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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Solving the world's food, feed and bioenergy challenges requires integration of multiple approaches and diverse skills. Andrea Eveland, Ph.D., assistant member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and her team identified a genetic mechanism that controls developmental traits related to grain production in cereals. The work was performed in Setaria viridis, an emerging model system for grasses that is closely related to economically important cereal crops and bioenergy feed stocks such as maize, sorghum, switchgrass and sugarcane.
The Eveland laboratory's research findings, "Brassinosteroids modulate meristem fate and differentiation of unique inflorescence morphology in Setaria viridis", were recently published in the journal The Plant Cell. In their study, Yang et al. mapped a genetic locus in the S. viridis genome that controls growth of sterile branches called bristles, which are produced on the grain-bearing inflorescences of some grass species. Their research revealed that these sterile bristles are initially programmed to be spikelets; grass-specific structures that produce flowers and grain. Eveland's work showed that conversion of a spikelet to a bristle is determined early in inflorescence development and regulated by a class of plant hormones called brassinosteroids (BRs), which modulate a range of physiological processes in plant growth, development and immunity. In addition to converting a sterile structure to a seed-bearing one, the research also showed that localized disruption of BR synthesis can lead to production of two flowers per spikelet rather than the single one that typically forms. These BR-dependent phenotypes therefore represent two potential avenues for enhancing grain production in millets, including subsistence crops in many developing countries that remain largely untapped for genetic improvement.
"This work is a great demonstration of how Setaria viridis can be leveraged to gain fundamental insights into the mechanisms that govern seed production in the grasses - our most important group of plants that includes corn, sorghum, rice, wheat and barley," said Thomas Brutnell, Ph.D., Director of the Enterprise Institute for Renewable Fuels, Danforth Center. "It's also worth noting that this project was conceived and work initiated after Dr. Eveland joined the Danforth Center - an impressive feat for a junior faculty member that speaks to both the advantages of working on a model system and the great team that she has assembled at the Danforth Center."
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 08 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)
Great, just what we needed: more rocket fuel for the race to the bottom of crop prices.
With the talk lately of opening up more markets for US farm production (read: more free trade, more globalization, and probably more jobs leaving America to pay for market access, just like always), all I can think of is that with developments like this, there aren't enough markets in the world to make US agriculture sustainably profitable unless a lot of the players simply drop out. Which is exactly what has been happening for the last 40 years or so.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday January 08 2018, @04:50PM (1 child)
And then there's the knock-on effects of doing that which we really don't want. Effects like:
- Farmers in Latin America decide to come to the US illegally on the theory that it's better than starving.
- Farmers throughout the Third World switch from vegetables, fruits, and grains to much more profitable crops that can't easily be grown in the US, like opium and coca.
- Really really desperate farmers (sometimes unknowingly) sell off their children to human traffickers. Most of those kids end up being forced into prostitution, and many don't make it to adulthood.
Of course, what the Powers That Be want is for these now-desperate people to show up at the nearest sweatshop, saying "Please, Mr International Capitalist sir, I'll do anything to help feed my family. Anything!" And Mr International Capitalist, being the generous guy that he is, will give some of these desperate people jobs that pay enough that if the entire family works for him 16 hours a day 7 days a week with no benefits or bathroom breaks (forget school, kids, these Nikes are more important!), they'll be able to live in a shack somewhere and eat a steady diet of grain imported from the US and maybe a couple of other things if they're lucky. If these folks starve or get sick or even breath the word "union", they'll be immediately replaced by other desperate people. If their government tries to resist any of this, then the WTO, IMF, and other instruments of international business will come into play to punish them, and if that doesn't do the job the CIA will make their best attempt at it. And since Mr International Capitalist is the one writing the story of what's going on, they'll describe it with terms like "development", "progress", and "industrialization".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 08 2018, @06:00PM
And here I thought the best way to demonize free trade around here was outsourcing because nobody cares about what happens to non-USians. Glad to be proven wrong with such force.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?