" I heard it through the AgLine"

November 9, 2009

 

·        ‘Team Tomato’ seeks salmonella answers

·        Scientists to bar code all plant, animal DNA

·        Calif. grapples with disappearing honeybees

·        ‘Tweet up’ today to help honeybee research

·        New Syngenta Ventures invests in biotech firm

 

‘Team Tomato’ seeks salmonella answers

 

(Washington Post) WASHINGTON -- The 10 tomatoes sitting in a Tupperware tub at the Food and Drug Administration seem to be doing nothing more than rotting, slowly. But an invisible battle is raging on the surface of the fruit, with provocative implications for food safety and the war that humans have been waging against bacteria for a century.

 

"This is the wrestling ring," said Eric Brown, a microbiologist at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, as he clicked open the lid to the tub. "This is the smack-down."

 

Working in a College Park, Md., laboratory, Brown and a team of FDA scientists trying to prevent salmonella contamination in tomatoes have stumbled upon what they believe are powerful, naturally occurring "good" bacteria that can slaughter the "bad" bacteria that have become a persistent problem in fresh fruits and vegetables because they harm humans.

 

"This is highly efficient weaponry, right here," said Brown, pointing to pipettes filled with the "good" bacteria suspended in a saline solution that will be dripped onto the contaminated tomatoes. He presented the initial findings of his research at an international salmonella conference this month in France. "The beauty is that we take something alive and organic and put it back into the field, and by itself, it will kill other bacteria. We're right on the edge of this."

 

It's a variation on the "enemy of my enemy" philosophy, with scientists like Brown cultivating hostile relatives of harmful bacteria to perform a sort of microscopic fratricide before the bugs can harm humans.

 

More than salmonella

 

While Brown's findings haven't been applied outside the laboratory yet, in his experiments the microorganisms obliterate not only salmonella on tomatoes but also several other pathogens blamed for food-borne illnesses, including listeria and E. coli O15:H7. So far, only vibrio, the bacterium found in warm seawater that can contaminate oysters and other seafood, has stood its ground against Brown's bacteria.

 

"It's a phenomenal finding he's got," said Steve Rideout, an assistant professor of plant pathology at Virginia Tech, who has allowed the FDA team to take samples from the university's 200-acre research farm tucked among industrial tomato growers on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

 

Salmonella has become a leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States. Once largely associated with poultry and eggs, the bacteria live in the intestines of animals. But recently, the bacteria are increasingly in fresh fruit and vegetables, for unknown reasons. Of nine nationwide salmonella illness outbreaks since 2007, just one was linked to a meat product, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rest were associated with vegetables, fruit, nuts or cereal.

 

Salmonella causes about 1.4 million cases of food-borne illnesses and more than 500 deaths a year in the United States, according to the CDC. While most people recover without treatment, young children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems can become severely ill.

 

Salmonella, which describes a group of 2,600 strains of related bacteria, can survive outside living organisms and has lived as long as 18 months in soil.

 

"Salmonella is turning out to be a far more challenging environmental bug than we ever thought it would be or could be," Brown said. "It's very difficult to get rid of, and we don't even know where it comes from."

 

Fruit and vegetable farmers face a particular challenge because produce is often eaten fresh; there is no "kill step," such as cooking. Most produce is not packaged, which increases the chances for contamination. And some pathogens such as salmonella and E. coli burrow inside the fruits and vegetables, making it impossible to wash them away. In fact, Brown has found that his microorganisms are not effective against salmonella when the battle takes place inside the tomato, only on the surface.

 

Salmonella is a particular problem for tomato growers in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and other states along the East Coast. And the tomato industry is eager for a way to reduce salmonella contamination and regain consumer confidence, said Reggie Brown of the Florida Tomato Exchange.

 

An outbreak of salmonella illness last year was incorrectly linked to tomatoes -- later traced to jalapeno peppers from Mexico -- but not before the tomato industry suffered losses of about $150 million. Consumer demand still has not returned to levels before that outbreak, said Reggie Brown, who is not related to Eric Brown.

 

"Every time someone reports in a news article on food safety about an outbreak associated with salmonella, the word 'tomato' will appear out there," Reggie Brown said. "There's concern and distrust."

 

'Team Tomato'

 

Like Brown, other researchers have been trying to find a naturally occurring bacteria that can kill pathogens on human food. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in 2007 that they isolated micro-organisms from baby carrots that suppressed the growth of four harmful pathogens. Last year, the same team applied "good" bacteria to kill salmonella on sprouts.

 

Brown and his colleagues, known around the FDA as "Team Tomato," made repeated trips to tomato-growing regions on Virginia's Eastern Shore this spring and summer, where they stomped through fields and swamps and collected more than 200 samples from plants, water and soil. Each trip, they stayed with their coolers of water and muck and plants in the same hotel. "I had to leave a substantial tip to satisfy my conscience," Brown said.

 

Back in their College Park, Md., lab, Brown and his main collaborator, Alex Enurah, identified more than 300 species before isolating five "good" bacteria.

 

The "good" bacteria don't appear to be harmful to humans but further investigation is needed, Brown and Enurah said. They intend to test the bacteria on tomatoes grown in research hothouses in the coming months. And they are testing whether the "good" bacteria could prevent salmonella contamination as well as treat fruit that is already tainted. Brown envisions a day when "good" bacteria could be sprayed onto fields of tomatoes just before harvest.

 

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Scientists to bar code all plant, animal DNA

 

(The Canadian Press) HALIFAX - It sounds like a futuristic fantasy, but scientists are quietly creating a global databank of DNA bar codes for the world's flora and fauna that could be used to identify illicit goods at borders and track the spread of disease.

 

From tiny micro-organisms to wild African buffalo, the Canadian-led science initiative is quickly amassing bar codes or identifiers for a growing database of life forms that will soon go after all plant life.

 

Zoologist Paul Hebert pioneered the unique technology that is being explored by a growing number of agencies to detect smuggled goods, falsely labelled products and harmful bacteria.

 

"It's the way the planet will be surveilled in the future," Hebert said Friday from the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario in Guelph before heading to Mexico for a conference on the expanding field of science.

 

"There's just no question that moving to this technology allows us to scale biodiversity analyses in a way that absolutely hasn't been possible."

 

The project, which took root in 2003 at Hebert's lab, will add plant life to the growing catalogue when scientists seal an agreement in Mexico on how to identify DNA bar codes in flora.

 

That's expected to open the way for the identification of illegally harvested forest products, endangered plant species and improved regulation of herbal medicines, researchers say.

 

The Consortium for the Bar Code of Life project involves identifying a particular DNA sequence in marine and animal life that is unique to the species.

 

That allows scientists to identify the species and create a so-called bar code of its DNA similar to the black and white stripes on store goods.

 

So far, researchers have added 100,000 species - including 725,000 individual specimens - in the databank, with Canada contributing about 80 per cent of that.

 

The technology has already been used to identify falsely labelled fish in the United States and clamp down on restaurants that sell one fish species as something else.

 

David Schindel, executive secretary of the consortium, said several government agencies in the U.S. and Canada are looking closely at the innovation for food safety, conservation, disease control and consumer protection efforts.

 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has adopted it for fish identification and also used DNA bar-coding to distinguish the seed pods of star anise from another identical herb that contains neurotoxins.

 

The U.S. Agriculture Department is also working on a global database of DNA bar codes for fruit flies to deal with horticultural pests, and lumber products to identify endangered timber products.

 

"Inside the U.S. government, there's more than a half dozen agencies that are actively testing bar-coding," Schindel said from Mexico, where 350 scientists from 50 countries are meeting this week. "So lots of government interest and investment and that's going to accelerate the rate at which we are building the database."

 

In Canada, only a few government departments have shown an interest in DNA bar-coding, Hebert said, adding he is working with Environment Canada to use the technology on water quality issues.

 

Bar-coding could also reveal how climate change is affecting animals and plants by determining what they eat now versus what they consumed centuries ago.

 

Hebert said they can do this by examining the contents of an insect's stomach and animal remains taken from ice cores found in ancient permafrost.

 

The findings might seem so esoteric as to be meaningless, but Schindel said they can give valuable insight into how entire food webs and ecosystems are changing due to global warming and other human pressures.

 

"We can use bar-coding to reconstruct whole communities and their food-web relationships," he said.

 

"That tells us what life was like in the past and it's going to allow us to document what impact global climate change has had ... That's the cutting edge of how scientifically bar-coding can be used."

 

Hebert said he can soon see a time when people will be able to use a tabletop devices at border crossings, schools and government departments to quickly identify a plant or animal.

 

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Calif. grapples with disappearing honeybees

 

(North County Times) – Bees are perishing at an epidemic rate in Southern California, ravaged by a mysterious malady called Colony Collapse Disorder that is punishing beekeepers already dealing with an infestation of mites and a diminishing number of places to put their colonies.

 

Entire colonies are falling to CCD, raising questions about the use of pesticides in agriculture and underscoring the fragility of farming and its vulnerability to disease and pests. Officials say that bees pollinate about 30 percent of the food crops in California: Apples, avocados, melons and many other crops would disappear without the dedicated assistance of the bees during their six-week lifespans.

 

Federal officials say CCD has been wiping out bee colonies since at least 2006 and has spread through farming areas across the nation, including San Diego and Riverside counties. Financially, beekeeping is a relatively small industry in the area ---- total receipts in San Diego County last year were about $3.1 million ---- but the potential economic impact of a collapse on the state's farming industry is far greater.

 

And the cause is a mystery.

 

"We just don't know what is going on," said Eric Mussen, a honeybee expert at the UC Davis extension who is respected around the nation. He said a combination of factors may be causing all the bees in some colonies to die off.

 

"No one thing appears to be causing the problem," Mussen said. "My suspicion is it may be serious diseases we are not aware of."

 

Mussen said that recent studies of collapsed colonies have shown contamination by agricultural chemicals. Moreover, he said, because bee colonies are hauled from crop to crop, the bees tend not to get a variety of pollen, which makes them healthy.

 

Bees eat both pollen and nectar from flowers, and they spread the pollen grains as they travel. Pollen fertilizes a plant's flower, which enables it to grow fruit or nuts.

 

Alan Mikolich expects he will lose as many as two-thirds of his colonies to CCD, diseases and parasites, such as the Varroa mite. And Mikolich knows bees. He has been raising them since 1985, tending up to 1,000 colonies in San Diego and Riverside counties from his Temecula base.

 

"I think it might have something to do with bee nutrition," said Mikolich, past president of the state beekeepers association. But he is as puzzled as others in the bee industry as they watch their incomes from honey and pollinating services fizzle.

 

"It's a complex problem," said Bill Oesterlein, deputy Riverside County agriculture commissioner. "It's hard to come up with solutions when you don't know what the problem is."

 

Brother Blaise has a theory.

 

The Benedictine monk has been raising bees for honey for 30 years at Prince of Peace Abbey in Oceanside, selling the honey in the abbey gift shop. "There's only so many rosaries people will buy," he said. But people bought all the honey his bees could produce.

 

That was when he had 100 colonies. Now he has one ---- the others have died off in the past 10 years, he said, ever since a cluster of cell phone towers was erected a few hundred yards away and with microwave transmission lines of sight through his colonies.

 

Some research has been done on cell phone transmissions, but it is inconclusive, Mikolich said.

 

Blaise says he's certain he had Varroa mites under control, so he's moving his remaining colony this week to a spot at the bottom of the hill from the monastery ---- out of the transmission path of the cell phone towers.

 

California is home to about half a million bee colonies, and CCD, the Varroa mite and the spread of aggressive Africanized bees is pushing some of their owners close to insolvency. Moreover, urbanization is reducing the places where beekeepers can put their colonies ---- state law requires colonies be kept at least 600 feet from residential areas.

 

Were it not for his full-time job, Dave Farmer of Valley Center says he would be broke.

 

Moreover, he and other beekeepers say, it's an "unending challenge" to find a place to keep the colonies, each of which contains about 25,000 bees but can range to 60,000.

 

So why continue with an enterprise so fraught with financial peril?

 

Farmer's answer echoed that of other beekeepers.

 

"I like nature, being outside," he said. "Bees are so interesting, and I like the intrigue and challenge of beekeeping. It's not something that a lot of people do."

 

It's something that even fewer people will do if a three-year drought is not broken or CCD is not conquered.

 

"I'm praying for rain," Farmer said. "Bees really suffer in a long drought."

 

Wet or dry, a migration of bees to Southern California soon will be under way from around the nation.

 

All of the bees are riding on trucks.

 

They're coming to duck the cold weather in the northern states and then to pollinate the state's almond crop, the biggest user of bees in the nation.

 

Up to three-quarters of the 2 million colonies in the nation will roll into the Central Valley in February to work the almond crop. Demand is so great that beekeepers can earn $150 or more per bee colony for pollinating almonds. That's as much as five times what the bees earn pollinating other crops.

 

Yet beekeepers say it can cost up to $200 per colony a year to provide treatments to try to ward off mites and diseases and to provide additional food to help the bees get through the winter. That additional food has become especially important, beekeepers say, as a succession of dry winters has reduced pollen supplies.

 

"It cuts into profits more and more every year," said David Winter, a partner in the Chaparral Honey Co. in Valley Center.

 

Science may save the bees, and the beekeepers' revenue, which can total about $400 per year for each colony in honey and pollination fees.

 

In a cooperative venture with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tom Glenn, a researcher who lives near Fallbrook, has bred a honeybee that destroys the Varroa mite eggs, thus preventing infestation.

 

Bees will love him for his work.

 

"Imagine something on your back as big as a human hand, drawing the life out of you," explained David Keelum, an entomologist with the San Diego County Department of Agriculture. Proportionally, that's how big the Varroa mite is to a bee, Keelum explained.

 

Africanized bees, which can swarm humans in fatal attacks, are more resistant to the Varroa mite. Yet if the Africanized bees infiltrate their hives, beekeepers must destroy the entire hive, killing the marauders, but also millions of innocent, gentle European honeybees diligently doing their jobs but caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

Ultimately, the mites and diseases killing honeybees may defy the best efforts of science and medicine, yet yield to the forces of evolution ---- the bees may develop a resistance to whatever is devastating their hives, scientists say.

 

"Honeybees have a remarkable ability to build back," said Mussen, the UC bee expert.

 

Call staff writer Jeff Rowe at 760-740-5417.

 

-- The challenges facing beekeepers will be discussed Nov. 17-19 at the California Beekeepers Association's annual meeting, at the Hilton Resort & Spa in San Diego.

 

For more information, to go www.californiastatebeekeepers.com.

 

Of particular interest should be Eric Mussen's presentation, "Glimpses of California's Beekeeping Future."

 

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‘Tweet up’ today to help honeybee research

 

(UC Davis) – Honey bee research at the University of California, Davis, will benefit from a TwitCause social media campaign that ends Wednesday, Nov. 11.

 

The Häagen-Dazs brand, a market leader in superpremium frozen desserts, and the San Francisco-based ExperienceProject.com (EP), an online community for sharing life experiences, are joining forces to help the honey bees on EP’s TwitCause.

 

"The easiest way for individuals to get involved is to visit www.twitcause.com," said Erik Darby of EP. "There are directions on top of the page that detail how to follow, retweet and make an impact around the honey bee cause on Twitter. Starting Thursday, Nov. 5, the designated TwitCause will be the Häagen-Dazs Help the Honey Bee campaign."

 

Häagen-Dazs, a division of Oakland’s Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, is pledging to donate $1 for every #HelpHoneyBees tweet sent between Nov. 5 and 11, up to $500 per day, for research at UC Davis to help stop the collapse of honeybee colonies worldwide.

 

"It's an easy thing to do, and they don't have to buy anything or send a letter to anyone," said Tonya Iles, interactive manager for Häagen-Dazs.

 

TwitCause allows followers to spread the word and aid in fundraising to support good causes via personal tweets.

 

Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of more than 100 crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, providing 80 percent of the country’s pollination services, according to UC Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis department of entomology faculty.

 

The UC Davis bee biology Web site is http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu/.

 

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New Syngenta Ventures invests in biotech firm

 

(Wire Services) BASEL, Switzerland -- Syngenta Ventures has made an equity investment in Metabolon, a privately-held U.S. biotechnology company focused on the use of metabolomics in research and diagnostics.

 

This is the first direct investment by Syngenta Ventures, Syngenta's newly-established corporate venture capital subsidiary.

 

"The creation of Syngenta Ventures will complement our in-house R&D work and enables us to be even more involved in promising technologies and innovative products with external partners," said Robert Berendes, Head of Business Development at Syngenta. "We need access to the best available new technologies in order to achieve the increase in agricultural output which will be vital over the coming years."

 

Sandro Aruffo, Head of Research and Development at Syngenta, added: "This investment follows a research collaboration with Metabolon which has existed for some years. We believe Metabolon's unique metabolomics platform will be an increasingly important technology for the development of innovative new products in the agriculture industry."

 

Metabolomics provides mechanistic insight and biochemical markers for complex biological processes. This technology aims to accelerate the development of plants with innovative new native and genetically modified traits.

 

Syngenta Ventures will take a seat on the Board of Metabolon. The equity investment was made in the Series C financing of Metabolon which raised in total $12.3 million from a number of investors, including Syngenta Ventures.

 

Financial details of the equity investment were not disclosed.

 

Syngenta is one of the world's leading companies with more than 24,000 employees in over 90 countries dedicated to our purpose: Bringing plant potential to life. Through world-class science, global reach and commitment to our customers we help to increase crop productivity, protect the environment and improve health and quality of life.

 

Metabolon is a diagnostics and services company offering the industry's leading biochemical profiling platform. Metabolon's patented platform provides a global analysis of complex biological samples for the discovery of markers. This metabolomics-driven approach enables the identification of biomarkers useful for the development of a wide range of diagnostics and provides insight into complex biochemical processes such as drug action, toxicology and bioprocess optimization.

 

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