This excellent New York Times article describes Eric Lander’s journey in science to his position today as not only one of the great genome researchers but a terrific teacher and human being.

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In Memoriam,
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the love that is to be.

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It was Sept 4, 1939, the day after the UK declared war on Germany, when mathematician Alan Turing reported to work at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Within weeks of his arrival, Turing and his colleagues were able to intercept high-level encrypted enemy communication signals and decode a vast number of these messages. The intelligence gleaned from this effort was passed on to field commanders, a process that was decisive to Allied victory.

Like the German military strategists, single-celled bacteria communicate with each other using coded messages to coordinate attacks on their targets. For bacteria these targets are plants and animals that provide the nutrients needed for growth. Until now, the diversity of codes employed by invading bacteria was thought to be extremely limited. However, our new research shows that bacteria communicate with a previously unknown signal. The research is described in two articles published today in the Public Library of Science and Discovery Medicine.

In a feat worthy of the Turing cryptographers, some plants have evolved a cypher-breaking detection system, called the XA21 receptor, that intercept the bacterial code and use this information to trigger a robust immune response, preventing disease.

Over the last 20 years, researchers have shown that bacteria employ specific signals to communicate. These signaling molecules accumulate in the external environment as the cells grow. When the concentration of signal reaches a certain threshold level, the individual bacteria mobilize concerted, group actions. Professor Bonnie Bassler, an early pioneer in studies of bacterial communication, calls the signaling molecules “bacterial Esperanto”.

Until now, it was thought that two major groups of bacteria (called Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria) use distinctly different types of communication codes. Gram-positive bacteria use oligopeptides, whereas Gram-negative bacteria generally use acylated homoserine lactones (AHLs) or diffusible signal factors (DSF). However, the newly discovered signal, called Ax21 (Activator of Ax21-mediated immunity), from the Gram-negative infectious bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae), falls into neither class.

Unlike other signals in the bacterial coding repertoire, Ax21 is a small protein. It is made inside the bacterial cell, processed to generate a shorter signal and then secreted outside the bacterium. Perception of Ax21 by other bacteria of the same class, allows the bacteria to assemble into elaborate protective bunkers, called biofilms. Biofilms render the bacteria resistant to dessication and antibiotic treatment. Thus, by virtue of communication and communal living, bacteria increase their chances of survival and proliferation. Ax21 perception also regulates the production of a virulent arsenal including “effectors” that are shot directly into the host to disrupt host defenses and the initiation of motility allowing the bacteria to colonize new sites for infection.

This process transforms the bacteria from a benign organism to a fierce invader. The bacteria multiply in the main arteries of the rice water transport system, causing the plant to wither and die.

To accomplish these diverse tasks, Ax21 perception triggers a massive change in the genetic program: Nearly 500 genes (approximately 10% of Xoo genome) change their expression in response to Ax21. Bacterial mutants defective in Ax21 no longer aggregate into bunkers, move to new sites or trigger changes in gene expression.

Host cryptographer: The XA21 receptor

Most rice plants are virtually defenseless to this Ax21-mediated bacterial attack. The exceptions are those plants that carry the XA21 immune receptor that detect Ax21 produced by the invading microbe.

XA21 belongs to a large class of immune receptors in plants and animals that detect microbes. The importance of these receptors is reflected by the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Professors Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffman for their discoveries in flies and mice.

[Bruce and I share more than an interest in science; my father (Robert Rosenthal) and Bruce's father (Ernst) were young cousins in Berlin in the 1920s. Their families fled the Nazi's and reunited in the US after the war. I was honored to hear Bruce discuss XA21/Ax21 and our shared family history during his Nobel lecture last week (starts at 40:45)]

In plants and higher animals, these immune receptors detect microbial components that are conserved among diverse bacteria. These include structures that make up the bacterial cell wall or are important for motility.

The advance that we reported today indicates that not only does this class of receptors recognize structural components of bacteria but that they can also detect bacterial signaling molecules. The ability of plants to intercept these messages provides them with a clear tactical advantage in the evolutionary battle. To date, only the XA21 immune receptor is known to have this capacity.

Early detection of the signal produced by the invading bacteria is critical because it allows the plant time to mobilize defenses. Thus, just as the work of Turing allowed Allied convoys to detect and evade U-boat patrol lines, and then guide Allied anti-submarine forces to destroy the U-boats, XA21 intercepts the Ax21 signal, allowing rice to mount an early and potent defense response.

Ax21 is present in other pathogens of plants and animals

We have shown that not only is Ax21 present in important plant pathogens such as Xanthomonas, which infects virtually all crop plants and in a microbe that causes Pierce’s disease on grapes, but it is also present in a human pathogen that infects hospital patients, such as those suffering from cystic fibrosis.

The conservation of Ax21 in both plant and animal pathogens suggests that Ax21 also serves as a signal in these related microbes. In support of this idea, some of the functions of Ax21 discovered in the rice pathogen have been recently extended to pathogens of peppers, tomatoes and mustards as well as to a human pathogen.

The discovery that a small protein from a group of single-cell bacteria plays a dual role in both rallying invading bacteria and triggering an immune response in the targeted plant, has not previously been demonstrated. However, exploration of bacterial genomes predicts the presence of an abundance of similar small secreted proteins and their predicted secretion systems in many other species. These discoveries suggest the intriguing possibility that other species of bacteria use small proteins like Ax21 to communicate and coordinate infection.

The new research also suggests that rice is not the only targeted victim that has learned to detect these abundant bacterial signals. Whereas only 10 immune receptors have been identified in humans, over 300 such receptors are predicted in rice and other important cereals. Unlike rice XA21, which has been shown to bind directly to Ax21, few corresponding conserved microbial signature has yet been identified for the hundreds of other predicted rice immune receptors. Thus, the plant immune response remains largely unexplored. An important question for future research is to identify the microbial molecules that these “orphan” receptors detect. Because most bacteria are in constant communication, it is clear that bacterial signals will accumulate in the host vicinity prior to infection. We speculate that some of the other hundreds of predicted receptors may have also evolved to intercept these bacterial messages.

How can the discovery of Ax21 be used to control deadly diseases?

The knowledge that bacteria use Ax21 to communicate is expected to lead to new methods to control deadly groups of bacteria for which there are currently no effective treatments.

For example, as described today in the journal Discovery Medicine, it may be possible to develop drugs that can antagonize Ax21-mediated biofilm formation, a process thought to occur in 65-80% of bacterial infections of plants and animals.

**********************************************************************************************************

The work was carried out by Sang-Wook Han1,* Malinee Sriariyanun1,*,#, Sang-Won Lee1,2,*, Manoj Sharma1, Ofir Bahar1, Zachary Bower1 and Pamela C. Ronald1, 2, †

Research on Ax21 was supported by National Research Initiative grants 006-01888 and 2007-35319-18397 from the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service. The discovery of XA21 was supported by the National Institute of Health grant # GM59962 to PCR.

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Consumers are asking us many questions about biotech seeds and traits. They want to know why some farmers may choose to use them and what the long-term implications are not only for our health but also for the farming/ranching industry.

All of the challenges and issues facing the agriculture industry are very complex and multifaceted. The issue of using biotech seeds and traits is no different. U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) has encouraged farmers and ranchers to share their experiences and provide some insight into why they choose – or choose not – to use biotech seeds.

They have set up the “food dialogs” on their website and tomorrow have invited myself and Michael Dimock, President, Roots of Change, to hold a conversation streamed live from U.C. Davis in northern California on November 2 at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time / 12: 30 p.m. Eastern Time. During this approximately 60-minute conversation, we will share our knowledge in and address the questions people have about genetic engineering and what that means for the future of our food.

Click here for more information.

Click here to watch the live video discussion.

Neither Michael or myself represent USFRA or its affiliates

Michael Dimock is president of Roots of Change Fund. ROC Fund develops and provides resources to a network of leaders and institutions in California collaborating in pursuit of a sustainable food system. It has invested nearly $6.3 million directly and attracted nearly $5 million in match for its programs and projects since 2004.

Dimock was a marketing executive in Europe for agribusiness, farmed organically for three years in Sonoma County, and in 1992 founded Ag Innovations Network, where he began his work on community consensus building and strategic planning to create healthier food and agriculture. From 2002 to 2007, he was Chairman of Slow Food USA and a member of Slow Food International’s board of directors.

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The day your son asks for a genetically engineered glow-in-the dark zebra fish and your wife desires a mauve rose may be the day that public acceptance of plant and animal genetic engineering has finally arrived.

Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded that a new variety of rose, genetically engineered to be an unusual shade of blue, does not pose a risk to the economy or ecosystems. This decision paves the way for the company, Florigene, to sell cut roses in the US. The mauve creation is based on the discovery by Davis-based biotech pioneer Calgene Inc, which isolated the “blue gene” from Petunia.

Is genetic engineering for entertainment what it takes for biotechnology to be accepted by consumers?

Physicist and philosopher Freeman Dyson thinks so.

In a provocative lecture on TED.com, Dyson says that proliferation of glow-in-the-dark zebra fish, fruit cocktail trees (7 species on one tree -already very popular with backyard gardeners) or even a grow your own dog kit is exactly what it will take before biotechnology becomes accepted as part of the human condition.

“We should follow the model that has been so successful with the electronic industry.” Dyson said. “What really turned computers into a great success in the world as a whole, was toys. As soon as computers became toys, when the kids could come home and play with them, then the industry took off. That has to happen with biotech.”

We may believe this or even recognize that it is true, but if so, doesn’t this vision condemn us to a kind of self-centeredness? Isn’t it a declaration that most of our behavior is governed by an emotional response to pleasure and an acknowledgement that pursuit of entertainment is what truly drives us to action?

I would like to believe that most wealthy world citizens have more compassion, more imagination and more humanity than that. That we will soon wake up and applaud applications of biotechnology that have reduced the amount of insecticides in the environment or those that have the potential to save the lives of thousands of malnourished children.

Will such humanistic inventive applications of biotechnology ever appear as essential to consumers in the developed world as a lego set that self-assembles into a live cat? Are more glofish and strangely colored roses needed before we accept biotechnological advances in agriculture?

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Two great scientists, Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffman, who have changed the way we view the immune response of plants and animals, have been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Tragically, Dr. Ralph M. Steinman of Rockefeller University, who discovered a new class of cell, known as dendritic cells, which are key activators of the adaptive immune system dies a few days ago. It is unclear if his family will be able to share the prize because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.

Hoffman’s group showed that Drosophila Toll, originally known for its function in development, is also important for the response to fungal and Gram-positive bacterial infection. Read the 1996 Cell paper for which he received the Nobel Prize here.

In mammals, the groundwork for receptor discovery was laid as early as the 1890s, when heat-stable molecules of microbial origin were shown to induce fever and shock in the mammalian host. Foremost among the inducers was endotoxin (LPS), represented in most Gram-negative bacteria. Widely known for its ability to induce septic shock, LPS is perhaps the most powerful elicitor of inflammation known in mammals. The identification of the receptors for these molecules was the central challenge in the field of animal innate immunity. Bruce studied two spontaneous mouse mutations that affected the response to Lps. Both mutations rendered mice insensitive to LPS and highly susceptible to Gram-negative infection. These results suggested the existence of a LPS receptor. Bruce’s lab isolated the genes corresponding to these mutations by positionally cloning in 1998. Read the paper here.

Like rice XA21, the protein that my laboratory studies, Toll and TLR4 carry a leucine rich repeat protein motif in the predicted extracellular domain and signal through a subclass of kinases called non-RD (arginine-aspartate) kinases. TLR4 and TOLL also shares the Toll /interleukin-1 (IL-1) receptor (TIR) domain with several plant proteins involved in immune signaling. Thus, the discovery of a role for Toll and TLR4 in the innate immune response provided a structural link between sensors used by plants and animals to detect infection.

Is it a surprise that Jules and Bruce won the Nobel Prize? No. The importance of their discoveries has long been known. Both Bruce and Jules have won one many well-deserved prestigious prizes for their work during their careers. Still, until the prize is awarded, you never know if the research will be recognized by the Nobel committee. I am ecstatic that it was.

Not only am I a great admirer of Bruce’s work but I am going to boast RIGHT HERE that he is my third cousin. I knew his multi-talented, lovely grandmother Kathe, a physician, who told me stories about our family during their escape from Nazi Germany. So I take special pride in this award. Here is a story about our shared ancestry.

I also had the great honor to coauthor with Bruce a review last year in Science magazine about the plant and animal immune responses.
Science-2010-Ronald-1061-4.pdf
Ronald_SOM.pdf
We dedicated the review to our great-great grandparents, Julius Rothstein (1830-1899)
and his wife, Fanny Rothstein née Frank (1834-1911), our last common ancestors.

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Strawberries are a particularly pest prone crop.

To control these pests, more than 9.5 million pounds of pesticides, including over 3 million pounds of methyl bromide, a toxic ozone-depleting chemical is applied each year. Methyl bromide is also associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer in farm workers.

We all like strawberries, but this pesticide use seems excessive: more pounds of pesticides were applied to 28,000 acres of strawberries than to 780,000 acres of cotton (and cotton is one of the world’s most pesticide intensive crops).

To avoid contributing to the use of methyl bromide, I have long purchased locally grown, certified organic strawberries. The organic approach is to rotate strawberries with other crops such as broccoli or a cover crop. Although yields in organic strawberries are only 65% to 89% that of conventional production, organic strawberries sell for 50% to 100% more than conventional berries, so the organic grower still does quite well.

Problem solved? Not so says an article in yesterday’s New York Times.

It turns out that even certified organic strawberries are fumigated with chemicals, including methyl bromide, at the early stages of their lifecycle.

“Before they begin bearing fruit, virtually all plants — whether they will go on to produce conventional berries or organic ones — are treated with fumigants and other synthetic pesticides.” In 2011, more than a million pounds of methyl bromide was applied around the world to young strawberry plants grown in nurseries. Most of the world’s nursery plants are produced here in California.

Why is this practice acceptable to organic growers?

The NYT reports that many organic strawberry growers say that using organic stock amounts to taking a big financial risk with little chance of reward. “You bring sick plants from the nursery, I mean, you might as well keep your money in the bank,” said Carlos Vasquez, who grows 24 acres of organic strawberries in Monterey for Driscoll Strawberry Associates, the largest berry distributor in the world.

Some growers may not know that they are purchasing fumigated stock; others growers don’t see it as a big issue anyway.

“Once the plants bear fruit, they are not treated with synthetic chemicals, so the berries themselves can logically be considered pesticide-free.”

But if you follow this line of argument, then many conventionally grown strawberries can also be considered pesticide-free. Methyl bromide is a soil fumigant and is not sprayed on the fruit. There is no evidence that methyl bromide or any of the other very low levels of pesticide residues on conventionally grown produce cause harm to human health. These residues are usually well below the tolerance levels set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In other words, most pesticides sprayed on crops are not harmful to consumers.

Many consumers therefore may conclude that if they are not harmed and their children are not harmed by a particular pesticide, then the application is acceptable. But most farmers and environmentalists would disagree. The toxicity of the pesticide does matter. That is because when it comes to methyl bromide and most other pesticides, farm worker safety and environmental health are key concerns. For this reason, an important goal of sustainable agriculture is to reduce the use of the most toxic substances.

Where do we go from here? Clearly new and improved methods of disease control are needed for organic and conventional growers of strawberries. This includes development of alternative, less toxic compounds that can control serious diseases such as Verticillium wilt. This disease is especially destructive in semi-arid areas where soils are irrigated such as the farmlands of California. Another approach is the development of genetically engineered strawberries with robust resistance to soil-borne pathogens. Because organic farmers are prohibited from growing genetically engineered crops, they would not be able to use such new varieties if they were ever to become available. But they may still be able to use methyl bromide.

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Generalizing about “GMOs” is almost completely useless. Each food we eat and each farm is so different that the genetic technologies and farming practices needed to optimize sustainability must be different too. That is why each crop (GE or conventional) must be looked at on a case-by-case basis, using science-based evidence.

I recently wrote a short Scientific American guest blog post for their “Passions of Food” day examining how cotton genetically engineered to express the organic protein Bt is affecting agriculture today. Thanks to Bora Zivkovic, former ScienceBlogger, for this collection.

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Peter Kareiva, the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, recently gave a seminar at the Long Now Foundation. His talk was summarized by Stewart Brand:

Kareiva began by recalling the environmental “golden decade” of 1965-75, set in motion by the scientist Rachel Carson. In quick succession Congress created the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act—which passed the Senate unanimously.

Green influence has been dwindling ever since. A series of polls in the US asked how many agreed with the statement, “Most environmentalists are extremists, not reasonable people.” In 1996, 32% agreed. In 2004, 43% agreed. Now it’s over 50% who think environmentalists are unreasonable.

Kareiva noted that as the world is urbanizing, ever fewer people grow up in contact with nature—current college freshman have less than a tenth of the childhood experience of nature as previous generations. And there’s a demographic shift toward multiethnicity, with whites already a minority in California and soon to be a minority in the whole country. Asked to describe a typical environmentalist, current grade school students say it’s a girl, white, with money, preachy about recycling, nice but uptight, not sought as a friend.

In general, environmentalist have earned the reputation of being “misanthropic, anti-technology, anti-growth, dogmatic, purist, zealous, exclusive pastoralists.”

Kareiva gave several examples of how that reputation was earned. In Green rhetoric, everything in nature is described as “fragile!”—rivers, forests, the whole planet. It’s manifestly untrue. America’s eastern forest lost two of its most dominant species—the american chestnut and the passenger pigeon—and never faltered. Bikini Atoll was vaporized in an H-bomb test that boiled the ocean. When National Geographic sent a research team there recently, they found 25% more coral than was ever there before. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster last year caused dramatically less harm to salt marshes and fisheries than expected, apparently because ocean bacteria ate most of the 5 million barrels of oil.

The problem with the fragility illusion is that it encourages a misplaced purism, leaving no room for compromise or negotiation, and it leads to “fortress conservation”—the idea that the only way to protect “fragile” ecosystems is to exclude all people. In Uganda, when a national park was established to protect biodiversity, 5,000 families were forced out of the area. After a change in government, those families returned in anger. To make sure they were never forced out again, they slaughtered all the local wildlife. In the 1980s, Kareiva was a witness in Seattle for protecting old growth forest (and spotted owls). At the courtroom loggers carried signs reading: “You care about owls more than my children.” That jarred him.

When genetically engineered crops (GMOs) came along, environmentalists responded with “knee-jerk anti-technology religiosity,” Kareiva said. How to feed the world was not a consideration. Lessening the overwhelming impact of agriculture on natural systems was not a consideration. Instead, the usual apocalyptic fears were deployed in the usual terms: EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE DEAD TOMORROW! When Kareiva was working on protecting salmon, he saw the same kind of language employed in a 1999 New York Times full-page ad about dams in the Snake River: TIMELINE TO EXTINCTION! He knew it wasn’t true. Salmon are a weedy species, and the re-engineered dams were letting the fish through.

The Nature Conservancy—where Kareiva is chief scientist working with the organization’s 600 scientists, 4,000 staff, and one million members in 37 countries—promotes a realistic approach to conservation. Instead of demonizing corporations, they collaborate actively with them. They’ve decided to do the same with farmers, starting an agriculture initiative within the Conservancy. For the growing cities they emphasize the economic value of conservation in terms of valuable clean water and air. They started a program taking inner-city kids out to their field conservation projects not to play but to work on research and restoration. An astonishing 30% of those kids go on to major in science.

Kareiva sees conservation in this century as a profoundly social, cooperative undertaking that has to include everyone. New social networking tools can be in the thick of it. For instance, people could use their smartphones to photograph (and geotag, timestamp, and broadcast) the northernmost occurrence of bird species, and the aggregate data could be graphed in real time, showing the increasing effects of global warming on the natural world. When everyone makes science like that, everyone owns it. They’ve invested.

–Stewart Brand

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This week, the G20 Agriculture Ministers gathered for their first-ever meeting to discuss potential measures to address price volatility and record high food prices. The key to any long-term solution is acknowledging that we need to empower the very people whose lives are most affected by food shortages. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land. The potential of small farmers for getting us out of this and future food crises cannot be overstated.

Today, we find that millions of lives depend upon the extent to which agricultural science can keep pace with the growing global population, changing climate, and shrinking environmental resources — and the extent to which this science is available to millions of the world’s poorest farmers.

Few people will argue with the idea that we need to grow more food. World economic and agricultural leaders have projected that the human population will surpass 9 billion by 2050, and 10 billion by the turn of the century. And they have forecast that we must double or even triple food production to meet demand.

Yet, already 40 percent of the earth is farmed (an area the size of South America). The amount of arable land is limited and what is left is being lost to urbanization, water shortages, erosion, and environmental degradation. Farmers are so pressed for space in many parts of the world that much of the land now being farmed is marginal, such as the steep hills of Ecuador. Overuse of pesticides sickens farmers and continuous cultivation of the same land drains it of nutrients.

So how will we keep up? How will we feed the world without destroying it?

My husband Raoul Adamchak and I often discuss this question. Raoul has been an organic farmer for thirty years, and I’m a plant geneticist. You may think that a geneticist and an organic farmer represent polar opposites. But we both have the same goal: an ecologically based system of agriculture that is able to grow more food, largely on existing farmland.

When Raoul and I wrote “Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food,” our intention was to give readers a better understanding of how geneticists and organic farmers address our big challenge–creating a healthy and productive agricultural system–and how what we do can be complementary.

We believe that the discussions about agriculture must be framed in the context of the environmental, economic, and social impacts of farming–the three pillars of sustainable agriculture. Rather than focusing on how a seed variety was developed, we must ask what most enhances local food security and can provide safe, abundant and nutritious food. We must ask if rural communities can thrive and if farmers can make a profit. We must be sure that consumers can afford the food. And we must minimize environmental degradation.

Both organic farming and biotechnology have a seat at this table. Organic farming began as a response to the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers, and relies on integrated management to control pests and disease. And while organic production practices can be an important component of sustainable agriculture, they cannot address every constraint faced by farmers, including some diseases and pests, challenges posed by climate change, and the need for adequate nutrition.

This is not to say that genetic engineering is always the most appropriate technology, but there are times when it can help rapidly solve major problems.

Rice is a good example. It is a daily source of food and calories for more than half the worlds’ people. Yet dependence on rice may come with a price, as the grain is deficient in vitamin A. Many of those who rely on rice are also vitamin A deficient. Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children. It also impairs immune system function and increases the risk of death from certain childhood diseases.

Plant breeders are using biotechnology to develop a new rice variety called Golden Rice, a unique type of rice that contains beta carotene, a source of vitamin A. Because rice contains negligible amounts of beta carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A, genetic modification is required to boost micronutrient levels. Crop breeders and farmers are now working together to develop varieties of Golden Rice appropriate to different growing conditions, with the intention of making these golden grains available to help meet urgent nutrition needs for many of the world’s poor.

As we address global issues of food and nutrition security we need everyone at the table. This includes breeders, organic farmers, seed companies, charities, geneticists, consumers. We need more support for agricultural research that is responsive to the unique needs of poor small-holder farmers. And we need the G20 to invest in agricultural development in the least developed countries, give farmers the freedom of technology choice, and explore options for international governance of food markets.

This post was first published on Reuter’s blog.

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