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The GM Tomato That Stays Fresh For SIX WEEKS – But Would You Want To Eat It?

February 4, 2010 by ·

the gm tomato that stays fresh for six weeks_Tomatoes could stay fresh for an extra month thanks to a genetic breakthrough The curse of the soggy tomato could soon be a thing of the past … or so scientists say. They have created a fruit which is said to stay fresh for 45 days – three times longer than the conventional version.

But the drawbacks are that it is the result of genetic engineering, and no one is saying what it actually tastes like.

The researchers believe the same process could be applied to other fruits, including bananas and mangoes.

However, the need for extensive safety testing means it will be years before the GM fruits could go on sale in British supermarkets, if ever.

Researchers in India lengthened the life of tomatoes by ‘turning off’ genes linked to the production of ripening enzymes.

This increased firmness and stopped the tomatoes going soft for up to 45 days, according to a report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers, from the National Institute of Plant Genomic Research in New Delhi, said the breakthrough could prove a boon for farmers who lose up to 40 per cent of their fruit to over-ripening.

Dr Asis Datta said: ‘Overall, the results demonstrate a substantial improvement in shelf life.

‘The engineering of plants provides a strategy for crop improvement that can be extended to other important fruit crops.’ The banana, mango and papaya all have a genetic make-up which could be manipulated in this way, Dr Datta added.

But Pete Riley, from the campaign group GM Freeze, said: ‘The majority of the public are very skeptical about the benefits of GM foods and I don’t think that this will do anything to persuade them.

‘We have survived for millennia without needing to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.’

He added that although the GM tomatoes might appear to be fresh for a month and a half, their vitamin content could decline, making them less nutritious than normal varieties.

The researchers in India are not the first to try to use genetics to create healthier or more appealing food. British scientists have created purple tomatoes rich in the antioxidants said to keep cancer at bay.

U.S. scientists have bred pigs whose fat is high in the omega-3 fatty acids thought to combat heart disease. By Fiona Macrae, The Daily Mail

Filed Under: Agriculture, Crop Protection, Fruits & Vegetables ·

Orange Juice Prices To Rise By A Third As Crisis Hits Crop

January 3, 2010 by ·

orange juice prices_The price of orange juice is set to rise by up to a third after cold weather and disease hit citrus groves in Florida. The American state is one of the world’s main producers – and the problems it has experienced have already led to the price of concentrated juice doubling in a year.

Supermarket prices have been reasonably stable so far but experts say this is only because stores fix prices with suppliers months in advance.

Clive Webster, executive secretary of the British Fruit Juice Association, said he expects prices to rise by between ten and 30 per cent when contracts are renegotiated, depending on foreign currency fluctuations.

He said: ‘There’s bound to be an impact when the raw price goes up. Supermarkets will be very reluctant to put prices up but they will have little choice when their contracts end.’

A survey of UK supermarkets over the past year has shown prices are yet to rise significantly.

A one-litre carton of smooth Tropicana rose from £1.81 to £1.90 at Waitrose and from £1.57 to £1.66 at Sainsbury’s.

But the price of concentrated orange juice has already soared on world markets, from 43p per pound a year ago to more than 80p per pound last week.

The US government expects this season’s yield of Florida oranges to be down 17 per cent on last year, at 135million boxes, because cold weather and ‘spotty’ rainfall have meant smaller oranges and fewer fruit per tree.

The state’s orange groves have also been ravaged by the deadly, incurable ‘greening disease’, which originated in Asia and forces farmers to uproot trees.

Millions of dollars have been spent on aerial pesticide spraying in an attempt to reduce the population of the insect that spreads the disease – the citrus psyllid.

But there is little comfort for people who prefer an alternative drink with their breakfast. Other breakfast staples such as tea, coffee, sugar and cocoa are also at their highest prices for decades, again because of the fluctuating weather. By Matt Sandy, The Daily Mail

Filed Under: Crop Protection, Fruits & Vegetables ·

Pest Attack Worries Farmers

December 30, 2009 by ·

pest attack worries farmers_Paddy farmers of the district are worried as diseases caused by pest attack pose threat to their hope for good yield this season. Though there were reports of paddy affected by diseases such as brown plant hopper, sheath blight and stem borer, it is stated that leaf rollers has caused considerable damage to the standing paddy crops. The reports suggest that though the disease attack was widespread in the district, the areas, which were inundated by rainwater during the November rainfall, were largely affected.

Farmers say that R.S. Mangalam, Thiruvadanai, Ramanathapuram, Nainarkoil, Panaikulam and other coastal belt of the district had been affected with leaf roller. They said that the insect had eaten the green portion of the paddy crops in many fields.

“Though we have received good rainfall this year, the disease is threatening the crop. We have been forced to concentrate heavily on fighting the disease. If proper attention is not taken, it will affect the productivity,” said Rajan of R.S. Mangalam.

He added that many farmers of R.S. Mangalam, were facing the same problem.

It was stated that the continuous rain coupled with chill climate had caused the spread of the diseases particularly leaf roller.

S. Rajendran, Joint Director of Agriculture, told ‘The Hindu’ though there were reports of pest attack in a few places, there was no cause for concern. The farmers were asked to spray the recommended pesticide in the affected fields. Enough stock had been maintained in all agricultural extension centres in the district. It was sold at 50 percent subsidy to the farmers.

Z. Kamaludeen, Assistant Director of Agriculture, Tiruppullani said the affected fields had already been recovering. Farmers were clearly educated on the need to apply mild dose of the pesticide to fight the disease. Since bright sunshine had been reported for the last one week, the disease would be automatically contained gradually. By R.S. Mangalam, Thiruvadanai, Ramanathapuram, The Hindu

Filed Under: Crop Protection, Environment ·

GM Crops May Ease Drain On Soil – Researchers

October 30, 2009 by ·

gm crops may ease drain on soil_The world needs genetically modified crops both to increase food yields and minimize the environmental impact of farming, Britain’s top science academy said on Wednesday. The Royal Society said in a report the world faced a “grand challenge” to feed another 2.3 billion people by 2050 and at the same time limit the environmental impact of the farm sector.

The world will have to increase food output by 70 percent and invest $83-billion annually in developing countries by mid-century, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation said earlier this month. “The problem is such an acute one, doing that sustainably without eroding soil, overusing fertilisers is an enormous challenge,” said the chair of the Royal Society report, Cambridge University’s David Baulcombe.

“There isn’t a lot more land to use,” he told Reuters. “And from the point of expense and using fossil fuels, we want to use less fertiliser.” “The food supply problem is likely to come to a head 10, 20, 30 years from now,” he said, adding this didn’t leave much time given the research lead time to develop new crops.

The answer would be a range of approaches from hi-tech genetically modified crops to low-tech management approaches such as sowing grass around maize to divert pests, as well as preserving the diversity of natural, wild crop varieties.

Farming indirectly, including deforestation, accounts for a third of greenhouse gases, say scientists, underlining the problem of increasing production simply by clearing more land or using more fertilisers, the biggest source of a powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.

Britain had to invest an extra 50 to 100 million pounds annually in research to boost innovation in a sector which had lost allure following food over-supply in Europe, the report said. A combination of changing diets, growing population, demand for farmland for biofuels and high energy prices have stoked food prices and renewed interest in agriculture.
Wednesday’s report invoked the successes of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, but aimed for a more sustainable approach. That revolution had more than doubled food output over 30 years but had also degraded soils in some cases. The world must develop over the next 16 years through genetic modification and conventional breeding varieties of crops resistant to disease, drought, salinity, heat and toxic heavy metals, the report said.

Progress in DNA-sequencing had made more plant genes available for engineering, improving the predictability of results in a “second generation” GM approach. “We’re looking at a different base than 10 years ago,” said Baulcombe. A combination of the food crisis and the global economic downturn has pushed more than one billion people into hunger in 2009, UN agencies said last week, confirming a grim forecast released earlier this year.

The Pressure group Greenpeace said GM crops were a costly distraction from tackling hunger through fighting poverty and helping smallholders in developing countries sell their product. “Poverty and hunger are the same thing,” said Marco Contiero, Greenpeace’s European GM policy director, who pointed out that the world already produced enough to feed itself, if that were shared fairly and there was less waste.  By Gerard Wynn, Independent Online

Filed Under: Agriculture, Crop Protection, Ecology ·

Agriculture Technology Should Be Affordable To Small Farmers

October 5, 2009 by ·

agriculture_The technology for agriculture sector should be sustainable and affordable to small farmers too, Secretary of the Union Ministry of Agriculture, T. Nandakumar, said here on Friday.

Inaugurating Agri Intex, the annual agriculture exhibition organised by the Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, he said, “Agriculture should be recognised as a knowledge sector that would adopt high level of technology. And, this technology should be affordable to small farmers.”

Mechanisation should improve efficiency and productivity. Indigenous machinery should be designed and developed for agriculture and horticulture as it would not be possible to import all the machinery for these sectors.

With increasing income levels, the demand for different varieties of food also went up. The demand for fruits, vegetables and processed fruits was increasing. So, the country had to produce these raw materials. “We need more food, feed and fibre,” he said.

Some of the constraints in producing these were limited availability of land, less water, variability in water availability and the impact of climate change. Technology was a solution to the problems faced by the sector. The research activities taken up in universities should reach the farm. There should be a strong connect between research and farmers. Analysis of soil health, macro and micro management of water, investment in technology and infrastructure to handle the agriculture produce were all important aspects.

The urban Indian families were moving towards processed food and this segment would probably grow at a faster rate now than it had earlier. For this, the production should have definite quality standards. The food processing industry should understand the problems and needs of farmers and try to support extension activities, he said.

P. Murugesa Boopathy, Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, said the seed replacement rate (SRR) achieved for rice was around 60 per cent. For pulses and oil seeds the SRR achieved was low. To improve the SRR, the university had taken up seed production in 32 centres for about 175 varieties.

Sugarcane cultivation was one area where mechanisation was required. The TNAU had displayed at the Agri Intex sugarcane harvesters purchased from Thailand. The university was also concentrating more on domestic and export market intelligence. It collected the market price for 152 commodities from 13 markets in South India and published these on its website www.tnau.ac.in and www.indg.in by 1. p.m.

S.V. Balasubramaniam, Chairman of the Bannari Amman Group of Companies, said that in 2008-2009 the country received almost 23 per cent low rains. The purchasing power of people was high and population was growing. So, the food needs were also going up. “We need to encourage agriculture to meet these demands,” he said. Global warming was a major challenge, he said.

K. Ilango, president of the Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, said though India was a growing economy with development in several sectors, many people were still dependent on agriculture. The Agri Intex was started in 2000 and was conducted almost every year. The focus this year was on technology.

D. Balasundaram, Chairman of Agri-Intex 2009, said the exhibition had over 200 stalls occupying nearly 2,600 sq m.

The fair would be on at the CODISSIA Trade Fair Complex till October 5. The Hindu.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Crop Protection, Technologies ·