Margaret Mellon at MOSES 2010 from Biofortified on Vimeo.

Almost immediately after her speech I recorded an audio interview with Margaret which I will post very soon. I already had some questions, but the speech spurred several more. What would you have asked her after this speech?

On the left is “tassel ear”, where silks and kernels (female, seed producing plant parts) appear on the tassel (male, pollen producing plant parts), where they are most certainly NOT supposed to be – it’s ok for sorghum and other grasses, but not for corn! On the right, there are at least 2 ears where there should be one, and those leaves poking out between the two might be more ears. Neither of these plants are transgenic or carry heritable mutations that cause these strange phenotypes. Both transgenic and non-transgenic fields are treated with a herbicide before we plant but after that the plants are grown with no additives, chemical or otherwise.

So, what the heck is going on?

I’ve always meant to look it up, but pollination season is so busy, and then it’s harvest season which is so busy, and then we’re analyzing the seeds… you get the idea.

While looking for pictures of corn borer damage, I found an awesome site by Peter Thomison and Allen Geyer of the Horticulture and Crop Science Department of Ohio State University: Troubleshooting Abnormal Corn Ears and Related Disorders.

They say that tassel ear is due to a variety of causes, including mechanical injury due to hail, which we did have pretty badly last year. No one really knows what causes “bouquet ear” with multiple ears appearing where there should be one, but it might be due to temperature stress due to cold.

There are many other common but strange corn phenotypes explained on their site. Check it out!

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.

One of the students of the lab defended his thesis work during this time frame.  He was a terrific speaker who made us understand the medical and economic burdens of these parasites on the impoverished communities he studied.  Somehow he managed to make the story of sample collection amusing…. And the details of the discovery of his own infection (after a very hot curry meal) made that defense one of the most memorable during my career in science (Figure 1, right. Speaker and his infectious agent).  But I still remember the scientific point: these infections have real impacts on the humans and the agricultural animals that live in close proximity to them in the developing world.  And that there appear to have been separate and distinct infections in humans and in pigs in the studies they performed.

Until recently I hadn’t thought much about the roundworms.  But this week when this paper came across my desk, I was glad to see that there was a potential breakthrough in the treatments for roundworms that could improve the health of millions of children.  And how might this be accomplished?  Using the Bt protein.

For some people, a great deal of the conflama around genetically-engineered (GE) crops has to do with the presence of a pesticide in the plant material—mainly the Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt protein—rather than coating the surface of the plant as organic Bt sprays or chemical-style pesticides would.  No matter how many times I explain that there are benefits to this strategy (such as reduced impact on non-target species and on improvements in farm family health among others), it doesn’t seem to help. No matter how many times I explain that pesticides aren’t the only modification to plants (as we see at Biofortified regularly), it doesn’t matter to critics of GE.  The fact that plants make their own pesticides? Not interested.  And no matter how many times I explain how the Bt proteins work only on species that have the specific receptor for that interaction—and therefore does not affect humans as it would the corn borer pest—it doesn’t seem to have any impact.  The misplaced fear continues to be used by the critics.

So when I saw this paper that suggested the Bt protein may be a powerful strategy for improving the lives of impoverished children around the world, all I could do was wonder if that might finally register with those who make unsupported claims of the effects of Bt on humans.

A team from UCSD studies the biology of infectious diseases (Aroian Lab), with the hope of harnessing biological strategies to combat the scourge of the roundworm parasitic infections.  As they describe, millions of people are affected by this:

These parasites infect the gastrointestinal (GI) tracts of 1 in 3 people in the world and may cause as much morbidity as malaria. STH infections in children result in growth and cognitive stunting and severely impact learning, school attendance, and future income potential. The World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2001 has urged the deworming of 75% at-risk school-aged children (nearly 400 million children). Over 44 million hookworm-infected pregnant women are at increased risk for premature delivery, low birth weight, maternal ill-health, and maternal death.

There have been chemical drugs used to treat the affected individuals.  However, these chemicals are losing their effectiveness as resistance builds in the parasites.  The UCSD team has sought a natural solution to this problem, and they are making progress toward that goal.

Earlier work established that the Bt protein may have effectiveness on certain nematodes (Wei and Hale et al, 2003).  Further work looked specifically at the effectiveness of Bt protein on an intestinal parasite species that can infect humans (Capello et al, 2006).   This new work examines the effectiveness of a Bt protein on a mouse model that more closely mimics a naturally-occurring infection situation in humans.

The experimental details are quite straightforward.  Mice were infected with a parasite (under the guidelines for animal use).  A Bt protein (Cry5B) was prepared and examined for bioactivity, with appropriate controls.  Bt protein solutions or control solutions were given to infected mice in a single dose.  The egg levels and worm burdens were determined among the experimental animals.  And the data were very clear.

When the researchers counted the levels of nematode eggs in the feces of the infected mice, there was a remarkable reduction in the counts of mice treated with the Bt protein solution—greater than 95% of eggs were reduced on the first day, and even greater over the next sample days.  The adult worm count drop wasn’t quite as dramatic (only 67% reduced).  The authors suggest that this means the worms that did remain in the intestine were probably severely compromised, and therefore not effective at reproduction.

The effectiveness of the Bt treatment was compared to a current anti-roundworm chemical treatment (tribendimidine).   It appeared that the Bt protein treatment was potentially more effective than this compound.  And these experiments used Bt protein in solution—which is highly degraded by stomach acids, as they demonstrate.  The authors suggest that wrapping by the Bt in a coating to bypass the stomach to get to the intestinal environment—commonly done for medications, it may be that Bt could be even more effective and use quite a low dosage.

This was a small scale pilot experiment in mice, and the work would certainly need to progress to humans to be sure of the efficacy.  And like all treatments that we have in the infectious disease arms races, awareness and monitoring of resistance would certainly be an issue.  But I suspect it will be harder for the anti-GE factions to use the fear of Bt if it can be shown that Bt has dramatic and remarkable benefits for humans in the developing world.  Like the impending launch of many nutritionally-improved GE products, as more people understand the benefits of these strategies for human health, hopefully the fear can recede and the facts can enter the discussion.

You may also want to hear from the research team themselves on this—they have created a Quicktime movie to tell you more about their work:

To download: http://aroianlab.ucsd.edu/Wormfreeworld1.mp4

You can “virtually” meet the researchers who performed this work, and hear more about the historical and current understanding of the effects of the roundworm infections on humans.  I would just like to add that the researchers performed this work with funding from the NIAID (National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases), and had no corporate funding in their declaration statement on their paper. I have no relationship with this lab or any relationship to the work performed.  I just read the paper and thought it was nifty.

Reference:

Hu, Y., Georghiou, S., Kelleher, A., & Aroian, R. (2010). Bacillus thuringiensis Cry5B Protein Is Highly Efficacious as a Single-Dose Therapy against an Intestinal Roundworm Infection in Mice PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 4 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0000614

Photo provided by T. Anderson, personal communication. Used with permission.

MaryM is Mary Mangan, co-founder of OpenHelix, a company that provides training on open-source software in bioinformatics/genomics. PhD in molecular/cell biology, with training in plant + animal systems, she’s the kind of independent scientist people claim they want to hear from, until they dislike the conclusions.  She also enjoys hot curry dishes regularly, and not just for their curative properties.

Anastasia has set up a Flickr account for the blog, which you can see on the Photos page! This has made it so much easier for me. I may be smarter than the average corn but all this web stuff is confusing.

You can see the pictures from my whole trip in the Flickr photo album hosted on Biofortified here, on the Flickr site, or read more below.

Seed Swap! I can’t wait!

The fine folks at Vermont Valley Community Farm have got some seed potatoes here of all kinds of colors. Jonnah (holding me) likes the blue ones the best. Their little tubers were selling like hot potatoes!

Jared here just got a Masters degree from UW Madison, and now he works for the Organic Seed Alliance! He is helping people learn how to produce seeds for planting and how to cross varieties together.

Hey buddies, how you doin?
(…) Organic only?
Whoa didn’t know this was such an exclusive club.

Look, I’m “Contaminating!”

Brian grows sweet corn, field corn, wheat, and soybeans on his family farm in Dwight, Illinois, which is about 1/3 organic. He was really curious about how the genetics of sweet corn works, and although he doesn’t grow any GE crops, he was ‘all ears’ about what people are working on!

Strike up the band! But lose that glove, man.

HELP! HELP! Jeffrey Smith has got me! He said I was cute but don’t let me out of your sight!

This is Margaret (“Mardi”) Mellon, who directs the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food & Agriculture Program.
Psst, is Jeffrey Smith gone? Can I come out now?

Chuck Benbrook works for The Organic Center, and writes about differences in the healthful content of food depending on how you grow it, and also writes about pesticide use with genetic engineering. He’s not as anti-GE as he sounds from what he writes, but he’s still arguing old questions.

Eric Mader from the Xerces Society talked about Native Pollinators and how you can help them out on your farm. Hey Roundup Ready Beet growers – remember to strip-spray and leave some forage for the bees!

Ah, the MOSES organic farming conference is over, and I’ve met a lot of people, some of whom just don’t like me and don’t want me on their farms or in their food…

But at the same time I met many people who are interested to learn more about me. Will Organic Agriculture stop being my enemy and instead be my ally in producing healthier, safer food that is better for the environment?
I’m optimistic, but these things take time.

The whole affair probably took a lot of planning, and the integration of twitter comments into the video webpage was impressive. This is the first time I have seen that kind of detail. It is especially good because even people who don’t twitter can see the discussion unfolding. The display of twitter comments behind the speakers was also a nice touch, however it was difficult to read them in the video – it was probably more for the physical audience at the event. But seeing as how Anastasia had two of her ‘tweets’ read aloud on the webcast, making both Frank and me jealous, it

The format got me thinking about how we might be able to do something like that on Biofortified. As a community (!) of people around the world, it would be exceedingly difficult to get a lot of people in one place – but if it was done online it could happen. Something to dream about doing someday!

I do have a nitpick about some of the questions asked of the panelists – the ‘Youtube’ questions. While participation on facebook and twitter was announced, I was surprised to see video questions included, and it was said on the webcast that they were ‘Youtube’ videos. However, there was no such announcement prior to the event. I received confirmation of this from Alex Rinkus. He said that they solicited questions from partner organizations and some questions were asked by random people on the street who were explained what the panel was about. But putting them on Youtube didn’t work out because the video quality degraded at each step of the way. That’s understandable, but the press release after the event said something different:

Participants were able to ask real-time questions through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and e-mail.

Pre-recorded questions ≠ Real-time Youtube submissions. I don’t want to overemphasize this point, but I think it would have been better to just call them questions from the street or something. Maybe I just would have liked to send a video question – they had me googling frantically looking for this!

As for the panel discussion, there were a lot of good things talked about. As I have said before, I was already familiar with Nina Fedoroff and Robert Paarlberg. I was particularly impressed with some of Gale Buchanan’s comments and demeanor, and Mark Cantley said some good things about the UK. Calestous Juma added some good perspective on Africa and elsewhere.

I thought that the discussion was good, but I felt that it could have used more diversity of opinions and perspectives. There really weren’t any big disagreements over any particular issue or another. I think the panelists communicated their perspectives well, but it was very ‘on message’ and wasn’t an exploration of differences and confluences. One thing to consider is that if a group of people does not agree fully on everything then when they do agree the power of that agreement is much stronger. This isn’t to say that the panel should have included someone like Jeffrey Smith – that would be absurdly unproductive. And I know how hard it is to plan good discussion panels because I’ve had to do that myself on several occasions. But a wider and richer discussion could have been achieved.

One thing that I certainly liked seeing was the piece on Norman Borlaug that they played at the beginning. Not only do I think more people need to know about Borlaug’s contributions to the world, but it highlights a critical issue ignored in many discussions of the future of agriculture: There are soon going to be several billion more people on this planet and the Green Revolution helped safeguard the lives of just one billion.

Heh, just one billion!

As of 2008, the global population was estimated at 6,692,030,277. (Source: Google) In 2050 we may have 2.3 billion more mouths to feed, and to feed well. We must do this on less land and with less water and to have a lower impact on the environment. We must do this with healthier food and safer food. It must be done amidst climate changes and our diminishing ability to pump more previously-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere – for both peak-oil and greenhouse gas emission reasons. It will take more than 2.3 more Borlaugs, I’m afraid.

There are many people who argue against the need to produce more food. Yes, we can also work to improve equity and food distribution, however, that will not be enough to feed 50% more people. I was once talking to a wheat breeder and he quizzed me on how much wheat stores we had in the U.S. – I guessed a few months worth. The answer he gave me was 11 days. The recent food shortages in the past couple years due to weather has caused the public and the media to realize that although we may feel comfortable (in this country) at the present, that comfort could easily be upset. Any future plan for how to proceed must take these issues into account, and I daresay that we have not yet figured out how to do it.

And so in finality, however you may feel about genetic engineering and other aspects of farming, I think you can agree that the emphasis placed on this future need was not misplaced. We didn’t see many of the twitter-savvy anti-GE folks participating in the discussion during this webcast, but I hope that the magnitude of the world’s needs as communicated by the panel was not lost on them, because it certainly is higher in my consciousness still a couple weeks later.

This is the first conference of this type that I have gone to, although I have been to an organic show-and-tell shindig here at the UW, this conference will be new to me. From looking at the schedule, it seems that it is mostly oriented toward farmers, but there should be plenty for me to check out.

The first thing I will see when I get there is the seed swap, which will be a first for me. There is a possibility that I will be able to interview someone about seed saving and/or backyard breeding. Otherwise I’ll take a good look around and maybe get some comments from people.

Saturday will be an interesting day for me, though. At 8:30 in the morning, Charles Benbrook from The Organic Center will be giving a talk:

Telling the Story of Organic Food Health
Saturday I – 8:30am
More than raw data about the environmental impact of pesticides or the benefits of organic food, stories and illustrative examples provide an effective way to communicate about organic agriculture. The Organic Center’s Chuck Benbrook will share meaningful ways to provide a clear understanding of the consumer and environmental health benefits of organic farming.

Then, at 10:30 am, Margaret Mellon from the Union of Concerned Scientists will be giving a keynote address:

DR. MARGARET MELLON “Two Views of Food Safety: Organic Agriculture and Biotechnology”
Saturday, February 27th
Dr. Margaret Mellon directs the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The program promotes a transition to sustainable agriculture and focuses on critically evaluating the use of biotechnology in plant and animal agriculture as well as assessing animal agriculture’s contribution to the rise of antibiotic-resistant disease. Trained as both a scientist and a lawyer, Mellon considers food safety through two lenses: organic agriculture and biotechnology. Exploring how people relate to food safety in these contexts as well as through scientific and legal perspectives, Mellon’s work considers how to put the issue of food safety into the context of the ongoing debates about the future of agriculture.

I have requested an interview with both Benbrook and Mellon, and as of today they both agreed. Their talks are back-to-back, however if I have to skip part of lunch to do it I will! I will be interviewing them by audio, and I will post the interviews to the blog. If there is something that you would like me to ask them, please let me know in the comments below, or send me a message through our contact form.

There is also another talk at 2 pm which I would like to catch.

GMOs and the Fight for Organic Integrity
Saturday II – 2:00pm
While evidence mounts to show that GMOs harm humans, fail to increase crop yields, and will contaminate organic crops, a new wave of GMOs is being introduced, threatening the ability of consumers to choose non-GMO foods. Join Center for Food Safety staff attorney Zelig Golden to learn about legal strategies to protect organic crops from contamination.

I wonder what he thinks about protecting the integrity of conventional white cotton from contamination by colorful organic cotton? Pollen flows both ways.

But one talk I am certainly looking forward to is this one!

Managing Nests for Native Bees
Saturday III – 4:00pm
Artificial nests can boost local populations of native pollinators, but they must be actively managed to avoid negative impacts on local bee populations. Join the Xerces Society’s Eric Mader for an overview of native bee biology, and guidance on how to construct and manage artificial nests for native pollinators in an ecologically sound manner.

Eric Mader is actually speaking in my building on Friday, but I will miss his seminar due to the conference, so it is great that he will be there because I’ve been meaning to build some artificial nests for bumblebees this year and I bet he will know what I need to do. This talk will be a great way to end the day before the 4-hour drive back to Madison.

Field of cotton by Brian Hathcock via Flickr.

We’ve all heard about the tragic suicides of farmers in India, and we’ve all seen blame placed on Bt cotton. Vandana Shiva has been a leading finger pointer, saying that farmer suicides are due to genetically engineered crops (specifically, due to Monsanto), as in the April 2009 post From Seeds of Suicide to Seeds of Hope: Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?, instead of focusing on real problems like the lack of fair credit.

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The farmer suicides in India were studied in depth in an October 2008 report Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India: Reviewing the Evidence by IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute). I covered the report over at Genetic Maize in Bt cotton and suicides in India, but I have zero experience in India, so it wasn’t a very in depth post. Happily, I have just found the post I wish I had the experience to write!

Siddhartha Shome writes about India and agriculture (among other things) at Sid’s Blog. His November 2008 post P. Sainath and Farmers’ Suicides in India is as relevant as the day it was written. I hope you’ll take a look. His recent post Frequently Asked Questions about GMOs and Bt-Brinjal is well worth a read as well.

Snow* is an evolutionary biologist and ecologist who’s been running an interesting experiment on wild radishes for more than a decade now. In the 90’s, when transgenic crops like Bt corn and Roundup Ready soybean were beginning to dominant the market (and the landscape), there were concerns that wild relatives would incorporate the transgenes and spread as superweeds. Corn and soybean, with their lack of compatible relatives in the US, are exempt from this concern. However, as more and more transgenic crops with compatible relatives come down the pipeline (and with some, like canola, already here) there needs to be some hard data on just how easily transgenes can persist and spread in wild populations.

Wild Radish. USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database.

Allele and phenotype frequencies for four populations over a decade. Figure from Snow et al., 2010. Click to enlarge.

Pollen fertility levels. Figure from Snow et al., 2010.

So what kind of effects in the wild can we expect to see from transgenes based on this study? From the paper’s conclusion we’re warned:

Clearly, crop alleles can persist for many generations following a single hybridization event, and crop-wild hybrids may recover wild-type fitness in later generations. Thus, beneficial or neutral transgenes that recombine independently of deleterious crop alleles may spread and persist indefinitely (Snow et al., 2010).

A relevant example is her 2003 study on Bt sunflower, which found that the Bt transgene in cultivated sunflower (Helianthus annuus), when crossed into wild sunflower (also Helianthus annuus), allows each plant to produce, on average, 55% more seeds relative to non-transgenic controls under field conditions (Snow et al., 2003). Rather frustratingly, follow-up work was halted when the companies sponsoring the study — Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Dow AgroSciences — refused to allow further access to the transgene or the seeds since they decided not to sell Bt sunflowers anyway.

Left: Cody Cobb. Right: Allison Snow. Bottom: Jean Marie Hartman's thumb.

With all this in mind, what are some steps we genetic manipulators and tamperers can take to lower the risk of transgene flow into wild relatives? One thought is to link the transgene of interest with another gene that’s deleterious in the wild but tolerated or even desirable in agricultural situations. Better yet, find two such genes and flank the transgene. Creating such a construct would require a lot more work, not to mention the difficulty of finding appropriate crop-tolerant-but-wild-harmful genes. But then, it’s just a thought. What are yours?

*Astute readers of Tomorrow’s Table might recognize the name from a parenthetical citation on page 110: “For this reason, some ecologists see the application of GE as a way to spare even more land from destruction by enhancing yields (Qaim and Zilberman 2003; Snow et al. 2005).”

Snow, A., Pilson, D., Rieseberg, L., Paulsen, M., Pleskac, N., Reagon, M., Wolf, D., & Selbo, S. (2003). A Bt transgene reduces herbivory and enhances fecundity in wild sunflowers. Ecological Applications, 13 (2), 279-286 DOI: 10.1890/1051-0761(2003)013[0279:ABTRHA]2.0.CO;2

Snow AA, Culley TM, Campbell LG, Sweeney PM, Hegde SG, & Ellstrand NC (2010). Long-term persistence of crop alleles in weedy populations of wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum). The New phytologist PMID: 20122132