" I heard it through the AgLine"

September 14, 2009

 

 

·        Father of the Green Revolution dies at 95

·        Documentary looks at plight of the honeybee

·        Drought? Calif. tomato crop exceeds last year

·        Not wine, but rubber from Russian dandelion

·        Deal will facilitate new algae extraction process

 

 

Father of the Green Revolution dies at 95

 

(AP via Yahoo! New) – DALLAS – Scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug rose from his childhood on an Iowa farm to develop a type of wheat that helped feed the world, fostering a movement that is credited with saving up to 1 billion people from starvation.

 

Borlaug, 95, died Saturday from complications of cancer at his Dallas home, said Kathleen Phillips, a spokesman for Texas A&M University where Borlaug was a distinguished professor.

 

"Norman E. Borlaug saved more lives than any man in human history," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program. "His heart was as big as his brilliant mind, but it was his passion and compassion that moved the world."

 

He was known as the father of the "green revolution," which transformed agriculture through high-yield crop varieties and other innovations, helping to more than double world food production between 1960 and 1990. Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives.

 

"He has probably done more and is known by fewer people than anybody that has done that much," said Dr. Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a close friend who persuaded Borlaug teach at the school. "He made the world a better place — a much better place."

 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called Borlaug "simply one of the world's best. A determined, dedicated, but humble man who believed we had the collective duty and knowledge to eradicate hunger worldwide."

 

Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of World War II. There he developed disease-resistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than traditional strains.

 

He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. In Pakistan and India, two of the nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields more than quadrupled.

 

His successes in the 1960s came just as experts warned that mass starvation was inevitable as the world's population boomed.

 

"More than any other single person of his age, he has helped to provide bread for a hungry world," Nobel Peace Prize committee chairman Aase Lionaes said in presenting the award to Borlaug in 1970. "We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace."

 

But Borlaug and the Green Revolution were also criticized in later decades for promoting practices that used fertilizer and pesticides, and focusing on a few high-yield crops that benefited large landowners.

 

Borlaug often said wheat was only a vehicle for his real interest, which was to improve people's lives.

 

"We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life," he said in his Nobel acceptance speech. "For a decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing and effective and compassionate medical care."

 

Borlaug also pressed governments for farmer-friendly economic policies and improved infrastructure to make markets accessible. A 2006 book about Borlaug is titled "The Man Who Fed the World."

 

Norman Ernest Borlaug was born March 25, 1914, on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, and educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse.

 

He left home during the Great Depression to study forestry at the University of Minnesota. While there he earned himself a place in the university's wrestling hall of fame and met his future wife, whom he married in 1937. Margaret Borlaug died in 2007 at the age of 95.

 

After a brief stint with the U.S. Forest Service, Norman Borlaug returned to the University of Minnesota for a doctoral degree in plant pathology. He then worked as a microbiologist for DuPont, but soon left for a job with the Rockefeller Foundation. Between 1944 and 1960, Borlaug dedicated himself to increasing Mexico's wheat production.

 

In 1963, Borlaug was named head of the newly formed International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, where he trained thousands of young scientists.

 

Borlaug retired as head of the center in 1979 and turned to university teaching, first at Cornell University and then at Texas A&M, which presented him with an honorary doctorate in December 2007.

 

He remained active well into his 90s, campaigning for the use of biotechnology to fight hunger. He also helped found and served as president of the Sasakawa Africa Foundation, an organization funded by Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa to introduce the green revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.

 

In 1986, Borlaug established the Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize, a $250,000 award given each year to a person whose work improves the world's food supply.

 

He received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in 2007.

 

He is survived by daughter Jeanie Borlaug Laube and her husband Rex; son William Gibson Borlaug and his wife Barbie; five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

 

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Documentary looks at plight of the honeybee

 

(CNN) -- "The Last Beekeeper" will change the way you see honeybees.

 

 You may find yourself rescuing a tiny bee you see struggling in a puddle of water. Instead of fearing its sting, you may think about the role honeybees play in putting food on your table.

 

The documentary, which premiered Saturday on the cable channel Planet Green, explores the "intimate relationship" between humans and bees through the eyes of three struggling American beekeepers.

 

"You suddenly realize that even though they look like insects, when you really look at them they take on these personalities," said producer Fenton Bailey.

 

Apiarists -- the professional title for bee scientists -- estimate that one out of every three bites of food you eat is directly or indirectly pollinated by honeybees.

 

Alarming headlines two years ago about the mysterious disappearance of honeybees prompted filmmakers to follow beekeepers from South Carolina, Montana, and Washington as they traveled with their colonies to pollinate California's massive almond crop.

 

 Director Jeremy Simmons said they wanted to show "more than what was in the paper" about the mystery.

 

"There is a really powerful connection between a human being and a bee because we've tended bees for thousand of years," Bailey said. "It's such an old tradition and bees are incredibly sophisticated, evolved creatures."

 

The cameras rolled as these beekeepers faced "colony collapse disorder," a still unexplained phenomenon which scientists estimate has wiped out almost a third of the domestic honeybee hives in the United States.

 

Nomadic beekeepers truck their bee colonies across the country, following the pollination seasons for almonds, apples, cotton and other crops dependent on their insects.

 

Nicole Ulibarri, who inherited her father's Montana beekeeping business last year, said it's a roller coaster ride for both the bees and the beekeepers.

 

"You can have a high this month and all of the sudden you can run into something, and the bees start starving to death," Ulibarri said.

 

Bees are loaded on trucks in January for a cross-country ride to California to pollinate almonds for a few weeks. Their next stop may be Washington state apple orchards for the spring pollination. The changes interrupt their natural rhythms, Ulibarri said.

 

"It's like putting you on a strict diet and that's all I feed you for the next month," she said. "And I pick you up and I shake your house and I take you down the road, which is pretty stressful, and then I move you to a new location, and, guess what, for the next six weeks, now, I've changed your temperature and now I'm only going to give you watermelon. You get sick."

 

The travel also exposes the bees to a variety of pesticides, adding to their stress, she said. And mites, believed to have been brought in by bees that were imported to replace lost hives, are also a problem, she said.

 

The film does not offer an answer to what's killing the honeybees. But Ulibarri said researchers are "getting real close" to identifying a virus as the main culprit.

 

In one poignant moment in the documentary, the cameras capture one of the beekeepers breaking down in tears after lying to his wife to hide the fact that he lost most of his bees.

 

"It's a tragedy, that silent moment in the bee yard when you realize you are surrounded by death," Simmons said. "It's a very powerful, very sad moment."

 

Along with the loss of their livestock, American beekeepers face tough competition from less expensive imported honey -- especially from China and Argentina, Ulibarri said.

 

She planned to sell her bees after last year's disappointing year, but the prices being offered for them was "literally nothing." But this year has been better, with fewer lost colonies, she said.

 

"Bees really become a part of us, we learn so much all the time," she said. "One really neat thing, when you're around enough hives, as soon as you open it, you can hear from the energy of the hive how they are doing. They are the voice of mother nature."

 

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Drought? Calif. tomato crop exceeds last year

 

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Despite drought and water shortages across the San Joaquin Valley, the state's tomato crop will be bigger this year than last.

 

According to a report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers will harvest 13.5 million tons of tomatoes used for processed foods, up 15 percent over 2008. The yield should average 43.97 tons per acre, 4 percent better than last year.

 

Farmers and producers of ketchup and sauces had feared the drought and water delivery cutbacks to the prime tomato-growing regions on the valley's west side would cut production and drive up prices. Instead farmers in other areas picked up the slack.

 

California grows most of the nation's processing tomatoes.

 

The national forecast is for 14.1 million tons.

 

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Not wine, but rubber from Russian dandelion

 

(theengineer.co.uk) – Most natural rubber comes from rubber trees in Southeast Asia, but this source is now under threat from a fungus.

 

Fungicides still provide at least temporary protection. But if the disease was to reach epidemic proportions, chemical crop protection would be rendered useless, and experts fear that the natural latex industry could collapse if that were to happen.

 

To develop an alternative source, German researchers have now genetically altered the make up of the Russian dandelion, making it suitable for large-scale rubber production.

 

Germans, Russians and Americans produced rubber from this plant during World War II. Unfortunately, once it is cut, latex seeps out and polymerises immediately, making it difficult to use.

 

Bu the scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology in Aachen have now identified the enzyme responsible for the rapid polymerisation and have switched it off.

 

'If the plant is cut, the latex flows out instead of being polymerised. We obtain four to five times the amount we would normally,' claimed Prof Dirk Prüfer at the Institute.

 

If the plants were to be cultivated on a large scale, every hectare would produce 500 to 1,000kg of latex per growing season. An additional benefit is that, unlike rubber from trees, the dandelion rubber has not caused any allergies so far, making it ideal for use in hospitals.

 

The researchers' next step will involve cultivating the plants using conventional breeding techniques. In around five years, Prof Prüfer estimates, they may well have achieved their goal.

 

The dandelion is not just suitable for rubber production. The plant also produces substantial quantities of inulin, a natural sweetener.

 

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Deal will facilitate algae extraction process

 

(Wire Services) FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Solix Biofuels Inc., an alternative energy technology company for the large-scale commercialization of microalgae-based fuels and co-products, has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Los Alamos National Laboratory which grants Solix access to use and expand upon LANL's technology; specifically its patented acoustic technology that is beneficial to Solix's algal oil extraction process.

 

LANL's acoustic technology utilizes sound waves to concentrate the harvested algae mixture and to extract the oil from algae cells. Combining these processes greatly reduces the energy required to extract algal oil and eliminates the need for chemical solvents.

 

Bryan Willson, chief technology officer of Solix, commented, "The agreement with LANL will allow Solix to quickly move forward with extracting oil from algae crops harvested at our Coyote Gulch Production Facility." He continued, "We will be able to apply and expand upon LANL's valuable research in our effort to develop energy efficient extraction processes of algal oil which is the next key step in bringing to market a commercially viable alternative to petroleum based fuels."

 

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and the Washington Division of URS for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

 

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

 

Solix Biofuels Inc., based in Fort Collins, Colo., is an alternative energy production technology company with emphasis on supplying scalable photo-bioreactors that will enable the global production of biofuels using microalgae as a feedstock. Solix is an intellectual descendant of the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program, which started in 1978 to explore ways to produce biodiesel from algae. In early 2006 Solix was founded with the support of Colorado State University with a goal of creating a commercially viable biofuel that will help solve climate change and petroleum scarcity without competing with global food supply. Solix began operations at its Coyote Gulch Demonstration Facility, located on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, on July 16, 2009.

 

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