SCIENTISTS ENGINEER SUGARCANE TO PRODUCE BIODIESEL, MORE SUGAR FOR ETHANOL

A multi-institutional team led by the University of Illinois have proven sugarcane can be genetically engineered to produce oil in its leaves and stems for biodiesel production. Surprisingly, the modified sugarcane plants also produced more sugar, which could be used for ethanol production.

The dual-purpose bioenergy crops are predicted to be more than five times more profitable per acre than soybeans and two times more profitable than corn. More importantly, sugarcane can be grown on marginal land in the Gulf Coast region that does not support good corn or soybean yields.


"Instead of fields of oil pumps, we envision fields of green plants sustainably producing biofuel in perpetuity on our nation's soil, particularly marginal soil that is not well suited to food production," said Stephen Long, Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences. Long leads the research project Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum (PETROSS) that has pioneered this work at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.


"While fuel prices may be considered low today, we can remember paying more than $4 per gallon not long ago," Long said. "As it can take 10-15 years for this technology to reach farmers' fields, we need to develop these solutions to ensure our fuel security today and as long as we need liquid fuels into the future."


Published in Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology, this paper analyzes the project's first genetically modified sugarcane varieties. Using a juicer, the researchers extracted about 90% of the sugar and 60% of the oil from the plant; the juice was fermented to produce ethanol and later treated with organic solvents to recover the oil. The team has patented the method used to separate the oil and sugar.


They recovered 0.5 and 0.8 percent oil from two of the modified sugarcane lines, which is 67% and 167% more oil than unmodified sugarcane, respectively. "The oil composition is comparable to that obtained from other feedstocks like seaweed or algae that are being engineered to produce oil," said co-author Vijay Singh, Director of the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory at Illinois.


"We expected that as oil production increased, sugar production would decrease, based on our computer models," Long said. "However, we found that the plant can produce more oil without loss of sugar production, which means our plants may ultimately be even more productive than we originally anticipated."


To date, PETROSS has engineered sugarcane with 13 percent oil, 8 percent of which is the oil that can be converted into biodiesel. According to the project's economic analyses, plants with just 5 percent oil would produce an extra 123 gallons of biodiesel per acre than soybeans and 350 more gallons of ethanol per acre than corn. BY CARL R.

BARLEY GENOME SEQUENCED

A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside may have you covered. They are among a group of 77 scientists worldwide who have sequenced the complete genome of barley, a key ingredient in beer and single malt Scotch. The research, 10 years in the making, was just published in the journal Nature.

"This takes the level of completeness of the barley genome up a huge notch," said Timothy Close, a professor of genetics at UC Riverside. "It makes it much easier for researchers working with barley to be focused on attainable objectives, ranging from new variety development through breeding to mechanistic studies of genes."

The research will also aid scientists working with other "cereal crops," including rice, wheat, rye, maize, millet, sorghum, oats and even turfgrass, which like the other food crops, is in the grass family, Close said.

Barley has been used for more than 10,000 years as a staple food and for fermented beverages, and as animal feed.

It is found in breakfast cereals and all-purpose flour and helps bread rise. Malted barley gives beer color, body, protein to form a good head, and the natural sugars needed for fermentation. And single malt Scotch is made from only water and malted barley.

The report in Nature provides new insights into gene families that are key to the malting process. The barley genome sequence also enabled the identification of regions of the genome that have been vulnerable to genetic bottlenecking during domestication, knowledge that helps to guide breeders to optimize genetic diversity in their crop improvement efforts.

Ten years ago, the International Barley Genome Sequencing Consortium, which is led by Nils Stein of the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany, set out to assemble a complete reference sequence of the barley genome.

This was a daunting task, as the barley genome is almost twice the size of the human genome and 80 percent of it is composed of highly repetitive sequences, which cannot be assigned accurately to specific positions in the genome without considerable extra effort.

Multiple novel strategies were used in this paper to circumvent this fundamental limitation. Major advances in sequencing technology, algorithmic design and computing made it possible. Still, this work kept teams around the world -- in Germany, Australia, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United State -- occupied for a decade. This work provides knowledge of more than 39,000 barley genes.

Alcoholic beverages have been made from malted barley since the Stone Age, and some even consider this to be a major reason why humankind adopted plant cultivation, at least in the Fertile Crescent, where barley was domesticated.

During malting, amylase proteins are produced by germinated seeds to decompose energy-rich starch that is stored in dry grains, yielding simple sugars. These sugars then are available for fermentation by yeast to produce alcohol. The genome sequence revealed much more variability than was expected in the genes that encode the amylase enzymes.

Barley is grown throughout the world, with Russia, Germany, France, Canada, and Spain being among the top producers. In the United States, barley is mainly grown in the northwest. Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota are the leading producers. SOURCE UNIVERSITY OF CARLIFORNIA.

COMMON PESTICIDE DAMAGE HONEY BEES ABILITY TO FLY.

Biologists at the University of California San Diego have demonstrated for the first time that a widely used pesticide can significantly impair the ability of otherwise healthy honey bees to fly, raising concerns about how pesticides affect their capacity to pollinate and the long-term effects on the health of honey bee colonies.

Previous research has shown that foraging honey bees that ingested neonicotinoid pesticides, crop insecticides that are commonly used in agriculture, were less likely to return to their home nest, leading to a decrease in foragers.


A study published April 26 in Scientific Reports by UC San Diego postdoctoral researcher Simone Tosi, Biology Professor James Nieh, along with Associate Professor Giovanni Burgio of the University of Bologna, Italy, describes in detail how the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam damages honey bees. Thiamethoxam is used in crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton. To test the hypothesis that the pesticide impairs flight ability, the researchers designed and constructed a flight mill (a bee flight-testing instrument) from scratch. This allowed them to fly bees under consistent and controlled conditions.


Months of testing and data acquisition revealed that typical levels of neonicotinoid exposure, which bees could experience when foraging on agricultural crops -- but below lethal levels -- resulted in substantial damage to the honey bee's ability to fly.


"Our results provide the first demonstration that field-realistic exposure to this pesticide alone, in otherwise healthy colonies, can alter the ability of bees to fly, specifically impairing flight distance, duration and velocity" said Tosi. "Honey bee survival depends on its ability to fly, because that's the only way they can collect food. Their flight ability is also crucial to guarantee crop and wild plant pollination."

Long-term exposure to the pesticide over one to two days reduced the ability of bees to fly. Short-term exposure briefly increased their activity levels. Bees flew farther, but based upon other studies, more erratically.


"Bees that fly more erratically for greater distances may decrease their probability of returning home," said Nieh, a professor in UC San Diego's Division of Biological Sciences.

This pesticide does not normally kill bees immediately. It has a more subtle effect, said Nieh.
"The honey bee is a highly social organism, so the behavior of thousands of bees are essential for the survival of the colony," said Nieh." We've shown that a sub-lethal dose may lead to a lethal effect on the entire colony."


Honey bees carry out fundamentally vital roles in nature by providing essential ecosystem functions, including global pollination of crops and native plants. Declines in managed honey bee populations have raised concerns about future impacts on the environment, food security and human welfare.
Neonicotinoid insecticides are neurotoxic and used around the world on broad varieties of crops, including common fruits and vegetables, through spray, soil and seed applications. Evidence of these insecticides has been found in the nectar, pollen and water that honey bees collect.

"People are concerned about honey bees and their health being impaired because they are so closely tied to human diet and nutrition," said Nieh. "Some of the most nutritious foods that we need to consume as humans are bee-pollinated. "SOURCE- University of Carlifornia.

FARM BUSINESS- WHAT I'M SEEING AND TOLD

3/4 of an inch of rain last night, so not much to get done around here today.
couple of things.  Some of the fellows have been going nuts with planting corn around here.  Been having some cool wx and
talk of snow this weekend.....first, some of the corn is turning orange.  I have to admit, can't remember what "trace" mineral
that it could be lacking.  a lot of talk......some saying it's dying
oh, the snow storm........we have headed wheat......not good to have snow on headed wheat, no matter what you say.

I looked at the wx maps for sunday morning temps.....its showing 27 for the panhandle of tx and okla.  according to handbook,

critical temp for wheat heading (I would suspect it was heading by now) is 30 degrees.........
I know the wheat isn't much good down there to start with, but this might be the final blow.....but the question is, will it have
an impact to prices......chances are NO.

interesting story coming out about how china they are not happy with our soybeans, due to GMO........maybe something to consider..

first, the buyer is always right........second, maybe we could go to "conventional" beans, use pre herbicides and maybe get this
resistance problem somewhat under control.

but the soybean assn and FB will get on their band wagon saying how wrong it is not to eat gmo, it's safe, etc...........

remember....the buyer is always right.....NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

CROP TALK- ARMY WORMS

This spring continues to shape up as a year with heavy armyworm pressure. With relatively little corn planted so far this isn’t time to panic – but we typically don’t see levels this high at this time of year, so if you have never scouted for armyworms before, this would be a good year to start! You’ll probably find some.  

The northeastern part of the state, where we happen to also grow wheat (armyworms love wheat) in some areas, is particularly thick with migrant moths. The female moths that arrive will be loaded with eggs and looking for suitable hosts to lay them on – many plants will do the job, with grasses strongly preferred. If you have wheat acreage, or your soon-to-be-corn acres have a grass cover crop, particularly cereal rye, those fields will be an armyworm magnet. Depending on when that cover crop is killed and corn is planted, the crop could be at risk.

The level of risk depends on two main factors: 1) the level of armyworm pressure in the area (see Table below - this will be high in much of the state this year), and 2) the degree of overlap between the grass host and emerging corn. That might also be high this year. As stated last week, a period without green, growing material will readily starve most armyworms. When that’s not possible, it’s time to reach for the insecticides to hit the larvae before they can feed on emerging corn. There are many insecticide options Corn Insect Control Recommendations - E-219, but all will work best when larvae are small (less than 1¼”in length).

Scouting fields beginning late next week is advised… before then, the larvae will be too small to see easily. By early May, larvae should be quite conspicuous and scouting will be relatively easy. A sweep net can be used, or even just visually inspecting plants for damage and/or feeding larvae will work. Disturbing and poking through the top layer of soil will reveal the larvae during sunny days, when they often rest here. Although there is not a threshold for armyworm in cover crops, 4 larvae/sq. ft is the guideline in wheat. Remember, Bt corn and seed treatments won’t save you from this one. So venture out late next week and check those high-risk fields. BY CHRISTIAN KRUKPE.

WOMEN IN AG: WHY ARE SWEET POTATO BEDS UNDER WATER?

Mother Nature dropped up to 10 inches of rain over parts of our state within a 36-hour period this week, causing creeks and rivers to overflow their banks. Many houses and fields along those waterways are now under water.

Sweet potatoes have been bedded in the field since the end of March. Every year, farmers bed “seed” sweet potatoes in the field. The seed potatoes will sprout, and those sprouts, or slips, will be cut and transplanted to the field in May and June. The sweet potatoes grown from those slips are harvested in the fall.

The beds are often cut twice. One acre of beds will produce enough sprouts to plant approximately 40 acres of harvestable sweet potatoes.

These photos tell part of the story. The two red circles highlight irrigation reels in the field that, along with the sweet potato beds, have been under water since Monday.
What can farmers in this situation do?

1. Rebed.

If the weather forecast for the next week holds and we don’t get any more rain, farmers could possibly get in the field to rebed the land next week. One challenge is there aren’t any seed potatoes left, so farmers will need to bed number ones. These are larger potatoes that are usually sold fresh (what you buy at the grocery store).  A number one won’t produce as many sprouts, and you can only cut that bed once. Instead of getting 40 acres of plants, they only average 15 acres.

       2.  Buy slips from other farmers.

Not only will the farmer incur the loss of investment in their own beds, they will have the expense of buying slips someone else has grown.

Speaking of investment loss, it’s important to realize most insurance policies do not cover bedded sweet potatoes.

It’s too soon to know the impact these rains will have on this year’s crop. The damage doesn’t seem to be widespread, but for those farmers impacted, it’s another challenge Mother Nature has dealt them early in the growing season. BY HEAHER BARNES.

GRAINS-U.S CORN, SOYABEANS EASE AS FARMERS EYE PLANTING WINDOW.

CHICAGO, April 28 (Reuters) - U.S. corn and soybean futures
fell on Friday on the prospect of dry weather for key Midwest
production areas in early May which would give farmers access to
fields during a crucial planting window, traders said.

Wheat futures were hovering closed to unchanged, with some
end-of-week profit-taking pulling prices from their highest in
more than a week despite concerns about a cold snap in the U.S.
Plains threatening to damage maturing crops.

Corn futures notched the biggest declines, sagging 1.6
percent as the weather view, if realized, would allow farmers to
seed most of their corn crop before mid-May. Farmers that seed
corn after that point risk a reduction in yield.

But heavy rains were expected this weekend.

"Nearly week of drying ahead then allows recovery in most of
Midwest, limits risk for standing water in corn/wheat,"
Commodity Weather Group said in a note to clients.

At 10:35 a.m. CDT (1535 GMT), Chicago Board of Trade July
corn futures were down 5-3/4 cents at $3.63-1/2 a bushel.
Corn futures were down 0.1 percent for the week.

Heavy deliveries against the CBOT May corn contract
indicating an abundance of supplies, added pressure to corn
futures.

CBOT July soybean futures were 3-3/4 cents lower at
$9.53-1/2 a bushel and on track for a weekly loss of 0.8
percent.

CBOT July wheat futures were 1-1/2 cents lower at
$4.29-3/4 a bushel. Prices topped out at $4.34-1/2, their
highest since April 20. The contract has risen 2.2 percent so
far this week, which would be the biggest weekly rally for wheat
in 11 weeks.

"There is adverse cold weather for the U.S. winter wheat
crop reflected in the price action today," said Kaname Gokon
from Tokyo brokerage Okato Shoji.

Low temperatures in north-central Kansas are expected to be
in the mid to upper 20s (Fahrenheit), according to the Commodity
Weather Group, potentially damaging for hard red winter wheat in
the biggest producing state.

The chilly weather in the U.S. Plains has added resonance to
spring weather concerns in western Europe, where crops have
faced frost in the past week on top of dry conditions, notably
in France.BY MARK WEINRAUB.

IMBIBITIONAL CHILLING CONCERN THROUGHOUT MIDWEST.

Corn planting is under way throughout much of the Midwest. The weekly USDA Weekly Crop Progress Report showed the 2017 corn planting pace behind average at 17%.
The pace may fall further behind average with the forecast calling for above-normal rainfall and below-normal temperatures over the next 10 days or so (through the first week of May), says Emerson Nafziger, University of Illinois Extension agronomist.

ILLINOIS CORN PLANTING PACE PULLS U.S. CLOSE TO AVERAGE

“Above-normal growing degree day (GDD) accumulations have meant fast emergence for corn,” says Nafziger. “In central and southern Illinois, corn planted by April 19 accumulated, by April 25 or 26, the 115 or so GDD required to emerge. With lower temperatures expected over the next 10 days, corn planted on April 25 or 26 may take almost twice as many days to emerge as corn planted in mid-April.”

The forecast is similar for much of the rest of the Midwest. “There is a big rain event predicted for parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and southern Illinois,” says Al Kluis, Kluis Commodities. “Some predictions call for up to 10 inches of rain.”

In Iowa, much of the state soil temperatures have reached 50°F., but soil temperatures could drop with the cold weather, says Mark Licht, Iowa State Extension cropping systems specialist.

“This is of concern because the impact from imbibitional chilling could have a big impact on corn yield potential,” says Licht. “Imbibition is the process by which seeds absorb water to initiate germination. The critical time period is 24 to 36 hours after planting.”

Imbibitional chilling injury can happen when the water available to the corn seed has a temperature in the lower 40s or less, says Nafziger. “Uptake of cold water damages membranes, and this in turn may cause abnormal seedling development and failure to emerge.”

Is your corn at risk?

“If the corn seed can take up some warmer water before soil (and water) temperatures drop, we often see less injury or none at all,” says Nafziger.

Corn planted early this week should be out of danger. “Corn planted on April 25 or 26 may be at risk, but rain that fell on April 26 (in Illinois) was not very cold, and with air temperatures expected to rebound into the 70s the last two days of April, along with the (warmer) rain that’s predicted, we hope not to see much of this problem from this round of weather,” explains Nafziger.
Saturated soils will be another concern for many the next few days.

“Seeds that are starting to germinate need oxygen, and will usually not survive the low oxygen levels in saturated soils for more than a couple of days,” says Nafziger. “They will survive longer if soil temperatures are cool, both because that slows growth and lowers oxygen demand, and also because cool water carries more oxygen into the soil. If soils start to dry off early next week, survival will be a concern mostly where water stands.”

Young seedlings have the advantage of having roots that might find pockets with more oxygen, but they still depend on seed reserves to grow, especially if it’s cool and cloudy, and before leaves have much green area, says Nafziger. “These reserves are mostly used up by the time the plant has two leaves, and diseases can invade the endosperm, especially in cool, wet soils.”

Seedlings can be expected to live for three to four days if they are submerged, and a few days longer than that if only the roots are in saturated soil. If plants remain alive, chances for seedlings to revive and thrive increase considerably once oxygen gets to the roots again.

“If the weather remains cool, emergence and growth will be quite slow even if it does eventually dry up enough to resume planting,” says Nafziger. “So warmer temperatures will help both to dry things out and to get the planted crop growing.” BY KACEY BIRCHMIER.

FAYOS EURGES GOVERNMENT TO DECLARE EMERGENCY ON AGRIC.

The Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, wants the Federal Government to declare an emergency on the agriculture sector to achieve its aim of diversification and fighting hunger in the land.

Fayose, while declaring open a four-day agricultural summit, organised by the state government in Ado Ekiti said states are financially handicapped to invest heavily in the sector.

Fayose, who said the step became imperative in view of the dwindling revenues from the oil sector, charged the Federal Government to devote more funds to agriculture, especialy in food production to encourage more Nigerians to farming.

Also speaking at the event, the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh and the founder of Afe Babalola University, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), said the country could only have economic breakthrough only if serious investment was done in agric.


In Fayose’s words: “The Federal Government should declare emergency in the agriculture sector, even there must be a bailout fund for the agriculture sector. What Nigerians need is food on their tables.

“It is sad that the state government can’t diversify again because they are financially incapacitated, so the Federal Government must come to our aid, they must bail the people out. If emergency is declared in the sector and people are attracted to farming, they can use the gains to run around and better their lives.”

Fayose counseled the Federal Government to also do more by way of increasing electricity generation in the country and in provision of storage facilities to add value to agricultural products.
He urged the traditional rulers and the residents of the state to join in the fight against illegal tree fellers, saying the government is losing huge amount through the illicit practice.

Ogbeh, who was represented by the Director, Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Ekiti, Dr. Ladipo Kolade, noted that the country was prosperous during the period when agriculture was the backbone of the economy.

He said: “During these years, we can boast of good investment in groundnut, cocoa and palm oil. They were resources of our foreign earnings; there was pride and economic boom until things changed for bad.
“But President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is supporting the
farmers through the CBN agricultural loan disbursement scheme. About 94,972 farmers are to benefit under this scheme in the 2016 budget”, he said.

Babalola called for 50 percent reduction in school fees for agric related courses in the Nigeria universities, to encourage youths in acquiring professional skillsin business of food production. BY MUYIWA ADEYEMI.

FAYOSE NEEDS TO INVEST IN AGRICULTURE

EKITI State Governor Ayo Fayose has been advised to invest in agriculture to boost food production, tackle hunger and create jobs for youths.

A socio-cultural organisation, the Achievers Group, which made the call, said: “It is not acceptable that Ekiti people should complain of hunger when the state is capable of providing enough food to feed the nation.”

A statement yesterday by its President, Femi Jegede and Publicity Secretary, Raphael Adeyanju, noted that government should replicate the success in education by devoting same time and energy it gave education to agriculture.

“We are confident  Governor Fayose can use agriculture as a tool for tackling the  food crisis facing our nation, using Ekiti State as a starting point. BY ODUNAYO OGUNMOLA.