CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Mystery disease in Ethiopia solved: linked to weed toxin

Imagine this…

A mysterious disease terrorising your community, not infectious but spreading nonetheless, and killing your relatives and neighbours. All you want to do is pack your bags and flee. Worse, when your plight comes to the attention of the health authorities, they are stumped and its not going to be easy or quick to solve.

A recent example of this kind of illness is “nodding disease” (South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania), which affects children 5-15 years old: they suffer epileptic seizures which causes their heads to nod, and they end up severely disabled and finally die. The USA’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) is working to identify the cause: so far, the best guess is that it’s linked to the parasite that causes river blindness combined with an autoimmune reaction, and exposure to chemicals could predispose.

Other examples of non-communicable disease outbreaks

On Global Health, I found there are outbreaks going back to 1911 (epidemic dropsy) but more recent ones were in India,  Bangladesh, Nigeria, Brazil, China, Afghanistan and even the USA.

 What are the likely causes for these outbreaks? The body of research, as found on databases like Global Health, tells us that they could be contamination of food and water supply, exposure to chemicals or heavy metals in the environment, or even use of traditional medicine.

 Mystery liver disease in Ethiopia with a ‘happy’ ending

Can public health authorities in low-income countries solve & stop such outbreaks?   Yes. In 2005, in Ethiopia, a 4 year long outbreak of liver disease in Tseda Emba, a small village of the Tahtay Koraro district of Tigray, finally reached the attention of the Tigray Health Bureau (THB). Now, in 2012, the multidisciplinary and one-health approach they initiated has “solved” the mysterious illness, significantly reducing new cases. 

 The research work was the subject of an entire session at the recent World Congress Public Health (WCPH-2012) in Ethiopia, and is now published as 5 papers in the supplement to April 2012’s edition of Ethiopian Medical Journal (EMJ). [Abstracts to these papers will be available on Global Health]. It demonstrates the relevance of the one-health approach to public health in low-income countries and is a fascinating detective story….

This week is climate week – 12-18 March 2012

The Met Office 2012 global temperature forecast predicts that this year will be around 0.48 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14 °C, with a predicted range of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C. The middle of this range would put 2012 within the top ten warmest years in a series which goes back to 1850. It seems hard to believe, but there are still people who do not believe in global warming and the imminent climate change; and there are also those who believe but do not know how to get involved in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions to slow down global warming. Climate Week is a supercharged national campaign to inspire a new wave of action on climate change. The first Climate Week, in March 2011, resulted in 3000 events, which were attended by half a million people, making it probably Britain’s biggest ever environmental occasion.

Subsidising the rich

On Monday night this week, the BBC aired a television programme in the UK on the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy’s subsidy system. Focusing on two main concerns, Samantha Poling (BBC Scotland’s investigations correspondent) looked at: (1) a loophole in the system that allows subsidy trading leading to millions of pounds of public money being paid out to businessmen who do no farming at all; and (2) the large payments (in some cases six-figure subsidies) made to wealthy individuals simply on the basis of them owning large amounts of land. In the meantime, those that the subsidies are intended to help (young, new and struggling farmers) continue to suffer economic hardship and constraints.

Phosphorus – essential nutrient, pollutant and limited resource

The world's phosphorus (P) reserves are almost peaking! Yet excess P is polluting our water resources! What is going on with the phosphorus cycle and what can be done about it?

From abstract to full text

Most people searching an abstracts database want to be able to click straight through to the full text of a relevant or interesting abstract.

Full text availability is one of the real added value features of CAB Abstracts and the Global Health database, but where and how to find the full text can still be confusing.

Here at CABI we do try hard to make the full text of any paper we abstract for the database(s) available to users by providing links (including DOIs where possible) and holding full text in our own permanent repository. Over the years we have been building a repository of full text material, mainly journals and conferences, which we host on our servers so that users can click through directly from the abstract straight to the full text pdf. The CABI repository currently contains over 85,000 full text papers from scientific journals and over 54,000 full text papers from conferences, plus the full text of a number of reports and single documents. If you search CAB Abstracts or Global Health on our own platform (CAB Direct), all papers held in the CABI Full Text repository have a clearly visible “View Full Text” button. The CABI Full Text repository is also available to searchers using other platforms (e.g. OvidSP).

We created the CABI repository so that we could offer permanent, unbroken links to full text papers from journals and conferences which for some reason or other are not available online or are difficult to find –  some papers, for instance, are available in print only, and some are available online but the links change or websites disappear over time. The initial concept was to provide a win-win situation for authors and users – authors knew that their papers would be more widely disseminated and read if they were accessible through our widely used database, and users would be able to click straight through to the full text. Our aim was to improve access to papers which were ‘difficult-to-find’ i.e. those which were not easily accessible through open access systems or from mainstream sources with a strong web presence.

Once you’ve done your search, here are some suggestions for subscribers on how to access the full text paper or document from an abstract or bibliographic record on the CAB Direct platform (this is generally applicable to CAB Abstracts/Global Health on any platform):

(1) If the abstract has a “View Full Text” button, this is a link to the paper in the CABI Full Text repository (for advanced users, sc:ft in the search box will pick up all records with a full text document in the CABI repository).

(2) If a url is provided on the database record, click on this to go to the publisher or society website. If your institution has a subscription to the journal, you should have access to the full text. If not, you’ll still find that some of these documents may be open access. Some publishers make all their papers open access, others make special issues open access, sometimes within the same issue of a journal some of the papers will be open access and some not. Others apply an embargo, so that papers published before a certain date become open access. All these models change frequently and the only certain way of knowing whether the full text is available (either open access or paid for) is to try the website.

(3) If the abstract record has a DOI this is even better. The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a unique identifier for that paper. Clicking on the DOI will take you straight to the exact document. Try copying the DOI into your Google search box to see if the paper has been deposited in an institutional or other repository.

(4) Or you can contact the author directly – most recent records have email contacts.

Finally, if you are a conference organizer, editor or society and wish to see your papers held in our repository so they are easily accessible to a worldwide audience of subscribers, please contact our Full Text Coordinator.

Music enhances plant growth and keeps pests at bay

A recent AoB blog caught my eye (ear?). Do plants respond to music? The blog refers to an experiment in which plants were assembled in Cadogan Hall, London for a 3-hour recital performed by the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to investigate the effects of music on plant growth.

Knowing that CAB Abstracts is a good source of unusual and interesting research, I had a quick look for any relevant studies. I can’t say the database is brimming with information in this area but what I found was definitely positive. One study looked at the effect of different acoustic frequencies on the growth of cowpea seedlings and concluded that sound waves with different frequency characteristics significantly increased plant height – good treatments included a 400 Hz frequency sound wave, cuckoo acoustic song, and an insect-music mixed sound⁽¹⁾. In the next paper by the same authors, a mixed combination of classical music and cricket voice (I think they mean the insect…) increased the growth, yield and nutritive value of edible fungi (including several Pleurotus spp.)⁽²⁾. Other research papers report similar effects. Some include the use of ‘green music’ to enhance the metabolism and growth of plants, ‘green music’ consisting of a classical music base along with some natural sounds such as those of birds, insects, water and wind, i.e. like music in a field.

After analysing the responses of various crop plants to different audio signals, one group of researchers suggests that it may be possible to compose specific music for specific plants⁽³⁾.

Plants, however, are not alone – ‘green music’ has been shown to enhance the milk yield of cows and increase the fermentation rate of starter cultures in probiotic yoghurt⁽⁴⁾.

Insects, it seems, find music stressful, and music could be used to control unwanted pests. In one recent study⁽⁵⁾, exposure to classical music decreased the lifespan of male Drosophila. Music appeared to affect the normal aging process rather than show overt toxicity, and the authors suggest it could be used in insect management programmes. Better still, greenhouse experiments on Chinese cabbage and aphid injury suggest a win-win situation - ‘green music’ increased Chinese cabbage yields and decreased aphid damage⁽⁶⁾.

References

(1) Huang Jun; Jiang ShiRen. Effect of six different acoustic frequencies on growth of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) during its seedling stage. Agricultural Science & Technology – Hunan (2011) 12 (6) pp 847-851.
CAB Abstracts ref. Full text paper (in English) available on CAB Abstracts
Online ref.

(2) Jiang ShiRen; Huang Jun; Han XingHua; Zeng XianLin. Influence of audio frequency mixing of music and cricket voice on growth of edible mushrooms. Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering (2011) 27 (6) pp 300-305.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

(3) Lee KeunYoung; Hur TaeWon; Lee WonChu; Yun SongJoong. Analysis of plants response to music signals. Journal of the Korean Society for Horticultural Science (2002) 43 (1) pp 5-10.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

(4) Mohammadi, R.; Rouhi, M.; Mortazavian, A. M. Effects of music waves on fermentation characteristics and viability of starter cultures in probiotic yogurt. Milchwissenschaft (2011) 66 (2) pp 193-196.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online publisher

(5) Morales, R. F.; Seong KiMoon; Kim ChaSoon; Jin YoungWoo; Min KyungJin. Effects of auditory stimuli on the lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster. Entomological Research (2010) 40 (4) pp 225-228.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

(6) Qin YuChuan; Lee WonChu; Choi YoungCheol; Ahn MiYoung. Preliminary study on the relationship among sonic, Chinese cabbage growth and aphids' injury. Journal of China Agricultural University (2001) 6 (3) pp 85-89.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

Other references on CAB Abstracts

Effects of insect acoustic and music acoustic frequency on the growth of 6 kinds of vegetables.

The effects of different musical elements on root growth and mitosis in onion (Allium cepa) root apical meristem (musical and biological experimental study).

Measuring effects of music, noise, and healing energy using a seed germination bioassay.

Effect of musical sound of Veena on balsam plants.

Countdown to seven billion: does the world have enough water to produce food for us all?

As the world counts down to the landmark of seven billion people on the planet (a scary number predicted to happen - perhaps a little too conveniently? - on the scary day of Halloween, 31 October) we are seeing an increasing number of stories and statistics on whether the Earth's resources can cope with a population predicted to carry on increasing for the foreseeable future. The population increase has been a feature in agricultural conferences over the last weeks, and in press releases for CropWorld Global 2011, a conference set to open in London on 31 October, the day already mentioned as when our population may be officially declared to be seven billion.

Among the statistics presented by Dominic Dyer, UK Crop Protection Association chief executive, in a speech on 21 Ocotober to AgChem Asia Summit in Shanghai, China, was a figure that the amount of farmland available to feed each person on the planet has fallen from 0.5 hectares in 1950 to 0.2 hectares today. Clearly, in order to sustain a growing population on a finite amount of land (and land subject in many regions to problems of desertification, erosion and salinization) we need to maximise efficiency and reduce losses: in the strapline of CABI's Plantwise initiative, 'lose less and grow more'.

How green is bioenergy?

 It is well known that there is an international effort to replace fossil energy with biomass in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and curb global warming. It was widely assumed that biomass combustion would be inherently 'carbon neutral' because it only releases carbon taken from the atmosphere during plant growth. However, there have been arguments with regard to the neutrality of bioenergy and the assumption that replacing fossil-sourced energy with bioenergy will in fact reduce GHG emissions. It turns out it is more complicated than once thought. For this reason the European Environment Agency (EEA) scientific committee has reviewed this assumption and has called for “a major revision of EU policies and directives related to bioenergy.”

Land sparing vs. land sharing: how best to reconcile food production and biodiversity?

 In a world of climate instability and ever-growing population, global food security is becoming an increasing concern. How do we feed a population of some seven billion (set to reach 9 billion by 2050) without losing even more of our precious biodiversity by diverting ecosystems such as forests and grasslands to cropland? Do we squeeze ever more production from our existing arable land, or do we need to find a way of increasing agricultural land area while protecting the wildlife on that land?

 
Oil palm plantation in Ghana: Photo Ben Phalan

Veterinarians Target Next Virus for Eradication

 
Following the recent eradication of rinderpest virus in cattle (see blog), the veterinary profession is contemplating which viral disease of animals should be targeted for eradication next. This is not an easy task considering the vast number of viral diseases that plague livestock animals and have devastating effects on animal health, public health and people’s livelihoods.

According to the authors of a scientific editorial (1) and a review article (2) that appeared in the recent issue of Veterinary Record published on 1st July 2011, the next livestock virus targeted for eradication could be peste des petits ruminants (PPR) virus.

Dr Michael Baron and colleagues from the Institute for Animal Health (IAH), Pirbright, UK said in their review that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) should focus on PPR virus as the next livestock virus for eradication.

PPR virus affects sheep and goats and is closely related to the recently eradicated rinderpest virus. Cattle can also be infected with PPR virus but they do not show obvious signs of disease. PPR is circulating on the edges of the European Union, on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Outbreaks were reported in Morocco and Tunisia in 2008 and there is evidence for its presence in Algerian sheep this year. It has also been present in Turkey for many years. PPR is the fastest growing and one of the most economically important diseases of sheep and goats, the animals that play a very important role in sustainable agriculture and development in Africa and Asia. Mortality in infected animals ranges from 10 to 90%, depending on age, breed and secondary infectious agents. Animals that survive become anorexic, their milk yield is reduced, and they are susceptible to secondary infections and abortions.

Baron and colleagues are already working on the development of a “smart” vaccine for PPR, one that leaves an antibody signature different from that created by infection with the virulent virus, so that vaccinated animals can be distinguished from animals that have been infected by virulent virus, and vice versa. They are also working on a "dip stick" test for PPR virus, similar to the one that IAH developed for the rinderpest eradication programme.

There are good reasons to believe that the eradication of PPR is an achievable goal, because the PPR virus shares a number of properties with rinderpest virus that contributed to the successful campaign to eradicate the latter, i.e. there is a safe and reliable vaccine; simple and effective diagnostic tests are available; the virus has a short infectious period, with no carrier/persistent state; transmission occurs only by close contact; and there is an economic incentive to eradicate it.

However, before a massive commitment of national and international resources for a successful eradication campaign, which would require surveillance and monitoring over a long period, a thorough evaluation of the likelihood of success of an eradication campaign, as well as its costs and benefits, is of utmost importance. Potential for eradication of other diseases such as foot and mouth disease (FMD) or rabies virus, for example, also needs to be evaluated.

CAB Direct database offers an excellent source of scientific information and is a very useful tool for evaluating potential for eradication of any viral disease of animals. It comprehensively covers world’s scientific literature from over 150 countries and in over 50 languages on all the viral diseases of animals, including PPR, FMD and rabies. CAB Direct database contains over 17000 records on rabies, over 13000 records on foot-and mouth disease and over 800 records on peste des petits ruminants.

References:

1. Anderson J., Baron MD., Cameron A., Kock R., Jones B., Pfeiffer D., Mariner J., McKeever D., Oura, CAL., Roeder P., Rossiter P. and Taylor W. (2011): Rinderpest eradicated – what next? Veterinary Record, 169: 10-11, doi: 10.1136/vr.d4011.

2. Baron MD., Parida S. and Oura CAL. (2011). Peste des petits ruminants: a suitable case for eradication? Veterinary Record, 169: 16-21 doi: 10.1136/vr.d3947.