Beans are an important food item, mostly in the developing world. Unfortunately, the golden mosaic virus infection is a serious constraint causing severe grain losses in Brazil and South America. The National Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio) approved the genetically modified golden mosaic virus-resistant beans developed by the Brazilian public Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) linked to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply. This work is an example of a public-sector effort to develop useful traits, such as resistance to a devastating disease, in an “orphan crop” cultivated by poor farmers throughout Latin America. It is a milestone as it is the first fully “publicly funded homemade” recombinant biotechnology crop improvement strategy that has reached this stage in a developing country.

Why are the virus-resistant beans so important?

Feijoada

Beans are highly nutritious and one of the most important legume consumed by over 500 million people in Latin America and Africa. In Brazil it is regularly an indispensable item of the everyday diet, often combined with rice and eaten by all social classes in all parts of the nation. They are found in a great variety of types with different sizes, colors and tastes consumed throughout the country. Perhaps, the most typical Brazilian dish is the ‘feijoada”, a black beans stew. The local consumption is around 16 kg per person every year. Given its high protein (15 to 33%) content besides B vitamins and minerals as iron, calcium and phosphorus, beans provide a high nutritional value meal. Moreover, beans are the major source of protein for the economically disadvantaged.

Currently Brazil is the largest producer, responsible for approximately 20% of the global production. It is estimated that the domestic production should reach 3.8 million tons in the 2010/2011 period. This is mostly an achievement of small farmers (less than 100 hectares) responsible for approximately 70% of the country’s production. In spite of this high domestic production, Brazil does not produce enough to meet its own needs.

Golden Mosaic Virus symptoms

The major threat to the farmer’s plants, causing losses of up to a 100%, is the golden mosaic virus, which is transmitted by the whitefly Bemisia tabaci in a persistent and circulative manner. That means that once the insect gets the virus it will transmit the disease to the crop its whole life. Only one to three whiteflies per plant in a field are enough to infect all plants. With the spread of the disease throughout Latin America, hundreds of thousands of hectares were either abandoned or could not be cultivated without heavy use of insecticides with limited efficacy. This kind of control has resulted in the development of insecticide resistance, adverse environmental effects, and health hazards to field workers throughout the region. In Brazil alone, annual losses vary between 90,000 and 280,000 tons. That would be enough to feed up to 18 Million adults in the country. There are 180 to 200 thousand hectares that are not suitable for cultivation.

The long way to develop the virus-resistant beans.

The search for bean varieties resistant to the golden mosaic virus (BGMV) begun in the 70′s. It was hoped to obtain plants immune to this disease through conventional breeding methods. Thousands of lines were evaluated for natural resistance or immunity to the disease, but the extensive screening of common bean germplasm found no genotypes with satisfactory level of resistance to BGMV. With the advent of genetic engineering new strategies have been employed in addition to conventional breeding. Finally a successful strategy was found. The strategy was the use of RNA interference (RNAi) that mimics natural silencing mechanisms. Infected plants naturally produce silencing mechanisms that interfere with the virus in the bean cells, unfortunately not effective enough against this disease. The new “vaccinated” variety produces small fragments of RNA that will activate its defense mechanism to silence the viral rep gene, which leads to the synthesis of an essential protein for the replication of the virus. Consequently, without this protein, replication of the virus is compromised and the plants become resistant to the disease.

The virus-resistant GE bean plants are on the top. The original susceptible bean is on the bottom. Look at the difference a single transgene makes!

Safety and the way from research to seed market

Safety precautions for modern agricultural biotechnologies start at the very beginning of the research at the lab, and continue through the different phases of the development. Only when detailed scientific assessments determine it to be innocuous is the new development considered for commercial use. Prior to the submission for the commercial release, a comparison between the virus-resistant beans and its parental conventional/non-modified variety in all the ecosystems where the beans are cultivated in Brazil had been conducted by a consortium of 10 research centers over several years. Results showed that the transgenic beans do not differ in the environmental impact compared to its non-engineered parent beans. Additionally, the transgenic beans offer the advantage of reducing insecticides that have being used to kill the whiteflies that transmit the golden mosaic virus during the past decades. The new virus resistant beans are also considered as safe for consumption as the currently cultivated beans. On that ground, CTNBio, the multidisciplinary commission responsible for making science-based, technical assessments for the safety of genetically engineered products approved the beans for commercial release.

Approvals by CTNBio may be followed by an examination from the National Biosafety Council (CNBS) on the socio-economic convenience and opportunities of national interest.

There are in any case, further steps to be pursued on the way to market the seeds, such as the incorporation of the trait into cultivars suited to the different local conditions, the registration of the variety and production of the seeds. The following step is the law inspired by the UPOV Convention (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants), legislation that came with the intend of protecting the rights of developers of plant varieties, no matter if obtained through conventional breeding or modern biotechnology, while encouraging investment in research and development. According to the legislation, any plant variety with a minimum of clearly new distinguishable characteristics goes through a process to be registered.  After the approval of registration the new variety enters the fields of seed production. Farmers will probably have to wait another 2 to 3 years to see the virus-resistant beans.

For more information

Do you want to know more about the virus resistant beans? See for example: Kenny Bonfim et al; RNAi-Mediated Resistance to Bean golden mosaic virus in Genetically Engineered Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris); MPMI Vol. 20, No. 6, 2007 (Link) and Aragão and Faria, First transgenic geminivirus-resistant plant in the field, Nature Biotechnology Vol. 27, 1086-1088, 2009 . (link)

Do you want to know more about the Brazilian legislation on biosafety? See: CTNBio webpage (http://www.ctnbio.gov.br/index.php/content/view/12840.html )

I am thankful to Dr. Francisco Aragão for reviewing the text.

Editor’s Note: You will find these fantastic virus-resistant beans added to the rotating header images on our blog!

Today, to be patriotic, for the 4th of July I bought my wife some red, white and blue carnations.  I got them at Franco’s Flowers on Leucadia Boulevard just off the I5.  If you live in North County, this is definitely the place to get flowers.  I’m no professional flower arranger, but I think they came out nicely.

I asked the clerk who was trimming and wrapping the flowers where they came from, and he said, “Columbia.”  At least that felt more patriotic than purchasing them from Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela.

The Irony of This Purchase

These greenhouses lie between a golf course and my home. It was all once flowers

It is ironic, because I live in Northern San Diego County, in the city of Encinitas, which was once the capital of cut flower production for the US.  One of the few remaining greenhouses, Dramm and Echter, borders my neighborhood.

The Ecke Ranch with a small mother-block of Poinsettias

Much of the hill-top land with views to the Pacific was once owned by the Ecke family.  They once controlled 90+% of the wholesale Poinsettia business selling to the greenhouses around the country to local greenhouses that prepared them to be America’s traditional Christmas decoration.  Over the years they have sold off land for housing, for shopping centers and for a beautiful golf course where I frequently run.  When my family moved to Encinitas in 1990, we bought in a neighborhood that was once in flowers, but which was converted in 1974.

Why The Flower Growers Left

There are several inexorable trends that have since driven the flower business largely out of my town.  Some has gone to California’s Central Valley.  Some has gone to Mexico.  Most has gone to Venezuela (roses), and Columbia (carnations).  The drivers were:

• The very high cost of land
• The very high taxes that were indexed on land price, and
• Diminishing labor pools

Basically, it was “Urbanization,” or really “Suburbanization.”  It has also greatly diminished our strawberry and avocado industries.  This really isn’t such a big issue outside of California, but it certainly is in a place like San Diego.

Can I Be Patriotic and Green While Buying Flowers?

These trends are not limited to flowers.  It is true of any labor intensive crop, with asparagus being the poster child.  Americans are rapidly increasing their consumption of this tasty, cancer-fighting vegetable, but our own production is declining rapidly.  The logic is simple – asparagus is a 12-15 year crop with a short, labor intensive harvest season for 2-4 weeks in the spring.  We once had thriving asparagus industries all over the US.  It was a common, local vegetable.  As doubts developed about the future labor supply ,and as land prices soared, farmers abandoned the crop.  Now we buy asparagus from Peru and transport it by air.  The roses, carnations and asparagus were all US-sponsored projects to give small farmers an alternative to growing cocaine.  In every case they have become industries dominated by large companies.  (The small farmers still grow the cocaine, by the way.)

Some Hope for Ocean Transport in the Future

Fortunately, there are several technologies in place and in development that may make it possible to deliver these commodities by ocean transport – an extremely efficient system.  Soon we may be able to enjoy flowers, asparagus, and off-season fruits while being both patriotic and green.

So can I feel patriotic buying those flowers for my wife?  Yes.

You can email me at feedback.sdsavage@gmail.com.  My website is Applied Mythology

Back in 1995, I was party to some discussions about whether about-to-be-released GMO crops should be labeled at the consumer level.  It was clear that a failure to do so would look to some like a conspiracy, but we also realized that it would be far too expensive to track the great rivers of grain well enough to be able to label everything accurately.   Practicality won the day and GMO foods were never labeled.  15 years later this decision is still being needlessly debated.

Why You Can’t Really Track All Grain

It does not normally make sense for a farmer to have his/her own harvesting equipment.  There are “custom, contract harvesters” who move from South to North during the harvest season.  There are always some grains left in the harvester as it moves from field to field.  The grain is then hauled to local “elevators” which are used to store grain.  They only have a few silos which end up containing grain from dozens to hundreds of fields.  Segregating the GMO portion of the crop is not possible at this stage.   To ask this system to segregate and track GMO is absurd.  It is much more practical to “identity preserve” the small amount of non-GMO crop.  That also usually involves paying a price premium.

A “May Contain” Label Might Have Been A Better Choice

I actually supported the idea of a “may contain GMO” label, recognizing that things like corn and soybeans are turned into ingredients that are in just about any processed food (corn starch, HFCS, soy protein, soybean oil…).  Both the biotech industry and the food industry thought that a “may contain” label would unnecessarily frighten consumers.  I still think it would have inoculated them against alarm.  In the Information Age, only the absence of information stands out.

Fruits and Vegetables

As I have written elsewhere, almost no fruit or vegetable crops will ever be GMO – not because of consumer wishes, but because of economics, brand protectionism, and alternative ways of achieving the same goals.  If GMO ever did move to fruit and vegetable crops, it would probably be intentionally labeled and farmers would then segregate the GMO from the non-GMO.  For instance, if there was a line of coffee with a trait that allowed intentional timing of flowering (and thus timing of harvest), it would be much cheaper because it could be mechanically harvested (this is actually needed, or coffee is going to become extremely expensive in the future).  A label could explain this.  If there was a new variety of potato with higher starch content, it would absorb less fat during cooking.  It could be proudly advertised as a “low fat” option at a fast food chain (there was such a potato in the works before McDonald’s killed the program).

The “Biotech By Choice” Brand Concept

There is the concept of an umbrella brand for these sorts of GMO innovations – “Biotech By Choice”  (I even once reserved the domain name for that). The GMO,Bt sweet corn, that already exists (quietly) should be the first product under that brand – if there ever was a grocery retailer with the guts to promote it.  Instead, they quietly tell their suppliers not to bring them any GMO corn.  The second product under the brand could be the GMO virus resistant papaya (which saved the Hawaiian papaya industry a few years ago). Instead it is being sold on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis.

Biotech Wine

A third product under the Biotech By Choice brand could be premium wine grown on virus and nematode resistant rootstock.  I once advised the folks in Chile, that own this Cornell-developed technology, to buy some previously ideal vineyard sites in Napa and France that are now worthless because they are contaminated with the nematode and virus which kill any grape you plant there.  They could buy that land cheaply, grow some really good grapes, and make a premium wine.  There are plenty of people who would subscribe ahead of time to be able to buy a case a year at a wholesale price.  Did that happen?  No. People with fears of genetic contamination (which shows that they know nothing about grapes)ripped the French version of that experiment out of the ground.  The US experiment still exists, but only because its location is secret.  Still, this technology will probably never reach the market (do you have a couple million spare bucks to help finish the work?).

A Biotech Crop to Feed the World

A fourth Biotech by Choice crop could be wheat.  It might be drought tolerant or efficient in its use of nitrogen.  It might be resistant to a herbicide so that specific varieties can be grown purely under a no-till system.  It might be resistant to Fusarium, a fungus, and thus free of the mycotoxin, DON or vomitoxin.  I’d like to be able to choose a loaf like that.  Wheat actually could be segregated into GMO and non-GMO.  Most wheat farmers have their own, on-farm grain storage facilities. Wheat quality is variable by variety, geography and year, so there is a lot of testing and movement of small lots.  If there were reasonable rules about “adventitious presence,” (e.g. a few kernals of GMO in the non-GMO because they were harvested with the same harvester). Then Biotech By Choice wheat products could be sold.  Will that happen?  Its hard to know.  The wheat farmers certainly hope so.

All Food Is Effectively Labeled if You Know A Few Rules

Most people would like GMO products to be labeled.  I get that.  But, if you know a few rules, they already are in a de-facto mode.  For the grain crops, other than wheat, it just isn’t practical to segregate, and it makes far more sense to label only what is non-GMO.  We do that and should. Just assume the rest contains GMOs. It is like buying eggs: they all contain cholesterol, but there is no need to say so on the label except for the “whites only” variety and no one would mistake the little boxes for eggs.

For fruits and vegetables it would make sense to proudly label the improved, GMO versions.  If they are not promoted that way, just assume they are non-GMO because that is the norm. This is comparable to the reason you don’t have to label lettuce or water that is “fat free.” If you don’t want GMO, don’t buy papaya’s from Hawaii.  You could also avoid squash, but I don’t think it is GMO anymore.

For wheat products, actual labeling will be feasible as long as people accept reasonable thresholds for adventitious presence. For now, just know that there is no GMO wheat being grown commercially, so there is no need to label anything (although most wheat products will have some soy or corn ingredients as well).

Conclusion

In my world, this all makes perfect sense.  I hope this helps.  If you don’t worry about GMOs, there is no need for labels.  If you have worries, it is easy to avoid GMO.  However, I’m under no delusion that activists will adopt such a view.  There is way too much money to be made in the fear business.

(This post originally appeared on Sustainablog on 6/23/11)

My email is savage.sd@gmail.com.  My website is Applied Mythology. GMO label Image from Food Freedom website.

In this post, I will use a journal article  cited in the discussion above (Elmore, et al.  Glyphosate-Resistant Soybean Cultivar Yields Compared with Sister Lines, Agron. J. 93:408–412, 2001;  Accessed from:  http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/agronomyfacpub/29/). This article examined the effects of genetically engineered herbicide resistance on production characteristics of several soybean varieties.  While multiple varieties and herbicides were considered in the research, those of interest here are the lines genetically altered for glyphosate resistance (GR) and their corresponding “sister” lines which were genetically similar with the exception of having no glyphosate resistance (Non-GR).

Table 5 in the article presents average comparisons for these two varietal groups.  The yield of Non-GR lines is given as 3.68 Mega-grams (Mg) per hectare while that of GR lines is 3.48 Mg per hectare.  Statistical significance between these two groups is not explicitly shown due to an apparent typographic error in the table (no letter designation is given for the GR group).  A standard error (SE) of 0.08 is reported, however, it is not clear whether this represents the error of the means themselves or the error of the mean comparison, 3.68 – 3.48 = 0.20 Mg per hectare. In order to proceed with this discussion I will assume that the standard error is for the contrast itself.   This appears to be consistent with the presentation of other tables in the paper and is the “best case” scenario for the researchers with respect to the variability of the data.  From here, we can see an approximate 95% confidence interval on the difference in means (roughly the difference ± 2*SE or 0.04 to 0.36) would almost, but not quite, cover zero.  This implies some significance, although marginal.   Still, the difference of 0.20 Mg or 200 kg per hectare would not be negligible to a producer, especially when compounded over several hectares.  Perhaps this is a case where statistical tests belie a real practical difference, as recently covered on Biofortified by David Tribe in GMO statistics Part 10: the King of Hearts is NOT equivalent to the King of England .

At this point, it is useful to consider how the experiments were carried out, what was actually measured, and how the data were collected.  In the methods section we find that the soybeans were grown in typical field plots measuring 4 rows wide and 9.1 m (30 feet) long.  The rows were on a standard soybean production spacing of 0.76 m (30 inches).  In order to provide a buffer from adjacent plots, only the center two rows were harvested.  It is not mentioned if a buffer or border zone was used between adjacent plots within a row, however, I will assume a 5 foot border here as this is similar to standard practice in such studies and does not greatly affect the demonstration given here.  This leaves us with an effective plot size of 60 inches x 25 feet or 11.613 m².  Through the magic of metric conversion, it turns out that the yield numbers reported in Table 5 also represent the units of 100 g per square meter.  This, of course, leads us to plot level yields. For the example above, the difference in varietal groups, 20 per square meter, is equivalent to 232.3 g per plot.  Conveniently, the authors have also supplied us with seed size information in Table 5, thus, assuming an average seed size of 0.144 g per seed, the difference observed was approximately 1613 seeds.

A handful of seed.

This still seemed fairly substantial, but was difficult for me to visualize.  To satisfy my curiosity, I took a trip to the local Coop and picked up some soybeans.  From these I determined that 1600 seeds is equivalent to approximately 420 ml (~1.7 cups) in volume or about what you could hold in two hands.  Using similar computations, the 2*SE used in the confidence interval above translates to about 1300 seeds or 340 ml (~1.4 cups).  A cup and a half of seed is translating to a potential difference in metric tons between varietal groups at the production level.  How is this happening?  First consider the process of plot harvesting.  The paper states that a small plot harvester was used for this purpose.  For those not familiar with these machines, they are usually scaled down, car sized versions of full size combines.  They are complete replications of larger machines having a sickle bar cutter and reel to collect plant material which is then passed through the machine where the debris and chaff is separated from the seed.  An operator sits on top controlling the direction, speed, cutter height, etc.  Often, a second person will ride or walk alongside the harvester catching the seed from each plot in a bucket or grocery sack.  Harvesting is a dirty, dusty business subject to human failures.  It is not hard to imagine the loss of a cup or two of seed over 25+ feet of plot during this process.  Seeds can be dropped, missed, shattered to the ground by the cutter/reel, or simply blown out the back with the chaff if the settings on the sieves are incorrect.  Care must also be taken to pause the combine between plots in the border zone (typically mowed down prior to harvest) in order to allow the combine to finish thrashing and processing the plot material.  Matters can be further exacerbated if the seed from each plot is run through a seed cleaner prior to weighing.  Of course, on top of all this, there is variation due to spatial location and arrangement, micro-climates, etc.  These are all sources of variation that skilled researchers strive to minimize.  The problem with scaling small plot results to full scale production levels is that the errors encountered in plot harvesting either do not occur in full scale scenarios or, when they do occur, they do not scale up proportionally.  The proportion of seed missed relative to the total amount taken in, for example, can be much higher for a small machine compared to a full size machine.  Small scale spatial variation is much more influential on small plot measurements compared to those taken across a wide area.  A common way to measure these differences is the CV statistic or coefficient of variation, which is the ratio of the response variability to the response mean.  In full scale production, this ratio is typically much smaller than the corresponding values from small scale research.  In other words, small variations can have a large influence in research data, but similarly scaled errors are not likely to occur at the field level.

To be clear here, I in no way mean to be critical of these particular researchers.  By all accounts they have carried out a set of designed studies to the best of their abilities.  I picked this article because of its relevance, convenience, and reported information.  It should be generally noted, however, that research methods have their limits in resolution and these limitations can translate to apparent large real world differences.  The interpretation of such differences should be considered with caution.

So, given these difficulties, of what use are small scale studies?  How should we interpret their findings?  While I hope I have shown that we should use caution and common sense when extrapolating to field scale levels, small scale studies have much more value than that.  Interpretation of results within a study, whether re-scaled or not, is always important.  Ranking and comparison of treatments, varieties, or other experimental effects are usually unaffected by these problems (see for example http://www.colostate.edu/depts/prc/pubs/ComparisonOfLargePlot_KL.pdf).  Small scale trials also allow researchers to control for outside influences such as environmental conditions, in order to more accurately measure experimental treatment effects.  They are indispensable for “proof of concept” experiments where the objective is to isolate a given process or test a specified hypothesis. As part of the scientific method, small scale studies play an important role helping researchers refine and define their research problems.  Often these results are then expanded to larger scale trials, thereby encompassing a wider array of potential variation and allowing better assessment of their viability in the real world.

Too often, however, the initial small scale results are picked up, extrapolated, and used by interested parties without consideration of potential problems.  Consider the conclusion drawn here by the authors:  “Glyphosate resistant sister lines yielded 5% (200 kg ha^-1) less than the non-GR sisters (GR effect).”   This conclusion has also been cited as definitive evidence of yield drag in the widely distributed report Failure to Yield by Doug Gurian-Sherman (Union of Concerned Scientists).  Yet, we have seen that this difference could have been as low as 40 kg per hectare.  Reporting or interpreting the field level extrapolations without acknowledging the variability is misleading.  A slight increase in the variability (0.02 Mg or ~160 seeds) would have led to a conclusion of non-significance.  Stating that a difference was found is fine, but stating unequivocally that a loss of 200 kg per hectare can be expected is not.  As consumers of research results we must be aware of the limitations regarding small scale trials and correctly assess the interpretations of extrapolations we make from them.

Over the last 15 years, agriculture has been changing technologically at an amazing pace. It is something that is truly fun to look back at and realize where we have come. As a producer of corn, soybeans, wheat, seed corn, and popcorn over many of those years it has truly changed what we are able to do and what we will be able to do in the future.

Equipment technology has created a way for us to be able to be better stewards of our ground and resources. Biotechnology has allowed us to push the food, feed, and fuel production to levels that only a few short years ago, many people would not have thought possible. Plus, we are utilizing fertilizer at a better rate. We are reducing our need for irrigation, in irrigated crop production. We are using fewer and fewer pesticides, which not only allows for a healthier product but also for cleaner natural resources like streams and drinking water.

For the farmer, this new wave of biotechnology, has allowed him to plant sooner and get over more acres faster. It also allows for a crop that can remain in the field in good condition longer. It is also allowing for new “green” technologies to come along with the feedstocks from the field being used for future cellulosic ethanol production and for helping coal fired electric plants to create a cleaner energy as well. All this is possible because of the healthy plants that biotechnology is allowing us to have. A plant that can protect itself, will be stronger then the plant that isn’t. Whether that protection is from in field pests or whether that is from the plant being able to be resistant to certain herbicides, it all helps in the final standability and yieldability of the crop that is planted.

Farmers love to plant biotech corn and soybeans. According to the USDA June 2009 Acreage report, US farmers planted 85% of their corn to biotech hybrids which was up from 80% in 2008. They also planted 91% of their soybean acres to biotech which was down 1% from 2008. Farmers have seen the value of these crops and are willing to plant them.

This doesn’t mean there doesn’t need to be more work done. Seed companies are going to have to realize that even though farmers are willing to plant biotech hybrids and varieties, they will start decreasing biotech acres, especially in “multi-stacked traits”, if they do not maintain an acceptable final yield. At the end of the day, farmers want yield. It is the final measuring stick of what the year was like.

As we move forward, we will need to find the way to feed an ever growing world. With population projections of 9 billion by 2030-2050, biotechnology is going to have to be the key to making sure the world has a plentiful, healthy, affordable food supply. And we, as farmers, will continue to plant it.

Brandon Hunnicutt farms in South Central Nebraska with his dad, brother, and cousin. They raise corn, soybeans and popcorn.  All their corn and soybeans contain some aspect of biotechnology in them, except for the popcorn.  Brandon has been involved with defending biotechnology and promoting throughout the years and currently serves as President of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association.

Photo by Yvan leduc via Wikipedia.

There is so much information out there on Colony Collapse Disorder. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone summarized it in one place? Kyle Bailey, undergraduate in biology at Iowa State, has done just that. The following, posted with permission, is an up-to-date review of CCD research. It includes information from a variety of sources, from fact sheets to peer-reviewed journal articles.

Introduction

Honeybees (apis mellifera) are the primary pollinator available to agriculturalists in the United States. This makes them a critical part of US agriculture.  Crops such as “almonds (82% of the world’s supply and 100% dependent on interstate pollinators); apples; cherries; blueberries; broccoli; carrots; cranberries; cucurbits like cucumber, melons, squash, pumpkins, and gourds” (Stankus 2008) are heavily reliant on honey bees for pollination.  Traveling hives provided by commercial apiary services pollinates many of these crops.

A current epidemic, called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), affecting honeybee hives throughout the US threatens the apiarist industry.  In the US during 2006-2007 29% of beekeepers reported some loss to CCD with some losing up to 75% of their stock (Winfree, Williams, Dushoff, et al).  CCD is characterized as a mysterious loss of worker bees in the hive.  There are no corpses to be found as the bees apparently wander far from the hive to die.  The hive generally has sufficient food stores to maintain the population.  The hives also generally still have undeveloped brood stock.  The new brood (as well as the queen) is of course doomed without any adult workers present to care for them and they soon die.  Because the bees travel far from the hive there are no bodies to necropsy and attempt to determine a cause (Stankus 2008).

This paper will explore the US economic and agricultural impacts of pollinator loss, and recent research into the causes of and potential solutions to CCD.

US Economic and Agricultural Impacts

The monoculture nature of agriculture tends to produce large numbers of flowers that all need pollinating simultaneously. A lack of honeybee colonies available to ship and set up for pollinating the variety of crops throughout the US will have a major impact on production.  Dr. Caird Rexroad, an associate administrator of agricultural research for the United States Department of Agriculture, in testimony before the United States House of Representatives Agriculture Committee states:

“CCD poses a problem for many segments of the agricultural community, particularly the pollination industry and many growers that depend on pollinating services.  In total, bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other tree nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables.  The California almond crop alone requires 1.3 million colonies of bees, a need that is projected to grow significantly by 2010.  Due to CCD, the bee industry is facing great difficulty meeting the demand of almond producers.  If researchers are unable to solve the problem and beekeepers are unable to meet demands for this and other crops, agriculture will be significantly impacted.” (2007).

Recent Research on CCD

CCD is far from explained.  There is apparently no single explanatory factor.  There is strong evidence, however, that it is biologically transmitted (Cox-Foster, Conlan, Holmes, et.al.). It would appear to be a combination of factors.  Most of them well known and others new, emerging, or as yet unknown.  CCD is however strongly associated with hives that have been under stress from any of a number of known stressors (Stankus 2008).  These include mites, bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, and insecticides.  The various fungi, and bacteria are not thought to be major contributors to CCD directly.  A major indicator for CCD is, however, hive stress and any infection or infestation could contribute.

There are two mites that are of significant impact to A. mellifera.  They are Varroa destructor and Acarapis woodi. A. woodi is a very small mite that lives in the tracheal tubes of the adult worker honeybee (http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/acari/frames/beemites.html).  It is also associated with additional bacterial infections (Stankus 2008).  V. destructor is by far the more important mite and is more strongly associated with CCD.  V. destructor is a mite that primarily infects the brood while it is still capped off in the comb.  When out of the comb such as when the colony is over wintering and there is no brood left the mite infests the adult worker bee piercing the exoskeleton on the back and sucking hemolymph (Bowen-Walker, Martin, and Gunn 1996). V. destructor is also associated with additional infections, this time viral. Infestation by V. destructor affects bee size, weight, population, timeliness of emergence, lifespan and even the ability of bees to learn (Stankus 2008).

Viruses affecting honeybees are more diverse.  There are at least 15 serious strains.  Strongly associated with Varroa mite infestation is deformed wing virus (DWV).  DWV is usually spread by the mites to developing larvae who develop small non-functional wings.  The resulting adult can crawl but not fly.  It has also been shown that the learning ability of bees may be affected (Stankus 2008).

A 2007 study looked at samples from 51 separate colonies, all of them mobile. In all 25 hives suffering from CCD they found Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) and they found the virus in only one healthy hive.  This strongly correlates IAPV with CCD (Cox-Foster, Conlan, Holmes, et al.).  The causal relationship of IAPV to CCD is currently under study (Cox-Foster 2008).  Vertical transmission from Queen to offspring has also been shown for a variety of viruses (Chen, Pettis, Collins et al. 2005).

The most common protozoans found in honeybees are cryptosporidian called Nosema apis and a close cousin Nosema ceranae. N. ceranae is a more serious disease and is jumping the species barrier from Asian bees (Apis ceranae) to European bees (Apis mellifera). N. ceranae reduces hive survivability to one in six (Martin-Hernandez, Meana, Prieto, et al. 2007).  Given the recent emergence of N. ceranae and the uncanny similarity in hive survival rates, the prospect of finding a link to CCD seems promising (Stankus 2008).

Certain pesticides in wide use in the US have also been suggested to be players.  Specifically a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids.  The most widely used of these in the US is imidacloprid.  It is used as a seed coat and can show up in plant tissues such as pollen and nectar in low doses.  It is known to be toxic to bees, but when used in this way the bees receive a sub-lethal dose. One of the principal effects of imidacloprid on honeybees is a loss of learning ability (Decourtye, Lacassie, and Pham-Delegue 2003).  Learning ability in bees is considered critical for the hive to continue thriving (Stankus 2008).  The use of neonicotinoid pesticides varies widely by region, but the occurrence of CCD is fairly uniform. The manufacturer of imidacloprid has released a press release strongly denying its product plays any part in CCD and suggesting studies that show this to be true (Bayer CropScience, 2008).

Dr. Cox-Foster, one of the leading researchers in CCD also suggests the unnatural diet bees are subjected to may be a factor.  One day bees can be in a field with nothing but almonds, another day nothing but watermelon, and in between fed an artificial sugar syrup.  This is not the diet bees evolved with and as such may be a stressor.  She also mentioned the practice of frequent hive splitting.  This produces new hives more often than bees would choose to do so on their own.  The last possible factor mentioned is the decrease in genetic diversity.  Beekeepers who have some Africanized bees have not suffered from CCD (Bodnar 2008).

Possible Solutions

There is a study looking at how Africanized bees seem to be resistant to many of the diseases currently stressing European bees (Frazier Tumlinson, Tomasko 2008).  One possibility is to breed resistance into our bees.

There is also the possibility of moving away from our dependence on a single species to do all of our pollinating.  Unfortunately not many other bees are social so keeping them in very large numbers is difficult.  The solitary bees tend to wander away when they perceive their population is too high. One study currently under way has as one of its main goals to “Improve management of bumble bee pollinators through research aimed at identifying factors believed to affect worker pollen foraging and pollination efficiency.” (Delaplane Visscher,Eitzer 2008).  In some areas native pollinators may be able to pick up the slack and provide sufficient pollination (Winfree, Williams, Dushoff, et al. 2007).

Depending on the findings of some current studies, we may simply find that a few changes in our managements of bees could make all the difference.  The careful use of novel miticides, maintaining more diverse food sources such as wild flowers in proximity to the crops we want pollinated, and maintaining a larger portion of the bee population as stationary hives instead of mobile operations that move state to state would all seem to be prudent, easy, and inexpensive first steps to staving off CCD.

Conclusion

CCD is obviously an important disease.  It is currently a major area of study and our government through the USDA is pouring millions of dollars into research projects all over the country.  At this point we are just beginning to understand the possible mitigating factors to CCD and how they may interplay with each other.  The coming few years will likely be hard ones on the apiary and agricultural industries.  Hopefully, solutions will be swift in coming and cheap in implementing.

Works Cited

Bee safety and Colony Collapse Disorder. (2008) Retrieved November 15, 2008, from http://www.press.bayercropscience.com

Bodnar, A. Colony Collapse Disorder (2008) Retrieved November 18, 2008 From http://www.geneticmaize.com/2008/06/colony-collapse-disorder/

Chen, Y. P., Pettis, J. S., Collins, A., Feldlaufer, M. F. (2006). Prevalence and Transmission of Honeybee Viruses. [Electronic version] Applied And Environmental Microbiology,72, 606-611.

Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service (2008) Colony Collapse Disorder – Determination Of Role Of Pathogens In Unique-Colony Losses Of Honey Bees And Funding Of Workshop On Ccd Retrieved November 15, 2008, from http://cris.csrees.usda.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/0?path=fastlink1.txt&id=anon&pass=&search=R=15893&format=WEBLINK

Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service (2008) A New Collaboration To Understand African Bee Biology, Ecology, And Management As A Key To Sustaining Honey Bee Health In The U.S. [Electronic version] Retrieved November 15, 2008, from http://cris.csrees.usda.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/0?path=fastlink1.txt&id=anon&pass=&search=R=23624&format=WEBLINK

Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service (2008) SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS AFFECTING HEALTH OF MANAGED BEES [Electronic version] Retrieved November 15, 2008, from http://cris.csrees.usda.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/0?path=fastlink1.txt&id=anon&pass=&search=R=8439&format=WEBLINK

Cox-Foster, D.L.,Conlan, S., Holmes, E.C., Palacios, G., Evans, J.D., Moran N.A. (2008). A Metagenomic Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder. [Electronic version] Science 318, 283-287

Decourtye, A., Lacassie, E., Pham-Dele`gue M. (2003) Learning performances of honeybees (Apis mellifera L) are differentially affected by imidacloprid according to the season. [Electronic version] Pest Management Science 59, 269-278

Martı´n-Herna´ndez, R., Meana, A., Prieto, L.,  Salvador, A. M., Garrido-Bailo´n, E., Higes M. (2007). Outcome of Colonization of Apis mellifera by Nosema ceranae. [Electronic version] 73(20), 6331-6338.

P. L. BOWEN-WALKER, S. J. MARTIN, A. GUNN (1996). Preferential distribution of the parasitic mite, Varroa jacobsoni Oud. on overwintering honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) workers and changes in the level of parasitism.[Electonic version]  Parasitology, 114, 151-157

Stankus, T. (2008).  A Review and Bibliography of the Literature of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder: A Poorly Understood Epidemic that Clearly Threatens the Successful Pollination of Billions of Dollars of Crops in America. Journal of Agricultural & Food Information. [Electronic version] 9(2), 115-143.

Subcommittee On Horticulture And Organic Agriculture Of The Committee On Agriculture House Of Representatives (1997) Review Colony Collapse Disorder In Honey Bee Colonies Across The United States (36-465 PDF) Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office

“Tracheal Mites” Tarsonemidae. (n.d.) Retrieved November 16, 2008, from http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/acari/frames/beemites.html

Winfree, R., Williams, N., Dushoff, J., Kremen, C. (2007) Native bees provide insurance against ongoing honey bee losses. [Electronic version] Ecology, 10, 1105-1113

Alan McHughen, plant biotechnologist at UC Riverside and author of Pandora’s Picnic Basket, is one of the professors participating in Debating Science, helping the students to develop an informational website about bioethics that may one day be relesased to the public. He recently shared some insights with the group that he has allowed me to share with you (emphasis original)…

I just returned from a trip to Lithuania and Poland, giving talks to university students, farmers and the public. They confirmed what I’d often thought, that the variouscriticisms of GE crops could equally be applied to conventional breeding, but rarely, if ever, are.This doesn’t necessarily mean the criticisms are invalid, but it does mean we show prejudiceagainst GE by applying the criticisms exclusively to GE.

For some examples:

1.GEis unnatural; it requires human intervention to produce plants that could not be produced by Nature alone. Conventional counterexample: Grafts between rootstock and scion of different species could not exist without human intervention. GE is singled out for this criticism. There is no regulatory scrutiny for interspecific grafts.

2.GE is disruptive to the genome, inserts t-DNA randomly and unpredictably Conventional counterexample:Ionizing radiation is far more disruptive to the genome and unpredictable in its effects. GE is singled out for this criticism. There is no regulatory scrutiny for mutation breeding.

3. GE crosses the species barrier; nature does not allow genes to cross the species barrier Conventional counterexample: Wheat, triticale and many other examples of conventional breeding to move genes from one species to a different one. Even in nature, Agrobacteriumtumefaciens does itacross distant and completely unrelated species, and without human help.GE is singled out for this criticism. There’s no regulatory scrutiny for interspecific crossing.

4. HT GE crops can cross with wild relatives, creating hybrid ‘superweeds’. Conventional counterexample: All crop cultivars carry some (natural) HT genes, and these can (and do) cross into wild relatives to create hybrids with herbicide tolerance(e.g. triazine tolerant canola). GE is singled out for this criticism. There’s no regulatory scrutiny for outcrossing of conventional HT cultivars.

5. Successful GE cultivars can lead to broad regional monoculture, exposing the crop to diseases and other threats. Conventional counterexample: So can a successful conventional cultivar lead to monoculture. GE is singled out for this criticism. There’s no regulatory scrutiny for monoculture of conventional cultivars.

6. GEcultivars requirefarmers to buy seed each year. Conventional counterexample: Conventional hybrids also require farmers to buy fresh seed each year. They’ve done so since the mid-20^thCentury. GE is singled out for this criticism. There’s no regulatory scrutiny for conventional hybrids.

7.GE seeds are patented and so use of their seeds is restricted. Conventional counterexample: Patents can also exist on conventional cultivars. And Not all GE cultivars are patented. GE is singled out for this criticism. Patenting is not unique or limited to GE, normustGE cultivars be patented.

8.GE cultivars are controlled by big companies and intended to make profits. Conventional counterexample: All seed companies intend to make profit, even with sales of seed of conventional cultivars. Also, not all GE cultivars are from private companies (e.g.GE papaya in Hawaii). GE is singled out for this criticism.

Can you think of any examples of a criticism of GE that cannot also be applied to conventional breeding?