstonia solanacearum, which causes bacterial wilt of potato and tomato, and Acidovorax avenae, which causes bacterial fruit blotch of watermelon. However, Bio-PCR also improves detection of slow-growing pathogens such as Xylella fastidiosa, responsible for Pierce's disease of grapes and leaf scorch of shade trees.

 

In studies with X. fastidiosa, Bio-PCR detected the bacterium in 90 percent of infected grape samples compared to 13 percent with conventional PCR methods.

 

More information: Read more about this research in the April 2011 issue of Agricultural Research magazine. http://www.ars.usd … lant0411.htm

 

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