Tag: disease

CONNECTED – a new network to tackle vector-borne crop disease in Africa

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Last week I was immersed in the world of African crop diseases, specifically the vector-borne kind, as part of the launch of CONNECTED. For those, like me, who aren’t an expert in the field – vector-borne diseases are those which are carried around by an organism (like a fly or insect) from one plant to the next.

This major new network brings together UK scientists with colleagues from across Africa to co-produce innovative new solutions to vector-borne crop diseases. And it turns out, there are a lot of them.

Africa has over 100 years of history with plant viral diseases. In 1894 cassava mosaic disease hit, followed by maize streak virus in 1901, and cassava brown streak in 1936.  Each had caused devastation, and in many cases, death.

Standing in the room and listening to presentations led by our African colleagues, there was a clear desire to work together – across disciplines and continents – to make a significant and lasting impact on crop disease reduction in Africa.

In this blog, I share just a handful of the things I learnt, alongside my thoughts for CONNECTED’s role in innovating for the future.

What are the challenges?

Almost every major crop in Africa is affected by disease

Yams, cassava, boy bean, cocoa, maize, coffee, bananas and many more of Africa’s key crops are affected by vector-borne disease.

That creates an ENORMOUS burden for the continent. Estimates shared by Prof Emmanuel Okogbenin suggest that yield losses due to plant disease cost $30 billion annually. In addition, it seriously affects food security and malnutrition in a continent where around 160 million of its population are already deemed food insecure.

As a result, demand is outstripping production for many crops (like maize), and Africa is heavily reliant on imported goods. These are undoubtedly more expensive than locally grown produce, and remain inaccessible or affordable to many.

Crucially, people have died as a result of every major outbreak.

When disease hits, it can cause severe losses

Sweet potato virus disease (SPVD) can lead to a 70-100% yield loss in infected plants.  The level of loss greatly exacerbates the issues described above.

So which crops are the most important ones to protect?

Well, it depends how you ask the question. 500 million people depend on cassava as a staple crop, and 158 million tons are produced in Africa by smallholders.

By contrast, 54 million tonnes of yam is produced annually, but 95% of this is produced in what is known as the ‘yam belt’, meaning it is considered critical in those regions. It also draws a value of c. $13.5M.

But it was clear from discussions today that we need to move beyond this idea of protecting a single crop. It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that.

In many cases, it’s not a simple case of a single vector and a single virus causing a single disease

Disease spread is highly complex. A single vector can carry many types of virus, and many viruses can be transmitted by multiple vectors. Additionally, some viruses affect a number of crops. This means it’s extremely difficult to know which vector/ virus to focus on tackling, or which crop to focus on treating, if you want to make a difference.

Perhaps surprisingly, some diseases only appear to ‘present’ when multiple viruses affect the same plant. In fact, around 69% of diseases in yams appear to be caused by 2 or more viral infections occurring at the same time.

To top it off, the vectors can often live on a number of different host plant species. This means that even if you create a crop that is resistant to a particular virus, it may still be present and spread between other plants.

And there are lots of vectors, spreading lots of diseases

Today I heard about so many vectors and viruses it’s impossible to name them all. However, here are just a few key examples that were covered by experts in the room:

  • Vectors: white fly, Aphids, leafhoppers, plant hoppers, mealybugs (my favourite, based purely on the name), thrips, and beetles.
  • Viruses: cassava brown streak virus, cassava mosaic virus, banana bunchy top virus, maize chlorotic mottle virus, yam mosaic virus, badnaviruses (yam, banana and coco), and legume potyviruses

Much disease is also spread by infected seed

In the case of sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV), a large proportion of transmission is down to aphids, but an even greater proportion stems from the sharing of infected seeds. In a Q&A session on this topic, one audience member asked, ‘what’s the main barrier stopping people from using uncertified seeds?’ The answer? Cost. At present, many people buy seeds from friends, by the roadside, at local markets, or store their own supplies from year to year. These practices carry risk and whilst ‘certified’ (virus free) seeds are available, these are expensive. It was an important reminder that often, the scientific solutions are available, but there are social, political and economic factors to consider in ensuring uptake of these advances.

Over 80% of agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa is done by small holders

Whilst this has many benefits (people effectively have ‘control’ of their food production systems), managing disease across such a vast number of smallholder farms represents a major challenge. First and foremost – it’s difficult to engage with such a large number of individual farms to coordinate disease management strategies. Critically, it’s also difficult for smallholders to coordinate responses amongst themselves. In this context, ‘CONNECTED’ seems an entirely appropriate name for an initiative tackling this problem.

Summing up

In summary, day 2 of the CONNECTED conference helped us to share experiences, identify key challenges and research gaps, and decide where, as a network, we should best deploy our resources.

There was also a real sense that CONNECTED could bring far more than collaborative & impact-led research (though this in its own right would be exciting!). There were calls for joint databases, support with equipment purchases, training and capacity building, on-the-ground diagnostic support, e-resources, new technology development, incentivising public-private partnerships, and much, much more.

Through this network, there is great potential to forge important international collaborations and pool resources for maximum impact.

All in all, it has been incredible to see what expertise exists in both the UK and in Africa, hear about the collective ambitions of these fantastic collaborators, and begin to chart a path for CONNECTED.

I for one, am left feeling hopeful, inspired, and of course, ‘connected’.

The CONNECTED project

Our mission

Determined to fight malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the CONNECTED project is building a network of researchers to tackle vector-borne* plant diseases that devastate lives.

The challenges we face …

  • Established plant diseases carried by vectors* significantly limit the ability of Sub-Saharan Africa to produce sufficient staple and cash crops.
  • Limited production causes poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, which in turn prevent economic and social development.
  • A range of new factors are set to compound the situation and raise the threat still further:
    • The emergence of new virus diseases
    • Climate change
    • A growing population
    • Resource limitations.

The solutions we are developing …

  • The CONNECTED** project is bringing together a network of world-class researchers to find and develop practical solutions to control plant disease.
  • We are pump-priming a range of innovative and potentially-transformative research activities, whose impact will be thoroughly evaluated. These research activities focus on five key areas:
    • Control strategies
    • Vector biology
    • New diseases
    • Vector / virus interactions
    • Diagnostics / surveillance / forecasting.
  • We are also providing training and capacity-building opportunities in the region during the three-year project lifespan.

And in the longer-term …

The aim is that the projects with the greatest regional impact can subsequently be grown into larger scale activities to achieve still greater bearing on the battle to control plant disease in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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This blog is written by Hayley Shaw who is the Manager of the Cabot Institute, and is a Network Advisor to the CONNECTED Network.

Notes
*A vector is a biting insect or tick that transmits a disease or parasite from one plant to another.

Breeding cassava for the next generation

Posted on by janet.crompton

Last week I helped to harvest and score cassava tubers a breeding trial at the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI). The trial is part of the NEXTGEN Cassava project which applies genetic techniques to conventional breeding and aims to produce new varieties with Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) and Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) resistance.

Why cassava and what’s the CBSD problem?

Approximately 300 million people rely on cassava as a staple food crop in Africa. It is resilient to seasonal drought, can be grown on poor soils and harvested when needed. However cassava production is seriously threatened by CBSD, which can reduce the quality of tubers by 100% and is currently threatening the food security of millions of people.

Cassava brown streak symptoms on tubers

Crossing cassava from around the world

Cassava varieties show a huge variation in traits including disease resistance. The NEXTGEN Cassava project has crossed 100 parent plants from Latin America with high quality African plants to produce new improved varieties, with higher levels of CBSD and CMD resistance. Crossing involves rubbing the pollen from one parent variety on to the female flower part (pistil) of the second parent variety to produce seeds.

Cassava flowers used to cross different varieties

 

Cutting back on time

The process is not easy. The complex heritability of traits in cassava means that many plants have to be screened to identify plants with the best traits. To cut down on this time, researchers from Cornell University sequenced the DNA from 2,100 seedlings and selected plants containing sequences linked to desirable traits.

Screening for resistance

These plants were transferred to field site in Namulonge, where there is a high level of CBSD, making it easier to spot resistant plants. After 12 months the tubers were dug up and cut into sections. Each root was scored for the severity of CBSD. Plants which  show no disease symptoms have now been selected for the next stage of breeding. Eventually varieties will be tested for their performance at sites across Uganda and given to farmers for their feedback.

We harvested and scored tubers for Cassava brown streak symptoms. I then tagged disease free plants for selection!

 

Time to harvest!

 

Alfred Ozimati is managing the breeding  programme

I helped to score and tag plants, it was hard work! I was impressed by the stamina of the workers who harvested from 8 am until 3 pm without a rest. I was struck by the mammoth task of breeding cassava for so many traits and by the programme manager Alfred Ozimati’s determination to get the work done as quickly as possible. Alfred is currently a  PhD student at Cornell University; he kindly offered to answer these questions:

What are the challenges of conventional breeding and how does sequencing help to address these?

Typical conventional breeding cycle of cassava is 8-10 years before parents are selected for crossing. The sequencing information allows a breeder to select parents early at the seedling stage, allowing more crossing cycles over time than conventional cassava breeding. With sequencing, the process of releasing varieties with improved CBSD and CMD resistance should take about 5 years.

What are your long term hopes for the project and the future of cassava breeding?

We hope to use genomic selection routinely, to address any other challenges cassava as a crop of second importance to Uganda will face. And also to take the technology to other East African, cassava breeding programs to faster address their major breeding constraints.

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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Talking sweet potatoes at the Source of the Nile

Posted on by janet.crompton

Last month I was invited to the Source of the Nile agricultural trade show in Jinja, Uganda. The show brings together all aspects of agriculture: from crops to chickens, cows and tractors. The event attracts over 120,000 visitors each year and runs for seven days.

I was needed on a National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) stand where Agnes Alajo (a PhD student and breeder) was selling improved sweet potato varieties, which are resistant to pests and diseases with higher levels of pro-vitamin A.

It is estimated that around 35% of children and 55% of child-bearing mothers in rural Uganda suffer from vitamin A deficiency, which is associated with preventable child blindness and mortality. The orange-fleshed NAROSPOT varieties developed by NaCRRI are enriched with pro-vitamin A and it’s hoped their adoption will help improve the deficiency problem.

The stand also had an impressive array of biscuits, cakes and even juice made from processing sweet potato. Agriculture is very important in Uganda; it accounts for around 24% of GDP and 43% of the working population are subsistence farmers (2013). Processing sweet potatoes to produce flour can be economically viable and provides farmers with an opportunity to add value to their crop, boost income and reduce poverty.

The range of products made through processing sweet potato

I had to hurriedly absorb information about sweet potato, as very soon hoards of excited school children arrived. The main challenge was that not everyone can speak English and my UK accent was quite difficult for them to understand. I had to speak clearly and slowly to get my message across. Often teachers had to repeat what I had said in their local language. There are over 40 local languages in Uganda, so even Ugandans can find it difficult to communicate!

Agnes explains the importance of pro-vitamin A rich sweet potatoes to school students

Agnes explains the importance of pro-vitamin A rich sweet potatoes to school students
There was a lot of interest from young people who want to pursue agricultural careers and are attracted to opportunities for commercialization. Most people were very intrigued about the cakes, and couldn’t believe that they were made using sweet potato flour. Unfortunately, we couldn’t give out samples to taste until the end of the week, which caused a lot of pleading and disappointment!

Walking around the show I discovered giant cassava tubers, a “speaking head” and impressive looking cabbages. I later  saw the source of the Nile itself!

I had a great time walking around. There was plenty of entertainment and I also got to see where the Nile flows from Lake Victoria!

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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Using GM to fight cassava brown streak disease

Posted on by janet.crompton

Last week I helped plant a new confined field trial for genetically modified (GM) cassava in western Uganda. The aim is to find how well the plants resist Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD).

Before planting, the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) held discussions with people from the local government and farmers’ groups. It’s vital to engage the local community so that people are correctly informed and on-board with the project. There were certainly some very strange myths to debunk!

Henry Wagaba (Head of Biosciences at NaCRRI) explained the huge losses caused by CBSD, which spoils tubers and can wipe out entire fields. CBSD is now the most devastating crop disease in Uganda and there are no resistant varieties currently available.

To fight the disease, NaCRRI researchers have developed GM cassava plants, which show high levels of resistance to CBSD at sites in southern and central Uganda. This trial will test how the plants perform in the growing conditions in western Uganda. Work will also be carried out to cross the GM plants wither farmer varieties to improve their growing and taste qualities.

I enjoyed getting stuck in and planting my first GM cassava!

GM crops are a contentious topic in Uganda. The passing of a National Biotechnology and Biosafety law has stalled in Parliament for over three years due to disagreements. Currently GM technology is used for research on banana, cassava, maize, potato, rice and sweet potato. However these are not approved for human consumption.

In nearby countries Kenya and Sudan, GM food products have been approved and many of these food products are imported into Uganda without regulation. It’s hoped the law will be passed soon to enable Ugandan farmers to reap the benefits of GM crops and protect against any potential risks.

Before the trial, I went on a safari in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, where I saw elephants, hippos and even lions!
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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Taking a trip to the cassava field!

Posted on by janet.crompton

At the end of last week I was lucky enough to be invited on a trip to the field. I didn’t really know what to expect but was very excited to find out!

The purpose of the trip was to collect data for the 5CP project to find out how different varieties of cassava respond to Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) and Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) in different areas.

We set off at 5.30am in the morning; the first stop was Lake Victoria to catch a ferry to the Sesse Islands. The team consisted of me, the driver (Bosco), research assistant (Gerald Adiga) and research technician (Joseph). Along the road, we saw several accidents, sadly a far too common occurrence in Uganda…

Due to delays, the ferry was rammed, and by the time we arrived it was almost the evening. We raced to the agricultural school with the field trial. Here the team have planted blocks of 25 clean cassava varieties from five African countries and our job was to score them for disease symptoms. CBSD and CMD are not very common on the Sesse Islands, and so most of the plants were healthy.

An agricultural student digs up a healthy cassava plant.

After a night of drinking Guinness in a corner shop we headed out, again at 5.30am! This time we headed to the city of Mbarara in the western region. The drive was really beautiful, passing Lake Mburo National Park and mountains covered with matoke.

Whilst scoring the cassava plants here we noticed a super abundance of whiteflies, which carry CBSD viruses. The weather had been particularly dry, allowing the whiteflies to breed like crazy. Fortunately, CBSD is also uncommon in this area and very few plants were diseased.

Super abundance of whiteflies on cassava which carry CBSD viruses.

The data from the 5CP project will help farmers to decide which cassava varieties offer the most protection against CBSD and CMD in their local areas; helping to protect them from the devastating yield losses caused by these diseases.

Fun stuff

On the way back we passed the equator line, and I got the chance to take some touristy photos. This week I also saw the Ndere dance troupe, who showcase the different dance and music styles from all over Uganda and other neighbouring countries. It was a lot of fun, some dances bared a weird resemblance to morris dancing and marching brass bands!

Crossing the equator!
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This blog has been written by University of Bristol Cabot Institute member Katie Tomlinson from the School of Biological Sciences.  Katie’s area of research is to generate and exploit an improved understanding of cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) to ensure sustainable cassava production in Africa.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Katie’s blog Cassava Virus.

 

Katie Tomlinson

More from this blog series:  

Life of breath: Understanding air pollution and disease through the Arts

Posted on by janet.crompton
Media vita in morte sumus.  Image from You Tube.

I have written on the Life of Breath blog about the symmetry between breathing as life, and breathlessness as death (as it appears in the words of the haka – see ‘I will not be drowned’).  The line media vita in morte sumus (‘in the midst of life we are in death’) was supposedly composed around the end of the first millennium, but is now believed to be a much older phrase, encapsulating a still older idea: that understanding something means encountering and attempting to understand its counterpart (1).  Just as All Hallows and All Saints are separated by nothing more than midnight, life and death cannot be separated from (nor understood without) each other. The Life of Breath project is a five-year senior investigator award funded by the Wellcome Trust (PIs Prof. Havi Carel at the University of Bristol and Prof. Jane Macnaughton at Durham University), considering breathing and its ‘pathological derivative’ breathlessness as two halves of a whole.

This sense of opposing ideas, linked and hinged in the middle, can also be found in some of the causes of breathlessness, such as smoke. Smoke resists definition. It can be dirty, as in Blake’s poem ‘London’ (‘Every black’ning Church appals’) or at the beginning of ‘Paradise Lost’ (‘a pitchy cloud of locusts’); or it can be cleansing, for example when fumigating a building. It can be a tool, to give food flavour and longevity, or to stupefy bees; or it can be a silent killer in a house fire, more dangerous than the fire itself. Smoke can also be holy, as in the veils of smoke and incense that surround God in the Old Testament. Steven Connor speaks of the God encountered in the Old Testament as ‘a smoky God … His ineffability and unapproachability are signified in the cloud of smoke’ that descends on Mount Sinai, and notes the duality I just mentioned, stating that ‘Smoke can be life, spirit, meaning itself; but it is also horror, filth, chaos’(2).  It seems natural, then, that we can find smoke both comforting (smokers may enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke, church-goers the spicy smell and ritual of the thurible) and disturbing: something that causes us to cough or wheeze, or which, over time, permanently compromises our ability to sing, speak or breathe (3).

Nelson’s Column during The Great
Smog, 1952.  Image taken from
geograph.org.uk via Wikipedia

This last is our most pressing concern when we consider smoke discharged directly into the air, whether it is via an exhaust pipe or a chimney (what Connor calls ‘the sewer into the sky’). These ideas are also bound up in historical approaches to breathlessness, respiratory diseases and conditions, and their relationship with smoke and air pollution (4).  A member of the project advisory board, Mark Jackson, notes that, before chronic or seasonal respiratory conditions such as asthma were properly understood, patients were given conflicting advice. Those suffering from hay fever or ‘summer sneezing’ were often told to treat their condition with ‘fresh air’, visiting the coast to inhale the supposedly clean sea breezes (5).  Elsewhere, Jackson tells us that during the Industrial Revolution, asthma sufferers might be given the opposite advice and told to breathe sooty air for its supposedly antibacterial properties (6).  Both Connor and Jackson write about the Great Smog of 1952, which killed several thousand people in the capital through exacerbating or inducing respiratory and cardiac disease. Here we might note another pair (the heart and the lungs) that cannot be easily separated, as we discussed at the first meeting of the core project team (see ‘Taking a deep breath’). Jackson notes that the link between pollution and disease was already well established before the Great Smog, and before the 1956 Clean Air Act it led to (7).  He states that the Act focused on ‘visible’ pollution, specifically prohibiting the emission of ‘dark smoke’, but paid less attention to invisible pollutants such as sulphur oxides and carbon monoxide.

As well as ignoring or dismissing pollutants that we cannot see, perhaps it is a natural human response to look on the vastness of the sky or the ocean, and assume that their sheer size dwarfs anything discharged into those spaces, rendering it dilute and harmless. As suggested by the invisible poisonous gases wafting stealthily around our towns and cities (or, indeed, our supposedly clean countryside and coastline), very often we are oblivious to that which threatens us. However, complacency offers us no protection from the consequences of air pollution, particularly for respiratory health. For example, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is now the fourth most-common cause of death worldwide, but there is no comprehensive history of breathlessness in a clinical context, a lacuna that the Life of Breath project aims to fill. The project will also attempt to situate breathing and breathlessness in their proper context via an interdisciplinary approach that draws on patient experience and clinical practice, as well as other relevant disciplines, such as medical humanities, history, philosophy, literature and anthropology, using each area to inform the others.

The funeral sentences in the Book of Common Prayer include the line ‘in the midst of life we are in death’. They go on, ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts’. As the Life of Breath project indicates, our lungs have secrets, too.

References

  1. The phrase media vita in morte sumus is sometimes attributed to Notker I, also known as Notker the Stammerer, a Benedictine monk and poet. He is supposed to have coined it after observing a half-built bridge stretching shakily out over a chasm.
  2. Steven Connor, ‘Smog’, a talk broadcast on Nightwaves (Radio 3), 2nd December 2002, to mark fifty years since London’s Great Smog.
  3. See Steven Connor’s essay ‘Whisper Music’ for his (and Aristotle’s) comments on coughing.
  4. Steven Connor, ‘Unholy Smoke’, a talk given at Trailing Smoke, Art Workers Guild, London, 12 November 2008, accompanying the exhibition Smoke.
  5. See Mark Jackson, Allergy: The history of a modern malady (London: Reaktion).
  6. Mark Jackson (2004), ‘Cleansing the air and promoting health: the politics of pollution in post-war Britain’, in Medicine, the Market and Mass Media: Producing Health in the Twentieth Century, eds. Virginia Berridge and Kelly Loughlin (London: Routledge).
  7. Jackson, ‘The politics of pollution’.

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This blog is written by Jess Farr-Cox in the School of Arts at the University of Bristol, Research Secretary on the Life of Breath project.

A full description of the scope of research, including all the different research strands, can be found on the About the project page of the project website.

A brief introduction to how Bristol’s plant science might save the world

Posted on by janet.crompton

Global crop yields of wheat and corn are starting to decline, and the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests things are only going to get worse.

Last year I looked at previous research into what climate change might mean for global crop yields and found that overall crop yields would remain stable but regional declines could prove devastating for certain parts of the world. The definitive new report from the IPCC finds that actually a temperature rise of just 1°C will have negative impacts on the global yields of wheat, rice and maize, the three major crop plants. Food prices could increase by as much as 84% by 2050, with countries in the tropics being much more badly affected than northern Europe and North America.

All over the world, research is underway to find sustainable ways to feed the growing population. Scientists within the Cabot Institute’s Food Security research theme are working on a range of problems that should help us manage the threat that climate change presents.

Improving crop breeding

The average increase in yields of the world’s most important crops is slowing down, which means that supply is not keeping up with demand. Professor Keith Edwards and Dr. Gary Barker are leading UK research into wheat genomes, developing molecular markers linked to economically important traits. These markers are often Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), which are single letter differences in the DNA code. It’s possible to find SNPs linked to areas of the genome associated with disease resistance or increased yield, allowing breeders to rapidly check whether plants have the traits they are looking for.

Wheat is a vital crop for UK agriculture as well as global food security.

Water use in plants

Climate change means that many parts of the world will face extreme weather events like droughts. Clean, fresh water is already an increasingly valuable resource and is predicted to be a major source of global conflict in the future.

Plants produce microscopic pores known as stomata on their leaves and stems, which open to take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis but close in drought conditions to prevent excess water loss from the plant. Professor Alistair Hetherington’s group looks at the environmental conditions that affect stomatal formation and function, which will help to determine how droughts or higher carbon dioxide levels might affect crop productivity in the future and how we might enhance their water use efficiency.

Professor Claire Grierson’s group are working on root development, another important factor in managing how plants use water. Plants produce elongated root hairs which extend out into the substrate, increasing the root surface area in order to absorb more water and nutrients. If we can understand how root hairs are produced, we may be able to breed plants with even more efficient roots, able to extract enough water from nearly-dry soil in periods of low rainfall.

Each root hair is a single elongated cell that hugely increases a plant’s ability to take up water.

Preventing disease

 

Mycosphaerella graminicola is a wheat
pathogen that greatly reduces yield,
posing the biggest risk to wheat production worldwide.

A particular concern of climate change is that diseases may spread to new areas or be more destructive than they used to be. Professor Gary Foster and Dr. Andy Bailey are leading research into a variety of fungal and viral plant pathogens, which are responsible for devastating crop yields around the world. They use new molecular techniques to determine exactly how diseases begin and what treatments are effective against them, information that will be vital as plant disease patterns change across the world.

Crop pollination

It is still unclear whether climate change is affecting bees, however some research suggests that flowers requiring pollination are getting out of sync with bees and other pollinators. This might not be a problem for wind-pollinated crops like maize and barley, or self-pollinators like wheat and rice, however most fruits and oil crops rely on pollinators to transfer pollen from plant to plant. Dr. Heather Whitney researches the interaction between plants and their pollinators, particularly focussing on how petal structure, glossiness and iridescence can attract foraging bees.

Plants in a warmer world

As the planet warms, the IPCC has shown that there will be an overall decrease in crop productivity. Climate change has had an overall negative impact on crops in the past 10 years, with extreme droughts and flooding leading to rapid price spikes, especially in wheat. Dr. Kerry Franklin is investigating the interaction between light and temperature responses in plants. High temperatures induce a similar reaction in plants to that of shade; plants elongate, bend their leaves upwards and flower early, which is likely to reduce their overall yield. We need to understand the benefits and costs of plant responses to temperature, and look  for alternative growing approaches to maintain and hopefully even increase crop yields in a warmer world.

What does the future hold?

The IPCC report shows that if nothing changes, we are rapidly heading towards a global catastrophe. Food production will drop, which combined with the increasing population means that billions of people could face starvation. The IPCC is keen to highlight that new ways of growing and distributing food may mitigate some of the consequences that we can no longer avoid, and a key part of that is understanding how plants (and their pathogens) will respond to changes in temperature, water availability and increases in CO2.
The research by some of the University of Bristol’s plant scientists, highlighted above, should provide important knowledge that plant breeders can utilise to develop and grow crops more suited to the daunting world that climate change will present.
This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Cabot Institute, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci 

Sarah Jose
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