CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

No, your car won't glow in the dark

'But will your car glow in the dark' was the headline of an Irish newspaper article a few months ago describing a joint project between Irish-based company Greenfield Project Management, the Belarussian government and Swedish-based Chematur Engineering. The aim is to produce fuel ethanol from grain crops and sugarbeet grown on land contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986. Not being a regular reader of the business sections of Irish newspapers, I read about the project more recently in the journal Sugar Industry/Zuckerindustrie.

Have you noticed an increase in your supermarket bill?

In the past couple of years the world price of field crops such as wheat, rice, soya beans, rice and palm oil has risen dramatically (doubling, tripling and more..).

But, what is causing this upward movement?  Well…a multitude of market forces!

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

The sound of despondent Handpicked bloggers rang through the air at CABI this morning. The corridors were reverberating in despair at the New Zealand Herald's frightening headline 'Climate change could see pubs run dry'. Streuth!

Pedants among you who have checked the link will have noted that the story appeared in last week's Herald, but what with the time difference with the UK and a weekend spent in the pub, it was a little late in catching our attention. But this makes it all the more worrying. We are one week nearer to running dry!

Natural England launches the Future of Farming awards 2008

Natural England are inviting farmers and farm managers across England (UK) to enter Natural England’s 2008 Future of Farming Awards.

The award scheme, which opened for registration on Monday 7 April, recognises and celebrates farmers in England who have integrated wildlife, landscape and access management with more sustainable farming production on their farms. The awards are being actively supported by the farming industry with input from the CLA, NFU and TFA.

25 future novel threats facing UK biodiversity

There requires a greater emphasis on forecasting and critical evaluation, and less dawdling on existing, well studied issues: in summary, this is the main recommendation made by 35 senior representatives from UK academia, environmental management & policy, and scientific journalism. 

Using a technique called 'horizon scanning.' They have established a list of 25 future novel threats facing UK biodiversity. This list includes toxic nanomaterials, potential invasiveness of new artifical life species and biomimetic robots or genetically engineered viruses. Although they only covered the UK situation, most of the 25 treats can be applied to other parts of the world.

Rethink urged on biofuel targets

From next month, UK government policy demands inclusion of biofuels into fuel at the pumps. The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from April 2008. But those calling for a halt on targets, including the EU targets for inclusion of 5.75% biofuels in road fuel by 2010 and 10% by 2020, now include not just environmental and development pressure groups such as Greenpeace and Oxfam, but the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, and the UK's chief environmental scientist Professor Robert Watson. So what are the reasons behind all the criticism of biofuel targets?

Ug99: One Year On

An opportunity here, for me to recap on a post I wrote back in January '07. Puccinia graminis strain Ug99 has once again hit the headlines and it isn't good news. The situation in outline is that the Ug99 strain of black rust fungus readily attacks wheat plants, as it resists the most popular rust-resistance genes that are used in modern wheat. It has been steadily spreading northwards from its point of origin in Uganda since 1999 (Uganda and the year 1999 provided the name). Experts were predicting that unless measures were taken, the fungus would find its way into the fertile bread-basket regions of South Asia, via the Arabian peninsula. Potential damage to agriculture in the region was estimated at some 3 billion US dollars per year. In his article  for CAB Reviews, Ravi Singh of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) highlights the threats of Ug99 migration. Follow this link to download the PDF.

This is still the case but as New Scientist reports, Cyclone Gonu which hit the Arabian peninsula last June could have pushed up the predicted arrival of Ug99 spores in Iran and Pakistan by up to two years. Strong storm winds blew north, not north-west as expected and could have carried airborne rust spores with them. Monitoring of the fungus in Pakistan is reportedly poor, so any such movement might not be apparent straight away.

Death by CAP

How EU economists are 'killing Europeans through CHD'

Surprisingly, it's not the acronyms that are at the root of the World Health Organization's damning accusation, it's our old friends, saturated fats.

The common agricultural policy (CAP) was put in place by the powers that be in Europe, not just to confuse any non-economist who has tried to understand it, but, according to the World Health Organisation, it is 'a system designed to kill Europeans through CHD' (or, for the acronym-intolerant, coronary heart disease).

The Common Agricultural Policy was dreamed up in the days when Europe was emerging from war, rationing and widespread starvation. Many deficiency diseases that we no longer see today were rife. But agriculture had just caught the wave of plenty - industrialisation was leading to what was essentially a farming revolution. The future was bright. Applying subsidies to farmers to grow food and grow it in abundance and create a common market for all this produce was going to solve all of Europe's problems, prevent another war and buffer the continent from the pressures of world free market capitalism. No-one said anything about heart disease.

Algae for biofuels: solving the land-use problem

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that there isn't enough suitable land space to grow crops for food and feed as well as for biofuel, and to retain the forests and other land uses that sequester carbon in huge quantities. As the Nature blog ‘The Great Beyond’ points out, two articles published in Science in February argue that biofuels, especially those derived from agricultural crops (first generation biofuels), actually aren’t that great for the environment because of the required clearance of forests, grasslands, peatlands and savannas to make extra space for biofuel crops. Timothy Searchinger and colleagues argue that a wholesale switch to corn-based ethanol "nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years", whilst Joseph Fargione and colleagues say that converting land to produce food-based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a "biofuel carbon debt".

So what’s the solution? We need a source of biofuel that doesn’t require a lot of land to produce it. How about that slimy green stuff we see floating on ponds? For several decades algae have been seen as having great potential as a source of fuel because of their high oil content which can amount to as much as 50% and their ability to grow quickly in sunlight. Now, due to increasing petrol prices government funds are again being channelled into new research on the use of algae as a biofuel and we’re starting to see developments that are making the production of biofuels from algae a commercially feasible proposition.

Organic biofuels?

While discussing biofuels with a colleague the other week, I wondered whether there was any demand for organically grown biofuels, as people interested in protecting the environment are likely to be interested both in biofuels and in organic agriculture. Not long afterwards I came across a record in CAB Abstracts for an article¹ on the life cycle assessment of energy crops, which discussed the environmental impact of different ways of growing fuel crops. It concluded that organic farming was preferred to 'integrated' production for maize and soyabeans, that it had both advantages and disadvantages for cereals and oilseed rape, that  extensive grassland was the lowest-impact source of biogas and (together with sugarbeet)  bioethanol, and that there was no preferable crop for biodiesel.

National Invasive Weed Awareness Week in USA

Sunday marks the beginning of the 9th annual "National Invasive Weeds Awareness Week" over in Washington D.C., USA. Looking at the packed agenda, the week looks to be well supported by all the players in US invasive species research, control and policy sectors.   

If you can not make any of the meetings and are interested in NIWAW 9 or invasive species in general, then check the blogsphere and the NIWAW website for updates.

Thanks to Jennifer of the Invasive Species Weblog for this heads-up.

Biofuel – the burning issues

The development of biofuel has been hailed as a sustainable way to combat dependency on declining oil reserves, but a new study suggests there are substantial obstacles to large-scale deployment of biofuels. It is still an open question whether biofuel can meet a significant proportion of the world’s energy needs, say John Fike and co-authors in a paper in CAB Reviews. There are numerous practical questions about biomass systems, from feedstocks to logistics to pretreatment/process technologies, to be addressed. While policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions may support biofuel, other environmental impacts are also of concern, say Fike and his colleagues at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

The cost of hauling the feedstock to the refinery is a key issue, and so a high proportion of farms within a given radius of the refinery would have to commit to producing the feedstock, as a need to transport the feedstock over long distances would make bioenergy production uneconomic. The distance of the refineries from the energy user is also an important factor. There are many logistic and socio-economic issues that will need to be resolved along with the purely technical issues, say the Virginia Tech team.

Policy is critical, and if US policies were to create a value for carbon sequestration, this would of course change the economics of bioenergy production. Tax levels on biofuel relative to fossil fuel are another central issue. Fike and his co-authors question whether the US government would allow a switch from food to bioenergy production to allow large increases in food prices, as some models have predicted. Some residents may oppose the dramatic industrialisation of the countryside that comes with bioenergy, but others may feel that this is a price worth paying for renewable energy.

The paper, Challenges for deploying dedicated, large-scale, bioenergy systems in the USA by John Fike, David Parrish, Jeffrey Alwang and John Cundiff appears in CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources2, No. 064, 28 pp.

Review of 2007

Happy New Year and a big thank you to all those who subscribe or read our blog.

It was a good 2007 for the hand picked ... and carefully sorted with a full calendar year of blogging under our belt, turning 1 year old on 2nd November. We posted 167 articles on a variety of topics and had one of our posts, "Bluetongue virus:knocking at the door" by Robert Taylor, nominated for consideration towards the new edition of the Science Blogging Anthology, "Open Laboratory 2007".

Please read on for a monthly breakdown of all our posts.

GREENhouse appeal.

The Living Rainforest, near Newbury in the UK, has launched an appeal to find sponsors for the building of a state-of-the-art ‘Green Greenhouse’ building prototype.  The aim is to raise £900,000 matched funding to complete construction of the £3.5m building.

Unsustainable food/crop production and increasing energy costs mean that new methods of production must be found to reduce reliance on non-renewable energy sources, and cut down on pollution from fossil fuels. A zero-carbon glasshouse is planned and the existing greenhouses will be expanded, along with associated buildings. These will be integrated to improve energy management.

The glasshouse will be heated with solar energy harvested via panels in the glasshouse and stored underground in a Vertical Soil Heat Exchanger (VSHE).

The Living Rainforest has secured around 80% of the required funding, but require a further £600,000 by April of next year and is looking for green corporate partners to get involved.

"The partner will benefit from The Living Rainforest’s unique facilities for corporate events and have an opportunity to showcase their environmental R&D to 70,000+ schoolchildren and other visitors annually."

Follow this link to view nearly 100 abstracts (search terms: greenhouses and energy) from CABI made available via Google.

Trade, biotechnology, biofuels, ethics: some issues that the sugar industry is thinking about

Having more or less recovered from the flu mentioned in Sarah's blog entry of 22nd November (no, I wasn't complaining I was dying -- quite the opposite; I kept expecting to be fully recovered the next day and then finding I wasn't), I went last week to the International Sugar Organization's annual international seminar (see the ISO events page) in London, featuring two days of presentations about subjects related to the economics of the sugar industry. This was more interesting than you might think for a non-economist like me -- many different subjects affect or are affected by economics, and even the presentation about the changing face of sugar futures trading was quite well-explained.

TOPPS - Best Pesticide Practice, Better Water Protection

New advice to protect water bodies from pesticide pollution has been published by EU experts. "Training the Operators to Prevent Pollution from Point Sources" or TOPPS, collates and provides best practice from 15 European countries. TOPPS aims for a sustainable improvement of water quality through education and training.

Bioethanol production arrives in the UK

British Sugar Plant, East Anglia, UK

Britain is now officially a producer of bioethanol fuel. The plant, already in operation for a few months, was declared open for business yesterday. Biofuels promise so much, carbon neutrality and reduced reliance on fossil fuels to name a couple. But there are potential pitfalls too - Katherine blogged about the issues of water usage in growing sugar cane back in February.

The new plant uses locally grown sugar beet as raw material, aiming to process up to 800k tons into fuel each year. Damage to world food prices is unlikely, since the sugar produced from the crop would be surplus to EU quotas and exported anyway. Scenes like the 'Tortilla Riots' in Mexico, shouldn't be repeated.

Concerning environmental effects, the abstract of this paper (freely available from the CAB Abstracts database via Google) assures us,  "...a significant proportion of the UK crop [of sugar beet] is being grown in an economically efficient way whilst minimizing environmental damage". Further reading can be found in this selection of abstracts here. The savings in carbon emissions could be equivalent to removing 40,000 cars from the roads. Good news when the European Union has set a target for all member states to increase the market share of biofuels to 5.75% by the year 2010. The plan is for fuel to be sold for blending with petrol and distributed widely. As flex-fuel vehicles become more commonplace (heavily dependent on biofuel becoming equivalently priced to fossil fuels), we may well see more industries of this kind being established.

The superfood of the future – Chenopodium quinoa

You may or may not have heard of this already. It’s called quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) and it’s a pseudocereal with properties that have made it an attractive staple food to peoples since the Incas - it was cultivated as early as 3000 BC.
Nutritionally, quinoa is thought to be superior to cereal crops as it has a good amino acid balance, a protein content of 10-18%, and it is gluten free. On top of all this, it has been proposed by the FAO to offer food security for the future, particularly because it is hardy at high altitudes where maize will not grow.

Pass the Tamiflu!

A bear, a lion and a chicken meet up in a chat room.

The bear types: "If I roar in the forests of North America, the entire forest is shivering with fear."

Not to be outdone by a mere bear, the lion taps in, "If I roar on the great plains of Africa, the entire savannah is shivering with fear."

The chicken, typing with his beak, says, "Big deal. I only have to cough, and the entire planet is shivering with fear."

Do you blog about peer reviewed research?

If so, the recent announcement from BPR3 (Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting) might be of interest to you and potentially increase the readership of your blog.

Blogging from BCPC/IPPC 2007 - Call for Agrochem Education

Day Three of the BCPC Congress here in Glasgow and everything is in full swing. There's a full programme of seminars, meetings and posters, alongside a buzzing exhibition hall. The quality of freebie giveaways is pretty low, but can whoever is giving out the squeezy brain stress toys please make themselves known? The CABI stand has seen fantastic traffic, drawn in by the chance to win a free copy of the 2008 UK Pesticide Guide, no doubt.

One of the highlights for me so far came in the Opening Address speeches - a thought provoking half hour from Hampshire, UK farmer Sam Browne. His talk "Farming at the sharp end with a blunt instrument" made an interesting point about pesticide usage in modern farming: pesticides are considered by some (and yes, there is widespread opposition) to be the only reliable way to grow crops with sufficient calorific content to meet rising worldwide demand; pesticide companies make a wide variety of effective crop protection products that farmers can use safely; using these products can so easily make a farmer's produce poisonous and dangerous in the eyes of the public. Chemical pesticides are all Evil Chemicals, the name carries an, automatic connotation of toxicity, danger and indiscriminate death-dealing, regardless of whether safety studies have been adequately carried out. Mr Browne called for a portion of the agrochemical sector's profits to be spent on education, explaining to the public if and how safe pesticide usage can be achieved, and informing people everywhere to counter scaremongering.

It remains to be seen whether his pleas will be heard, but considering the size of this meeting and the number of agrochemical companies represented here, he probably picked the right place to have his say. Now, if you'll excuse me, I may have spotted someone to ask about those brains...

Not mush-room for fungi in school

The British Mycological Society runs an excellent website called Fungi4Schools. Not a school lunches initiative as you might expect, it's a resource for teachers who are looking for ways to introduce information about fungi in all their many forms to students of all ages.

A quick investigation of the UK National Curriculum, and I'll admit I only had a quick search, found no mentions of fungi/fungus and only one of 'microbes' (at Key Stage 4, with respect to environmental energy and nutrient cycles). I've seen for myself that even students starting undergraduate biology courses at university often don't have a clue about fungi. Given just how important fungi are to the environment, crop protection, human health, biotechnology and more, it's odd that more effort isn't made to tell students about them.

I don't know whether it's the same story in schools everywhere. Maybe you can have your say in the comments and let me know!

Vote for the winner of the “Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting” icon contest

As mentioned in a previous article, there is growing debate in the blog sphere over the need for a means to identify the sources of science being reviewed or used as evidence by bloggers. Well, the authors of “Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting” or BP3 for short, devised an icon design competition for which CABI, along with other publishers have provided prizes for the winner of the competition. The entry deadline has now passed, the final three designs have been chosen and now BP3 need all interested bloggers and blog readers' help to vote on the winning design. So head across to BP3 and cast your vote for the icon that you wish to see at the top of posts which discuss peer-reviewed science <direct link>. The deadline for casting your vote is Monday 24th September. CABI would like to wish the best of luck to the final three designers.

Highlighting the use of evidence

I spotted this blog article on Friday morning and sent it on to one of my colleagues, and soon it was sent around all the blog team here at CABI. This whole topic of the use of an icon/logo to highlight the use of peer-reviewed evidence has caused a great deal of discussion and a mixture of feelings amongst the bloggers. I have given it a great deal of thought over the weekend and decided to report the issues and resulting discussions that have occurred.

Consultation on proposed EU Soil Framework Directive

The EU proposed a Framework Directive for Soils in September 2006, after a consultation with member states discovered that only nine had legislation to protect against soil degradation. This directive lays down a framework within which Member States must introduce domestic law and policy to protect their soils from various threats and ensure remediation of contaminated sites.

Why should central Europe be worried about the state of each Member State’s soils?

Well in brief; all terrestrial life on Earth depends on the delicate, friable layer of soil that covers the continents. Without soil, living things would never have emerged from the oceans – and there would currently be no way that plants, crops, forests, animals and people could survive. Soil carries out numerous functions. It provides mankind with food, biomass and raw materials. It serves as a platform for human activities, our landscape and our heritage and plays a central role in terrestrial habitats and gene pools. It also stores, filters and transforms substances such as water, nutrients and carbon. All these functions and processes depend on the structure of the soil. Within Europe alone there are over 320 different major soil types. In short damage to the structure of each of these soil types would have a detrimental roll-on effect to ecosystems and environmental services.

Soil degradation is not just a single Member States responsibility, it has transboundary consequences. Losses of soil organic matter in one Member State impair achievement of the EU’s Kyoto Protocol targets. Dams can become blocked by sediments from erosion further upstream in another country. Groundwater in bordering countries can be polluted by contaminated sites on the other side of the border. Therefore it is important that the EU provides a uniform framework for all Member States to act upon to prevent damage.

Defra¹ has launched a consultation period for comments on the EU Soil Framework Directive (closes 19th October 2007). In addition they have produced an initial Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) which assesses how each of the proposals will meet the needs of soil protection in the UK, how they could be improved to ensure that the policy measures are proportionate to the risks to soil protection, and the potential costs of their implementation.

For further details on this consultation visit the Defra website or the EU Europa soils thematic website for the full Soil Framework Directive, provided in all EU languages.

For those interested in the topic of soil degradation, a quick, free text search of CAB Abstracts using the following keywords “soil” = 640000+ records, and a more defined search for “soil degradation” = 3207 records.

¹ Defra is the UK governments ‘Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Organic tomatoes - better for your heart?

Having carried out organic farming research for three years prior to joining CABI, my attention is always grabbed by comparisons between organic and 'conventional' agriculture. The size of the organic food market continues to grow (the global organic food and drink market was projected to generate revenues of US$40 bn in 2006, according to British consultancy Organic Monitor), but the question of whether or not organic food is actually healthier for the consumer is one that continues to be controversial.

A ten-year study on organic tomatoes published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, which finds that organic tomatoes have almost double the level of flavonoids, has received widespread publicity this week, and will be used by the proponents of organic farming to support their argument for the health benefits of this type of agriculture. But Lord Krebs, former chairman of the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) and long-standing organic sceptic, is not convinced, and a review published in the latest issue of the Nutrition Bulletin (Is organic food better for our health? Nutrition Bulletin 32 (2), 104–108) by Claire Williamson from the British Nutrition Foundation concludes that there is currently not enough evidence to recommend organic over conventionally produced foods.

Soil, a potential large scale carbon store

We have all heard in the news that to tackle climate change, greenhouse-gas emissions must be reduced on a global scale. Fossil fuel emissions still remain the largest contributor to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, therefore reducing their contribution to global energy is key¹. However, as this is a process that can not be done overnight, an additional strategy to withdraw CO₂ from the atmosphere is also required. One suggestion has been to plant trees around the world. However if afforestation is done in the wrong areas (e.g. away from the tropics, in tundra areas) then it does more harm than good. As one of the screeners for the Soils section of CAB Abstracts, I have seen a dramatic increase in the discussion of the potential of biochar (agrichar) to alleviate this problem.

What is biochar? It is a black carbon byproduct of a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating green waste or other biomass without oxygen to generate renewable energy. Compared to afforestation (left), when biochar (right) is used as a soil amendment, it has a net 20% gain in carbon sequestration (click on image for larger version).

^{Copyright Nature magazine}

Climate change clock ticking for wild relatives

International Biodiversity Day is here, and CGIAR brings us news that climate change threatens the wild relatives of cultivated potatoes and peanuts. The CGIAR study warns that 61% of wild peanut and 12% of wild potato species could be made extinct over the next half century. This poses a problem for plant breeders and GM crop producers alike. Wild relatives are a vital source of genetic diversity for crop improvement and if that pool of resources is diminished, genes which confer resistance to pathogens for example, are lost.

Andy Jarvis of CGIAR explains "The vulnerability of a wild plant to climate change can depend on its ability to adapt by, for example, extending its range as warming in its native regions becomes too hot to handle. One reason wild peanut plants appear to be so vulnerable to climate change is they are largely found in flat lands and would have to migrate a long way to reach cooler climates, a predicament exacerbated by the fact that peanuts bury their seeds underground, a meter or less from the parent plant. That limits the speed at which seeds can move into more favorable climates. By contrast, plants in mountainous locations could theoretically survive by extending their range slightly up a slope, even by only a few meters, to find cooler weather."

1000 diseases mapped - a challenge is issued

Over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog Jeremy decided to lay down a challenge to us here at CABI - make it possible to view the changes in distribution over time. We'd like to explain a little more about the history of the maps - we began publishing Distribution Maps of Plant Diseases in 1942 and for the first 50 or so years the distributions were drawn onto the maps by hand. Historically, when a new edition of a map was published the idea was that old editions would be replaced by the new edition and the old edition was discarded - therefore, when we digitised the maps for the first time in April 2006, we also had the job of tracking down the old editions. We have managed to get a number of them (back 10 years or so) but there are older maps out there that we have to locate, clean up and then get digitised. Part of the digitisation process involves extracting the metadata that is locked up in the map, and constructing an abstract to accompany the new electronic version. It takes time... and money.

Now that the maps are digitised, the next stage is to look to do something similar to what has been suggested by Jeremy as well as other developments to make the maps more usable and useful in general - we have been looking at ways of doing this and there is certainly a lot of scope for development with the technology that is out there.

In regard to the suggestion of creating time series animations showing the changing distribution of pests and diseases - it's a great idea, but note that the maps are not revised on a regular basis but rather only if it has been brought to our attention that a revision is necessary for reasons of change of distribution or taxonomy. They are also pdf files - if anyone knows how to animate a pdf file please let us know!

If we were to make the data more dynamic, what would be a good tool for visualisation - Google Earth, NASA World Wind? Something else? If you have thoughts and suggestions please leave a comment.

We'd also like to announce that over the next few days we are going to make every 100th Map published so far, open access on the website - that way you can all get some idea of how they have changed over the years.

And finally, we're happy to hear from anyone who has suggestions for improving and developing the maps - please contact maps@cabi.org.

Katherine Cameron - Content Editor (Env. Sci.) & Mapping Coordinator
David Smith - Business Innovations Manager

Could it bee your mobile phone?

One serious cause of honey bee die-off in the US is Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  It leads to collapse of the hive often with complete absence of bees or only the queen and few other individuals remaining. 
A story in the Independent yesterday highlighted a theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other gadgets could be affecting bees’ navigation systems, preventing them from finding their way home.  Dr Jochen Kuhn at Landau University has found that bees refuse to go back to their nests when mobile phones are placed nearby.  This work follows an earlier paper suggesting that higher frequencies may cause changes in the bees learning abilities.  However, this theory is widely disputed and is only one of many current ideas. 

An FAQ from the entomology department at Penn State University states that, due to results of intensive beekeeper surveys, their working group is not currently investigating radiation from mobile phone towers or GM crops such as Bt corn.  Current research priorities include:
• Chemical residue/contamination in the wax, food stores and bees
• Known and unknown pathogens in the bees and brood
• Parasite load in the bees and brood
• Nutritional fitness of the adult bees
• Level of stress in adult bees as indicated by stress induced proteins
• Lack of genetic diversity and lineage of bees   

For more information see Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (MAAREC) website, DEFRA, and BeeBase.  The National Bee Unit is monitoring the situation closely, is in contact with US scientists and suggests that any beekeepers concerned about losses should contact their local inspector.  Search for information on CAB Abstracts with the terms below.

Where have all the bees gone?

Recent reports of disappearing bees may initially come as a relief to some of us, but this is actually very serious news considering bees pollinate a large proportion of our plants, including some food crops, and are keystone species in the ecosystem.

Today the Bumblebee Conservation Trust invited the UK public to send in sightings of bumblebees over the summer so it can build up a map of where the 25 species of bumblebee are - 3 of the UK’s 25 species are already extinct, 5 are now designated UKBAP species in recognition of their precarious situation, and 4 more are scheduled for inclusion. Dave Goulson of the Trust said, "People with digital cameras or a camera on their mobile phones can send us pictures of the bumblebees in their garden and we will send them back an identification. If people send us the date and a postcode of where the bumblebee was seen then we will be able put together a national map."

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

Hurtling around the planet, some 23 km above our heads, will be a network of 30 satellites making up the EU Galileo positioning system. The 675 kg spacecraft will carry the equipment necessary to potentially pinpoint the position of a transponder on the Earth's surface with centimetre-accuracy. Assuming the project overcomes the economic and political issues that threaten the projected 2011 start, it stands to drive astonishing new applications in agriculture.

The project consortium members have been given until the 10th of May to resolve long-running disagreements on the technical and financial details behind making Galileo work. Read on below for more about the system's potential.

Suggested CAB Abstracts search: remote sensing and satellite

1000 diseases mapped!

This month sees the publication of map number 1000 of Distribution Maps of Plant Diseases the authoritative source for accurate data on the worldwide distribution of plant diseases of economic or quarantine importance, published by CABI in association with the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO).

First published in 1942, Distribution Maps of Plant Diseases are a respected, referenced source of distribution data, expertly compiled and validated and used by plant health organisations around the world. The maps cover important diseases affecting agriculture, horticulture and forestry. Two sets of 18 disease maps are produced each year, covering fungi, bacteria, viruses and nematodes, comprising mostly of new maps and also some map revisions. Many maps have been revised following changes to taxonomy or distribution, some a number of times – the most revised map is currently Peronospora hyoscyami f.sp. tabacina (map no. 23) which was revised for the 10th time in 1998!

Since April 2006 Distribution Maps of Plant Diseases as well as it’s sister product Distribution Maps of Plant Pests (with maps of nearly 700 arthropod plant pest species) have also been available in electronic format with a complete and fully searchable electronic backfile dating back over the 65 years of their publication.

And the 1000th disease species to be mapped is… (drum roll please)… Oidium neolycopersici L. Kiss, a fungus commonly known as tomato powdery mildew affecting the leaves and stems of, as the name suggests, mainly tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum). Severe infections caused by O. neolycopersici, especially if they start early in the growing season, lead to a reduction in fruit size and quality. Apparently, it was absent in Canada and the USA until the 1990s but soon after its first detection on greenhouse tomatoes in Québec, Canada the pathogen spread rapidly from one region to another in North America and it is now widespread in many states of Canada and the USA. This indicates that the fungus can be considered as an invasive species as it can spread rapidly in new areas where it sometimes causes economic damage. O. neolycopersici was only recently recognized as a distinct species of the Erysiphaceae during studies by Kiss et al. (see references below) and this recent clarification has enabled us to accurately map this species now.

To celebrate the publication of map no. 1000 we have made this map open access - just click here to view it in PDF format.

For more information about this product including the processes involved in making the maps, how to get a free trial or subscribe and for a full list of the species that are mapped in Distribution Maps of Plant Diseases please go to www.cababstractsplus.org/DMPD.

For more information on Oidium neolycopersici and its distribution please see the following references:

• Kiss, L.; Cook, R. T. A.; Saenz, G. S.; Cunnington, J. H.; Takamatsu, S.; Pascoe, I.; Bardin, M.; Nicot, P. C.; Sato, Y.; Rossman, A. Y. (2001) Identification of two powdery mildew fungi, Oidium neolycopersici sp. nov. and O. lycopersici, infecting tomato in different parts of the world. Mycological Research 105 (6), 684-697.
• Kiss, L.; Takamatsu, S.; Cunnington, J. H. (2005) Molecular identification of Oidium neolycopersici as the causal agent of the recent tomato powdery mildew epidemics in North America. Plant Disease 89, 491-496.
• CABI (2006) Crop Protection Compendium.

Cow + Grass = House

Cows plus grass equals dung; 7-9 million tonnes of it each year in the USA alone! What if cows plus grass made flooring?, or shelving? or a table?

Michigan State University researchers, working with the US Department of Agriculture, reckon that the "digester solids" leftovers from anaerobic digestion of cattle manure can be processed into fibreboard. Such digestion is becoming more common as measure against manure-runoff contamination of waterways following muck-spreading.

The material has the same properties as ordinary fibreboard, being basically the same structure of compressed fibres glued together with chemical resins. One would hope that squeamishness wouldn't be a barrier to its use either, given that there's not a hint of manure aroma! The fact that it's recycled could make it more attractive than wood-based alternatives.

It's not the first time that fibrous manure has been put to use in such a way either. In Thailand, plants plus elephants equals paper. Elephant dung paper looks to be doing good trade as an environmentally conscientious business.