The topic of the debate was “can organic agriculture solve food scarcity problems?”. The subjects were randomly chosen and don’t necessarily support the views of those engaged in the debate, so I will not speak for anybody but myself. I was on the con team, and we were charged with arguing that organic agriculture is an inferior method of food production. We were up against a very good team and all day folks were coming up to us and telling us how much they enjoyed our debate. Ultimately, we won the best overall debate team and took home an engraved trophy and left the meeting $125 richer after splitting a $500 prize between the four of us.

My role on the team was to look into the pesticides used in organic agriculture and their treatment regimes. To my surprise, I found that organic operations actually increase the amount of inputs put into the environment by requiring higher concentrations and more frequent applications of pesticides. The insecticides used in organic ag are often less effective, less selective, and can have greater non-target effects than synthetic insecticides. Some organic pesticides, like the biopesticide Beauveria bassiana, are assumed to have a very low environmental impact quotient (EIQ), but haven’t been tested for potential ecological side effects. My position (and position on the debate team) is that GMOs like Bt corn are better for the environment because they decrease the amount of pesticides that we must put on crops and that organic pesticides are worse for the environment because they must be constantly reapplied in very high concentrations.

This, however, wasn’t the idea that earned me my stripes during the debate. During the Q&A session, somebody asked us to clarify why we thought organic ag was able to innovate to a lesser extent than sustainable or conventional agriculture. My response was that we can modify pesticides to become less toxic, more easily degradeable and more difficult for insects to detoxify by producing insecticides synthetically and making it more or less difficult for the insecticides to degrade. While organic ag could certainly benefit from new chemistries, they reject them as soon as modifications such as these take place because the new pesticide is synthetic. In short, organic producers are unable to take advantage of novel chemistries. I used the example of adding carbon atoms or benzene rings in a specific place to keep beta-lactam antibiotics medically relevant during the debate, but there was a much better example I could have used but unfortunately neglected to discuss. But, hey… that’s what the blogosphere’s for isn’t it?

Very recently, the lab of Reddy Palli has figured out a way to genetically modify an organism to become a spray-on pesticide. To fully understand and appreciate what’s going on, there are a lot of things I need to explain. Fortunately, I’ve got about 12 hours of travel time ahead of me. Awesome, right?

A Colorado potato beetle. USDA photograph by Scott Bauer via Wikipedia.

First, let’s talk about the animal discussed in the paper. The Colorado Potato Beetle is what’s referred to as a ‘superpest’. It’s highly prolific, and essentially bulletproof. This insect specializes on solanaceous crops like potatoes and tomatoes, the crops most closely related to nightshade plants. These plants are famous for defending themselves by producing deadly secondary metabolites. By specializing on these plants, the Colorado Potato Beetle has evolved with some incredible detoxification mechanisms which shields it from our pesticides. As an unfortunate (for us) side effect, it manages to become resistant to every pesticide we throw at it very quickly. It can defoliate entire potato fields, and we can’t stop it very easily. We’re desperate for new chemistry to counteract this pest.

Next, let’s talk about a very basic part of insect physiology. Insects, like humans, are made from proteins encoded by DNA. When a protein needs to be made, an RNA polymerase translates DNA to RNA, and a ribosome transcribes the RNA molecule to protein. This is pretty constant throughout the kingdom of life plants, humans and insects all use a similar system and there is RNA in everything you consume. It can get a bit more complicated than this (see below), but there’s one thing I need to point out – mRNA is always single stranded in eukaryotic organisms. Some viruses use a double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecule. This is kind of like DNA, but it’s made out of slightly different stuff. Insect immune systems are good at picking up stuff that looks like it shouldn’t be there and dsRNA sticks out like a sore thumb.

The beetle has an immune system just like us. Ever get sick? Did you get better? That’s your immune system working. Beetles are exposed to pathogens just like we are every day. A good example of this is a cypovirus, which is kind of like an insect rotavirus. When the beetle gets a cypovirus, a series of enzymes pick the dsRNA it makes from the crowd of mRNA and selectively degrades it by using that dsRNA as a template to scan all the RNA in the insect and then degrade it. This is called RNA interference, or RNAi.

How can we use this to our advantage?

The experimental setup Palli's team used. Everything's labeled pretty well, and very self explanatory. The larvae eat the leaf, eat the dsRNA which causes their own body to shut down vital systems.

Unlike our antibody production system the RNAi system is kind of stupid and won’t distinguish self from nonself mRNA. The reason for this is that RNAi is also used to make sure the beetle doesn’t produce too much of a particular protein. If it wants to shut down certain specific proteins, it can make small interfering RNA (siRNA) and allow the RNAi system to destroy the RNA. It’s physiologically important for the beetle to be able to do this, but there’s no doublecheck system. The beetle can’t tell if it produced the RNA or if the dsRNA came from another source.

Reddy Palli’s lab did something ingenious with bacteria. They inserted several sequences into a bacterium that made double stranded RNA to a variety of important proteins. These included the muscle protein actin, sec23 which is a protein involved in the transport of newly produced proteins, and a couple ATPases which are responsible for producing the ATP energy currency of the cell. After killing the bacteria but preserving the RNA, they sprayed the bacteria onto potato plants which contained Colorado Potato Beetles. They also did this with just straight dsRNA. The beetles eat the plants, they eat the bacteria and a whole load of dsRNA.

What happened?

Here’s the cool part: it actually worked. To me this is mind blowing because RNA is incredibly unstable, thanks to an oxygen attached in a rather unfortunate place which allows it to break the backbone of the molecule. There are also nucleases which degrade RNA so the bacteria had to be modified so they wouldn’t produce these enzymes. Keeping the molecule double stranded helps by making it more difficult for either of these reactions to occur, so dsRNA is more stable than regular mRNA. But it’s still an incredible thing to me that this even worked.

If you want to show this works, you need to first show that the mRNA levels drop in response to the treatment. Turns out that they do for all the genes involved. Actin is the muscle protein, the ATPases produce energy and sec23 and CopB are involved in protein transport. The control was something which has relatively constant transcription that wasn't target by RNAi.

The beetles ate the killed bacteria, digested the outer wall and released the dsRNA. The cells take up the RNA, and the RNAi process occurs just as described above. The RNA coding for actin gets degraded, so that the beetles don’t make new actin or repair their existing actin polymers. In short, their muscles fall apart, their cells don’t divide. Even their sperm wouldn’t move…all these processes are dependent on actin.  As a direct result, the beetles stop eating, stop moving and die. Similar things happened with the other genes. When sec23 and COPB are silenced, their proteins don’t properly get transported and modified, resulting in a buildup of nonfunctional machinery. When the ATPases are silenced, ATP is no longer produced and the beetle can’t produce enough energy to maintain vital life functions. From this research, it would appear there are a great diversity of genes we could target which opens up a lot more avenues of attack when making pesticides.

Now, there are some neat implications to this research. This was a ‘proof of concept’ paper, which means that this works on a particular organism with a particular set of proteins under ideal lab conditions but doesn’t directly deal with the economics, field conditions or range of pests that could be targeted. It’s exciting and this technique has a lot of potential, but a lot more research needs to be done before we could use this in the field. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons to be excited to see this further developed, though. Even though this may be a somewhat limited technique (see below), I could still see this being used to create very highly specific insecticides that quickly degrade in the environment.

In general, this would be the ideal pesticide for an environmentalist because RNA is all around you, as are nucleases. The Colorado Potato Beetle produces RNA and siRNA. We produce RNA and siRNA. Bacteria produce RNA, but I’m not sure if they produce siRNA. This is essentially all-natural, with the only difference being that we’re telling the beetle to degrade proteins at the wrong time and at a much higher rate than it normally would. RNA degrades by itself pretty easily and RNA degrading nucleases can be found almost anywhere you look. The bacteria can degrade in the environment and have no components which aren’t found in soil bacteria except foreign RNA sequences. There’s no reason to think there would be any issues with the bacteria staying around in the soil for an extended period such as we’d see with DDT.

Despite my enthusiasm for this clever technique, I also don’t want to give anybody the impression this is a ‘magic bullet’ for pest control. Some critters take up RNA better than others. RNAi was discovered in nematodes using this technique, so we could potentially use this on nematodes as well as beetles. Honeybees are able to ingest RNA and acheive silencing, so we might even be able to target sawflies. We could not use this on moth pests because lepidopterans are notoriously difficult to perform RNAi in, which has led to caterpillars being more of a biochemistry rather than genetic model organism. Since a lot of pests like aphids pierce the plant and suck the juices out, this would be useless against them because they’re not actually ingesting anything on the outside of the plant. There also may be better ways to introduce the dsRNA and for all we know using viral machinery may be a better way to introduce and replicate the dsRNA. There’s a lot more basic research which needs to be done on this before I’d be willing to say ‘we could use this’. With this paper, there are good reasons to think this would work.

The results from the experiment. This is a survival curve, with the percentage of the larvae surviving plotted on the Y axis and the time of survival plotted on the X axis. As you can see, the survival curves dropped far below the controls. A is the bacteria encapsulated dsRNA, while B is the dsRNA without bacteria. Both work, despite the limitations I explained earlier.

In addition to needing to pay attention to the pests this could work on, we need to pay attention to the kinds of beneficial insects and other animals this would potentially harm just as we would any other pesticide. Actin tends to be pretty similar in all organisms. The other genes are really important, and are probably very conserved in genetic sequence. I would think this could have some potential nontarget effects on other beetles, flies or wasps that I’d be pretty concerned about the potential for syrphid flies to eat aphids coated in dsRNA filled bacteria, for example. I think it’s unlikely that RNAi would be able to be done for humans in this manner because we’re coated in nucleases and to perform RNAi we must actually envelope dsRNA viral components in artificial cell walls to prevent degredation in the bloodstream if we inject RNA into the body as we would with medication used to treat ebola. I’ll go into more detail about this in the next paragraph but even if we found that we could potentially perform RNAi in humans by doing this I wouldn’t expect any big nontarget effects because we could choose the systems interfered with in the insects and avoid using systems humans and insects have in common. We aren’t able to do this with conventional insecticides as well as we could with dsRNA because they often target systems humans and insects have in common like sodium channels and acetylcholinesterase. We do OK by making pesticides less toxic to humans (synthetic pyrethroids have LD50s 10x less than natural pyrethrum for a quick example), but we could always do better.

I’m not sure how big of a problem resistance would be, but I can kind of sort of speculate on this. RNA is difficult for some organisms to take up, so I don’t think it’s impossible for the organism to change its ability to uptake RNA. As far as easily imaginable forms of resistance go, I think this would be the most problematic form of resistance. Increased nuclease activity in the digestive tract would be an issue from a resistance management standpoint, as well. The beauty of this technique is that we can put any sequence of RNA into the bacteria to perform this technique. If we were to target insect specific insulin-like peptides, we could kill the beetles by causing growth deformities or by putting the insect in a diabetic coma. If we found that we could silence some of the metabolic machinery in a species specific manner we could target this. We could target single genes, or groups of genes and thus custom-tailor our pesticides to the pest itself. If the sequence of the RNA changed in response to the management, we could just determine if a different RNA sequence would work. It’s very exciting stuff, and it uses chemistry that’s already existing all around (and even inside) you.

It’s a good example of how technology can be applied in novel ways. In this particular example, we are doing something very simple-genetically modifying bacteria-to accomplish the relatively simple goal of killing crop pests. If we were to develop this further and get it ready for field use, organic agriculture proponents would be sadly unable to take advantage of this technique because they ban both synthetic insecticides and genetically modified organisms. Organic agriculture rejects many tools which could help them further goals which are certainly admirable. Unfortunately organic agriculture proponents attempt to maintain a false dichotomy between synthetic insecticides, genetically modified organisms and environmental issues. A lot of this stems from simple chemophobia, the idea that synthetic things are inherently bad. This causes the field to reject many good tools like this based on little more than fear and misunderstanding. Unfortunately, as a result of this I reject organic agriculture and refuse to buy anything organically produced despite the fact I agree with their goals wholeheartedly. I sincerely hope the field moves in a direction which places an emphasis on environmentally friendly solutions rather than perceived naturalness of interventions. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

Zhu, F., Xu, J., Palli, R., Ferguson, J., & Palli, S. (2011). Ingested RNA interference for managing the populations of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata Pest Management Science, 67 (2), 175-182 DOI: 10.1002/ps.2048
Zehnder, G., Gurr, G., Kühne, S., Wade, M., Wratten, S., & Wyss, E. (2007). Arthropod Pest Management in Organic Crops Annual Review of Entomology, 52 (1), 57-80 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ento.52.110405.091337

Bahlai, C., Xue, Y., McCreary, C., Schaafsma, A., & Hallett, R. (2010). Choosing Organic Pesticides over Synthetic Pesticides May Not Effectively Mitigate Environmental Risk in Soybeans PLoS ONE, 5 (6) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011250

Kovach, J., Petzoldt, C., Degni, J., & Tette, J. (1992). A Method to Measure the Environmental Impact of Pesticides New York’s Food and Life Sciences Bulletin

What if you found out that maize can cross with oats? Ron Phillips, Regents Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, gave a talk on parts of his career as a plant breeder, and he focused on the role of serendipity – of fortuitous chance events, in the life of a scientist. And one of his serendipitous discoveries was that you could, against all boundaries we humans apply to nature (in our minds), indeed cross maize with oats. So we grabbed him for an interview to talk about the amazing Oat-Maize Addition lines and more. The right person to explain these plants to everyone on video – right there for us to interview, how’s that for Serendipity?

So what do you think, is an Oat plant with one Maize chromosome a “GMO” or something else?

When we sat down at a table with our food, a guy named Carl sat down across from us. He took a look at our name tags and told us he knows – and likes – our blog. First name-recognition from the blog! We talked with him and the other members of the ad-hoc table party about what we all do, and interesting issues in genetic engineering. We learned a little about GE crop regulations and how bizarringly strict they can be sometimes.

For instance, many regulations require that every base pair in the plasmid you use to transform a GE crop be accounted for. The sequence is the easy part, however often times these circular pieces of DNA that genetic engineers use to insert a gene into a plant have been cobbled together from parts from various species to make the mature vector with all its useful parts. This is how exact it must be – you have to be able to say where every base in the plasmid came from. For every A, C, T, G, however inconsequential they may be – you have to say where it came from. If you inserted a restriction enzyme site (makes a place to cut the DNA) with PCR or some other tool, you have to list that. Any single letter unexplained, though it may be far from a gene and thus very unlikely to affect anything, could be cause for rejection. Consider that not everything in this plasmid even gets incorporated into your plant – it seems that explaining the presence of one Thymine in a string of letters that doesn’t even get into the plant is pretty weird. Are these the things that matter most, really?

We also learned something about some of the tests required to verify aspects of GE crops for approval, such as making sure that you know where the transgene is integrated into the plant genome. Originally, an experiment called a Southern Blot was used to confirm where the gene went. Southern blots are useful for checking the length of a region of DNA in any specific place you want in the genome. If you made a blot that was specific for the place your gene popped into, you would see a size difference in your piece of DNA. It would show the original region plus the length of the DNA you inserted. Today, however, we have much more advanced tools that can be used to sequence every base pair in and around your transgene, giving far more information than the Southern Blot. But the blot is still required, and may be for a long time. It would be like having to learn a stick shift vehicle to get your license when every car is an automatic – this also doesn’t make sense. Regulations such as these are a mix of science and politics, and what worries me is that any attempt to change things, such as removing the southern blot requirement, would immediately be framed as “weakening” the regulations. Interesting discussion. It would be great to get a guest post from someone who has more experience with these regulations to help us all find out more about the scientific and bureaucratic details involved.

After dinner, it was time for the introduction and the first plenary talks. It is tradition at the MGC to ask everyone who is attending the conference for the first time to stand up for cheers and accolades.  Then, everyone who has attended 2 or more conferences gets to stand. Then 5 or more, 10, 15, and on up to 50. Always at the top are Ed Coe and Gerry Neuffer. Ed could not make it this year, so Gerry was the last man standing. He was at the first Maize Genetics Conference as a graduate student in 1959, and has only missed two conferences in his life. That’s a whopping 51 conferences! Here is Gerry posing with Frank.

Gerry Neuffer never met an ear of corn he didn't like

The Plenary talks that followed were interesting. The first was about the knowns and unknowns about factors that influence yield in maize, by Elizabeth Lee. Simon Chan followed with a very cool talk about changing centromeres in Arabidopsis to make the offspring of the plant inherit just half of one parent’s chromosomes and nothing else. It also had implications . Not only was it fascinating in the approach used, but the implications for being able to ‘fix’ hybrid vigor an/or reduce the number of plants that were screened, but it also suggested an explanation for why when you cross distantly-related species, why they might lose chromosomes from one or both of the parents, if I understood the talk correctly. Cool stuff.

Afterward, we all adjourned to the hall with all the posters to meet up with colleagues both from near and far, and have some drinks. As it was St. Patrick’s Day, one bartender was wearing leprechaun ears while serving cups of beer on the house!

The Maize Genome Database folks were out in full force at this time, trying to get people interested in the many genetic resources that they have on their site, and they were looking for input for a site redesign from the attendees. It was almost like a kiddie’s corner with scientists getting MaizeGDB Tattoos and rearranging website pieces on a magnetic board!

Anastasia and I both got tats on our hands to forever show our Zea mays pride. Well, at least until it rubs off.

Only badass maize geneticists wear MaizeGDB tattoos

Frank also got one and wanted to show it off in front of the MaizeGDB cloodle!

Frank looks fearsome with his new tat

The end of the night arrived before we managed to kill our voices – so it was time to recharge for the next day of this marathon conference.

Friday morning had some interesting talks, some neat stuff, but this post is already getting pretty long as it is. So instead, I will just mention one talk. James Schnable, UC Berkeley grad student, blogger extraordinaire at James and the Giant Corn, and Biofortified contributor, gave an oral presentation in front of the entire conference. He talked about his research on the “two genomes” in maize. In the history of this species, its chromosomes got duplicated, leaving twice as many copies of each gene. Over time, some of the duplicate genes from these two genomes got lost, as things got scrambled around over innumerable generations. James used Sorghum, a close relative of maize that did not have this duplication event happen, to piece together the history of these genes and where they all went. Awesomeness! Very good job.

It is almost time for lunch now, so I will leave it at that. During the conference, we will be adding more photos to our Flickr photo album as we can. They will also appear here in our on-site photo album. There’s lots more science to come, and hopefully we can get more of this out to you than ever before!

This afternoon, we will be at the poster session to talk about our projects. If you are at the conference and want to come find us, Anastasia will be at her research poster (#263) from 1:30-3 pm, and her MaizeResearch.org poster (#196) from 3-4:30. Frank and I will be at the Biofortified poster (#299) from 1:30-3 pm ready to tell all about the blog and see if anyone wants to be a star and pose with Frank.

Some of the talks on the first afternoon were on the effect of pieces of the wild teosinte genome in maize varieties, aka introgression lines, and selecting for dark orange color in the kernels, for example. Reid, a fellow UW-Madison grad student, gave a great presentation on the performance of some new sweet corn lines compared to popular varieties.

On the second day, the first order of business was a round-table discussion from 8-11:30, where breeders and grad students could get up in the middle of the group and draw their breeding strategies on an easel. During a break, I snapped this photo of some of the presenters and other innocent bystanders, and as a result, when I went in front of the group to talk about my plant breeding videos, my only question was about the blog! As you can see, Frank here was telling people about it.

Note Wenwei Xu on the left, and Seth Murray and Marilyn Warburton in the 3rd and 4th positions. Marilyn studies resistance to fungi that produce Aflatoxin, a toxin that stunts growth in both livestock and human beings. Aflatoxin levels are highly regulated in the US, while in developing countries it remains a persistent health issue.

After a delicious build-yourself sandwich lunch, it was back to a few more talks. Wenwei Xu talked about how to evaluate how big your sample size must be if you are studying corn earworm resistance. It turns out that with a statistical model, he showed that sampling 5 ears is just as good as 10. Seth Murray gave an interesting talk about modeling the effective recombination rate in maize chromosomes. The ‘Big Science’ project in the maize genetics community is a huge crossed population called the Nested Association Mapping population, or NAM for short. He was able to model how often chromosomes trade arms in meiosis, an important process that recombines or mixes up the DNA an organism inherits from each of its parents.

There was also a great presentation by another graduate student named Joana, where she talked about modeling the roots of maize. She showed how she put together a computerized photo box for photographing the root structure of plants that were dug up from the field. This presentation was not only image-rich, but it also had some video clips of rotating root balls, making it a great way to round out the end of the NCCC-167 meeting.

The whole group gathered for a photograph in the beautiful 65 degree March weather we were having. As he usually does, Frank N. Foode wandered through the crowd – as you can imagine a Supersweet ear of corn can be popular amongst corn breeders. Where’s Frank?

The meeting was over in the afternoon, and it was time then to rest up and get ready for the main event of the week, the 2011 International Maize Genetics Conference, held at the same hotel. Soon enough, Anastasia was on the scene and James as well. The conference adventures are just beginning!

Featured image of the 2010 ASA, CSSA, and SSSA meetings.

Ever wonder what the heck people mean when they say we need a “Second Green Revolution” or a “Greener Revolution”? There is a unique opportunity to find out!

Green Revolution 2.0: Food + Energy and Environmental Security was the theme of this year’s ASA, CSSA, and SSSA 2010 International Annual Meetings that took place 31 October to 4 Novermber this year in Long Beach, CA. ASA is the American Society of Agronomy, CSSA is the Crop Science Society of America, and SSSA is the Soil Science Society of America. These three organizations hold thousands of scientists all the way from grad students to professors emeritus.

Many of the scientists that presented at the meetings made their presentations open access so that any one could learn about their research. Yes, that means you can access many of the presentations for free! Topics range all the way from Agroclimatology to Wetland soils. There’s Extension Education and Biotechnology… and so many more. You can browse by subject or author or even search for key words. This is a great chance to learn about the science that’s going on right now without needing to go behind a paywall. Want to discuss any of the presentations or posters? Start a conversation in the Biofortified forum!

A diverse diet, made up of a variety of grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, and animal products is the best way to get all the essential macro and micro nutrients.

Over at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, Jeremy has been critical of information coming out of the First Global Conference on Biofortification. He wonders if the organizers and attendees were/are too focused on a techno-fix rather than on diverse diets as a solution. This being a conference on biofortification, we talked about biofortification a lot, and it could be argued that biofortification is a techno-fix, whether by breeding or biotechnology.

However, we talked about a lot more at the conference, including supplementation and fortification, diverse diets and education, cooking and farming methods. To say that diverse diets were ignored would be incorrect. That obviously isn’t getting through in the materials coming out of the conference through the organizers or media, which is a problem.

If we polled each conference attendee, I think most if not all would say that a diverse diet for every human on the planet is the ultimate goal. Many of the sessions addressed this specifically, getting into the details of how diet and nutrition are intertwined. Here are just three examples:

Percentage of funds spent by families on different items before and after a 50% increase in food prices. The red and green blocks represent high-nutrient foods from plant and animal sources. Image from Howie Bouis's plenary talk at the Global Conference on Biofortification.

For example, Merideth Bonierbale, of the International Potato Center, described how consumption of some potatoes that are high in vitamin C but low in iron can assist with absorption of iron in other foods for low-income people in rural areas of Peru.

Mark Failla, Professor of Human Nutrition at Ohio State, talked about  how cooking methods can change bioavailability of nutrients. Pro-vitamin A in cassava is more bioavailable in fufu than in gari, possibly because the high temperature used in roasting gari breaks the nutrient down. Because pro-vitamin A is fat soluble, adding oil helps make the vitamin more bioavailable, but even the type of oil can make a big difference.

Howarth Bouis, Director of Harvest Plus, in his plenary The Five Big Challenges, reminded us that the percentage of the diet that has the most vitamins isn’t grains but the leafy greens, animal products, etc. When the price of grain goes up, consumption of nutrient rich foods goes down, because the grains provide more calories per dollar. The people buying these foods might still have full stomachs but the nutrients aren’t there. Ideally, people would be able to buy those nutrient rich foods and eat a diverse diet, but we know that’s not what is happening out there, especially when food prices are high.

Why vitamins and minerals matter

While starvation due to lack of food is a problem that certainly needs attention, malnutrition due to lack of vitamins and minerals has gone virtually unnoticed. The hidden hunger of malnutrition affects an astonishing 1 in 3 people worldwide, according to the Micronutrient Initiative. Lack of key micronutrients, especially in the first 1000 days of life (from conception to the second birthday), results in adverse effects to cognitive and physical development as well as a reduction in immune function. Those key nutrients include iodine, vitamin A, iron, zinc, and folate.

The sad truth is that, in many places, whole generations of people are growing up with brains and bodies that aren’t what they should be. How can we expect these people to find ways to bring themselves, their families, their villages, and their countries out of poverty? The truth is, they can’t, or at least the task is far more difficult than it would be for people who weren’t malnourished. This is the real tragedy of malnutition. If we can find ways to deliver nutrition to this generation’s mothers and their young children, those children will grow up strong and smart, and able to fight off disease as they should be. If we can improve the nutrition of just one or two generations then they will be able to make change for themselves and those around them, including those who do not have enough food. We need to help these people receive adequate nutrition through any methods that are appropriate for the situation. The goal is not just a healthy diet, but a self-sufficient healthy diet.

What can we do?

Impoverished people aren’t getting the nutrients they need because they don’t have access to a diverse diet, often because they can’t afford to purchase anything but grains. The long term goal is to enable people to have access to a diet that includes vegetables, fruits, and animal products. That will take global, regional, and national efforts to increase incomes for the poor. These changes are obviously something we all want to do but also obviously something that is going to take a very long time. While we work on reducing poverty, we can make nutritional improvements to the foods people are eating. In the mean time, there are a lot of people who are getting enough calories but who can’t afford nutrient dense foods.

Can we improve staple foods to meet more of the nutritional needs of the people eating them? The answer is, in a lot of cases, yes. In the developed world, we have fortified foods, including iodized salt, iron and folic acid fortified flour. These interventions have been successful in eliminating deficiencies of those nutrients. Similar efforts have worked in the developing world, but rural areas, distant from roads, have not received the benefits. Another problem with fortified foods is that they do add to the cost of the food, which doesn’t work well for rural or urban poor who can’t afford even a few extra pennies. Some government fortification initiatives have worked, but require constant monetary input.

Another option for nutrient delivery is supplementation as pills, shots, vitamin packets that can be added to foods, or food products like Plumpy’nut. These can be very effective in certain circumstances, such as for disaster relief, or while longer-term fortification programs are being initiated. But they have some significant drawbacks, including the requirement for frequent delivery of often perishable products, low acceptance rates by the people who might benefit from them, side effects like nausea, and health problems from over-supplementation. And again, rural people often don’t have access to such products.

What can we do for those people in rural areas who don’t have access to fortified foods? Most people in rural areas farm, even if only a small plot of land. Can they farm more diverse foods? In some cases, yes, depending on soil and rain and other factors. In some cases, the people are lucky if they get a few potatoes or cassava or a few ears of corn or stalks of rice out of the ground, and adding additional crops isn’t possible. One of the speakers at the conference said that many farmers in developing countries only produce enough food for part of the year, and must purchase the rest (I unfortunately don’t remember who said this). If we can put the ability to accumulate more nutrients in the seeds themselves (or cuttings, in the case of potatoes and cassava), then those few staple foods can be that much more valuable nutritionally.

Biofortified crops

Biofortified crops have many advantages over fortified foods or supplements. First, the nutrients can be packaged in biological molecules are easily absorbed by the body yet recognized by the body so over-consumption (within reason) won’t result in overdose of the nutrient. Second, the seeds only have to be distributed once, if they are non-hybrid varieties, and each generation the seeds will still have increased nutrients. If they are hybrids, the seeds can be distributed via existing seed distribution channels (if they exist – obviously hybrids would not be a good solution where there is no way to purchase or otherwise obtain seed each year). Finally, the improved seed can be bred or engineered to contain not only improved nutrients but also disease resistance, stress tolerance, and other traits that will help the plants be more productive without additional inputs. The same is true for plants propagated by cuttings or tubers, but even more so because each plant is clonal so there is no chance of genetic drift reducing nutrient content or other traits.

Biofortified and otherwise improved plants would allow farmers to have a higher income due to greater yields, as well as providing nutrients to allow the farmer’s family to be strong and healthy. Biofortified crops have the potential for big impacts on urban and non-farming malnourished persons as well. If all someone can afford is a bowl of rice or a little corn for arepas, and biofortified varieties are available, then their food dollar can go much further nutritionally. Biofortified crops aren’t just useful for people in the developing world, either. We in the developed world often don’t get the nutrients we need despite access to a diverse diet, fortified foods, and supplements.

Of course, biofortification isn’t without problems. For example, there are unique economic issues that could arise. There is potential for biofortified varieties of a crop to be considered more valuable than non-biofortified varieties, so the biofortified food would actually be more expensive, just like the fortified food can be more expensive. This would benefit farmers but wouldn’t help non-farmers. However, unlike fortified food, after some time, the seeds could be passed from farmer to farmer until most of the available food is biofortified, so the price differential would no longer be there. Another option would be for a country to make rules about new seed varieties, such as saying that they must contain certain levels of a nutrient, so that over time all seed would be biofortified.

Moving forward

Ideally, biofortified crops would be developed in ways that would benefit small farmers in developing countries the most. There are many issues to consider but I think there are two that are the most important.

Golden Rice, just another improved rice strain, yet it has a great potential to cover micronutrient needs of rural, rice-based societies. Photo from Goldenrice.org.

First, the traits must be developed with the intent for free distribution to those who need it most. Governments and non-profit organizations like Harvest Plus are doing good work, but partnerships with corporations have a lot of potential. Golden rice (set to debut in 2012 with enough pro-vitamin A to meet nutritional needs with regular rice consumption levels) is the first example of a public-private partnership, although because it was the first, securing a humanitarian license wasn’t quite as smooth as it could have been.

Now, there is evidence that corporations see value in such partnerships, and the process is much smoother. The method being pursued by the Gates Foundation and Monsanto with Water Efficient Maize for Africa (PDF) could be used as a model for new public-private partnerships. They plan to distribute improved seed with the water efficient trait to low income farmers at no cost, while relatively wealthy farmers may be required to pay for the seed.

Second, the plants must come with education. In Kenya, for example, education of the health benefits of orange sweet potato over white sweet potato has been key to acceptance. One way to distribute information that was discussed at the conference is to train one trusted person in each village who will then be able to disseminate the information. If a foreigner just drops off some stuff, whether it’s seeds, medicine, or anything else, without information, the items might not be accepted.

I think it was Denis Kyetere, Director General of the National Agriculture Research Organisation in Uganda who said – imagine an African villager walking into your neighborhood and telling you what you need to do to be healthy, to exercise and eat more vegetables. Would you listen to an outsider? We don’t even listen to our doctors, but we might listen to a friend.

Community based education has been shown to work. One example is Living Goods, an Avon style service that provides life-saving medicines, supplements, condoms, and more at a low cost. Education comes along with the products. The “Health Promoters” who sell the goods are members of the community so are much more likely to be trusted.

The take home message, for me, is that there are people in dire need that deserve better, and improved nutrition is the key to solving many problems. As Mark Whalqvist said in a symposium about “Weaving biofortification into the global development agenda”, good nutrition is not really about rights. It’s about equity, fairness. A child growing up in rural India or Uganda deserves a chance for healthy brain and body development just as much as a child growing up in Washington, DC or Ames, Iowa. It’s only fair.

Just defining the problems can be difficult. On a global scale, we have one list that has been agreed upon by representatives from counties all around the world. The Millennium Development Goals, developed by the UN and adopted in 2000, are a good list of the things that those of us in the developed world need to work on both in our own countries and in the developing world (bonus: cute logos). The list isn’t so good for accountability and determination of success because it is based on many factors that aren’t easy to measure but it’s still a useful list. And, every one of these goals has roots in nutrition.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Calories aren’t enough. Brains and bodies need macronutrients like proteins and fats as well as micronutrients like iron and beta carotene to grow strong and healthy. People who suffer from nutrient deficiencies have a reduced ability to help themselves and their neighbors.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education Without healthy brain development, education is far more difficult. This is true no matter where a child lives.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women As men leave the farms in search of work in cities, women are left to tend children and farms. This means women have even more control over nutrition than ever before. We need to empower them with the ability to choose healthy foods for their families.
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality Child mortality is a direct result of poor nutrition. Not only can a lack of key nutrients cause health problems and death on their own, the lack of those nutrients can reduce immune response so fighting off illness is harder if not impossible.
Goal 5: Improve maternal health Well nourished moms have healthy babies.
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Well nourished bodies can better fight off disease. While nutrition isn’t going to cure AIDS or malaria, it can reduce secondary infections and help keep the diseases from being debilitating.
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability Biodiverse diets are the best for nutrition, and there is a lot of evidence that biodiverse farms are better for the environment, provide habitat, and require fewer inputs. Because farming is the biggest human land-impacting activity, making farms more biodiverse results in more environmental sustainability.
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development This one might be more of a stretch, but I think we can all agree that one of the few things that unites all humans is an appreciation for a good meal. Whether it’s green papaya salad in Thailand, wood fired pizza in Naples, or fufu soup in Ghana – food is more than the nutrients it carries. Food is pleasure, food is livelihood, food is economics, food is the one thing we can not do without.

Even before the talks get started, the posters here display some exciting research. For example, B.B. Singh, an agronomist who splits his time between Texas A&M and an Indian university, has developed 60 day cowpea.The short maturation time of these special legumes means that they can be integrated into existing rotations in India, the US, and Africa, without the loss of any of the staple grain crops. They can be planted right into the stubble of the previous crop, provide about 1.5-2.5 tons of high-protein beans that can be cooked into a variety of traditional dishes as a substitute for beans such as chickpeas, soybeans, or lentils. They have a mild taste and high levels of iron and zinc. The bean plants can be used as fodder for animals and the plants fix nitrogen so less fertilizer is needed for the next crop. Other benefits include disease resistance and low water requirements.

Dr. Singh has been successful in his work to help Indian farmers integrate the cowpea into their wheat and rice rotations, and hopes to get farmers in Texas and the American south using cowpea as well. This work is particularly important for two reasons. First, in India, while legumes are an important part of the diet, increased demand for rice and wheat has decreased the number of acres where legumes are planted, causing an increase in price and reduction of protein in the diets of many Indians.  Second, soybeans do require a reasonable amount of water, and as rainfall becomes more variable, the US supply of the legume will decrease.

The director of the Food & Agriculture program at UCS Margaret Mellon, graciously agreed to do an interview with me while at MOSES. This immediately followed her keynote speech, which I referred to in a couple of my questions. (might be required watching if you want to appreciate it fully.) For instance, she excluded mentioning commercialized GE traits that were not Bt and herbicide resistance, trying to say that that is all there was. I also asked her about Golden Rice, knowing full well that she was a critic of it in its early days. What is the position of the UCS on it today? I also asked about Failure to Yield, and how it was that so many people seemed to think that it concluded that there was either no increase in yield due to genetic engineering, or that the opposite was true. (3-4% estimated increase in yield due to Bt) I ended by saying that although there are a few things that I disagree with the UCS on, they are doing a better job of being critics of GE than pretty much anyone else. And then I expressed something about peer review… and something happened! I thought about editing it to put the goodbye’s at the end, but you know what, I decided that the flow of conversation should be preserved how ever it turned out.

Have a listen, and let me know what you think! (Music by the eminent Carl Winter)