freezing the footprint of agriculture while feeding 9 billion people
Jason Clay, Senior VP at World Wildlife Fund, discusses how to grow more food without turning more land over to agricultural production.
the ethics of modern agriculture: organic foods vs. frankenfoods
Political scientist Robert Paarlberg questions the logic (and the morality) behind the ban on biotechnology in Africa.
(not) business as usual: a modest proposal for sustainable agriculture
Historian Jimmy McWilliams makes some surprising suggestions about good ways to intensify agricultural production while respecting the environment, and asks us all to eat less meat.
Patrick Hayes
barley: molecular breeding
Paul Jepson
pests: monitoring GE crops
Carol Mallory-Smith
grasses: gene flow and herbicide resistance
Steve Strauss
trees: forest biotechnology
The Outreach in Biotechnology (ORB) program seeks to provide accurate information, in context, about biotechnology. Our focus is on the ways in which biotechnology is being used in agriculture, and the implications this has for the economy, human health, and sustainability.
Portland Monthly Magazine, Jan 2010
A better understanding of tree genetics enables timber companies to make smarter, more sustainable decisions, and allows tree farmers to improve their yield so that more wild forestland can be left alone. It is as straightforward an eco-premise as they come: be more efficient with the resources we use so as to reduce our overall take.
Chromosome: a long, continuous piece of DNA that contains many genes, regulatory elements, and other intervening nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also include DNA-bound proteins that serve to package and manage the DNA. Different organisms have different numbers of chromosomes. Each parent contributes one chromosome to each pair so that offspring get half of their chromosomes from their mother and half from their father.
For six years now, the Food for Thought Lecture Series has brought internationally recognized experts to OSU to speak about ways that biotechnology can support sustainable agriculture. Lectures are free and open to the public, and can be viewed online.
During the 2009/2010 series:
• Journalist Daniel Koeppel took listeners to banana plantations across the globe that are being destroyed by a fast-moving blight, and to the biotech labs where a race is on to save them.
• Jason Clay, Senior VP at World Wildlife Fund, discussed how to grow more food without turning more land over to agricultural production.
• Political scientist Robert Paarlberg questioned the logic (and the morality) behind the ban on biotechnology in Africa.
• Historian Jimmy McWilliams made some suprising suggestions about good ways to intensify agricultural production while respecting the environment (and asked us all to eat less meat).
2010/2011 speakers will be announced soon!
Regulation must be revolutionized
Nature, 29 Jul 2010
Golden rice will probably reach the market in 2012. It was ready in the lab by 1999. According to Ingo Potrykus, the father of golden rice, "This lag is because of the regulatory differentiation of genetic engineering from other, traditional methods of crop improvement. The discrimination is scientifically unjustified. It is wasting resources and stopping many potentially transformative crops such as golden rice making the leap from lab to plate."
Golden rice in Bangladesh by 2012
The New Nation (Bangladesh), 9 Aug 2010
Bangladesh is likely to complete all necessary experiments on its golden rice variety, enabling farmers to start cultivation as early as 2012. With the International Rice Research Institute's go-ahead in 2003, the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) developed the variety of rice through gene transfer into BR-29, the highest yielding BRRI variety, producing golden rice highly suitable to Bangladeshi growing conditions.
transgenic canola plants cross-pollinating in the wild
Scientific American, 6 Aug 2010
University of Arkansas scientists recently identified transgenic traits in feral canola. "Other than confirmation of something [i.e. cross-pollination between feral canola plants outside of agriculture] that has already been reported, I don't think there's anything that should raise an alarm," stated OSU scientist Carol Mallory. "Being transgenic does not make feral canola unique or more competitive unless someone is trying to control it with [the herbicides] glyphosate or glufosinate, which would negatively impact natural flora, also."
New York Times, 26 Jul 2010
Algae, single-celled phytoplankton, produce half our planet's oxygen and are the fastest-growing green organisms on Earth. A Californian firm, Sapphire Energy, is using the tools of modern biotechnology to engineer algae that are super efficient at converting air and sunlight into lipids that people can then use to make biofuels.
Hundreds of researchers in both industry and academia are working to find ways to optimize biofuel production from algae. Currently, the US Department of Energy plans to invest some $24 million to tackle key hurdles in the commercialization of algae-based biofuels.
Engineered algae have many uses beyond biofules, including sewage treatment and bioremediation.
Foreign Policy, May/June 2010
Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West at the same time that the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion. Yet over the next decade, the number of hungry people in Africa will increase to 645 million.
"What's so tragic about this is that we know from experience how to fix the problem," writes Food for Thought lecturer Robert Paarlberg. "Wherever the rural poor have gained access to improved roads, modern seeds, less expensive fertilizer, electrical power, and better schools and clinics, their productivity and their income have increased. But recent efforts to deliver such essentials have been undercut by deeply misguided (if sometimes well-meaning) advocacy against agricultural modernization and foreign aid."
Genetically engineered distortions
New York Times, 14 May 2010
In this op-ed, Pam Ronald and Jimmy McWilliams (former ORB Food for Thought lecturers) discuss a recent report by the National Research Council that gave ammunition to both sides in the debate over the cultivation of genetically engineered crops. Lost in the media kerfuffle is the potential role this technology could play in the poorest regions of the world — areas that will bear the brunt of climate change and the difficult growing conditions it will bring.
Exploring algae as fuel