Plant protection in sustainable systems of agriculture

Abstract

A comprehensive evaluation of 13 plant essential oils namely: caraway, chenopodium, cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, garlic, geranium, lemon, matrecary, peppermint, rose, rosemary and thyme and 14 of their monoterpenoidal constituents: borneol, camphor, carvacrol, carveol, carvone (R and S), chlorothymol, cineol, cinnamaldehyde, citronellol, eugenol, geraneol, menthol, and thymol was investigated for their antibacterial activity against the two phytopathogenic bacteria, Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Erwinia carotovora var carotovora. Trials for improving the antibacterial activity by either structure modification or mixing with the three synergists: piperonyl butoxide, Triton X-100 and Tween 20 were achieved. New N-methyl carbamate derivatives based on monoterpenoids were introduced. Cinnamon, clove, chenopodium, caraway, rosemary and thyme oils proved to possess good antibacterial activity. Thymol, chlorothymol, and carvacrol were potent against the tested bacteria and quite close to the effect of the standard. Conversion of menthol into its carbamate derivative gave good enhancement in the bactericidal activity at all concentrations compared to menthol itself. Also, the carbamate derivatives of β-citronellol and borneol improved the bactericidal activity against E. carotovora, but decreased it against A. tumefaciens. Synergistic antibacterial activity of the tested monoterpenoids was observed when combined with each of the three synergists particularly with Triton X-100.     

Crop pest management and food security in Nigerian agriculture

Abstract

Pests damage crops at different stages of growth on the field, at harvest, during transportation and in storage. This leads to 5 – 40% crop loss yearly and has a serious effect on the food security for the ever-increasing population of the country. The management of pests in crops to obtain a better yield is paramount for food security. The resource-poor farmers who produce a large percentage of the crop for consumption cannot afford expensive management of pests in order to meet the yearly target consumption level for the country. The different methods for the management of pests—cultural, biological, indigenous knowledge systems, use of resistant varieties, use of plant extracts, use of pheromones and the minimal use of chemicals in an integrated pest management system which hitherto existed as fragmented information—are discussed. Areas for future research are also mentioned.     

Plant nutrition for sustainable development and global health

Background

Plants require at least 14 mineral elements for their nutrition. These include the macronutrients nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and sulphur (S) and the micronutrients chlorine (Cl), boron (B), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni) and molybdenum (Mo). These are generally obtained from the soil. Crop production is often limited by low phytoavailability of essential mineral elements and/or the presence of excessive concentrations of potentially toxic mineral elements, such as sodium (Na), Cl, B, Fe, Mn and aluminium (Al), in the soil solution.

Scope

This article provides the context for a Special Issue of the Annals of Botany on ‘Plant Nutrition for Sustainable Development and Global Health’. It provides an introduction to plant mineral nutrition and explains how mineral elements are taken up by roots and distributed within plants. It introduces the concept of the ionome (the elemental composition of a subcellular structure, cell, tissue or organism), and observes that the activities of key transport proteins determine species-specific, tissue and cellular ionomes. It then describes how current research is addressing the problems of mineral toxicities in agricultural soils to provide food security and the optimization of fertilizer applications for economic and environmental sustainability. It concludes with a perspective on how agriculture can produce edible crops that contribute sufficient mineral elements for adequate animal and human nutrition.     

Plant biotechnology for food security and bioeconomy

This year is a special year for plant biotechnology. It was 30 years ago, on January 18 1983, one of the most important dates in the history of plant biotechnology, that three independent groups described Agrobacterium tumefaciens—mediated genetic transformation at the Miami Winter Symposium, leading to the production of normal, fertile transgenic plants (Bevan et al. in Nature 304:184–187, 1983; Fraley et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 80:4803–4807, 1983; Herrera-Estrella et al. in EMBO J 2:987–995, 1983; Vasil in Plant Cell Rep 27:1432–1440, 2008). Since then, plant biotechnology has rapidly advanced into a useful and valuable tool and has made a significant impact on crop production, development of a biotech industry and the bio-based economy worldwide.     

The fungal threat to global food security

Fungi threaten the security of food supply to human populations on several fronts. They destroy up to 30 % of crop products through disease and spoilage processes, while mycotoxin-producing fungi and opportunistic pathogens endanger food safety. Control of these fungi is vital for improving food security, but current measures are inadequate and further challenges due to human-population growth and climate change are escalating. Investment and innovation in research on strategies to control fungal growth, harnessed through international, inter-disciplinary collaboration across socio-economic boundaries, provides one key to rising to this challenge.     

The cult of the amateur in agriculture threatens food security

The incorporation of science and technology into agriculture has led to enormous growth in crop yields, providing food security in many countries. From the 1950s onwards there has been increasing interference in agricultural policy by a few scientists who are marginal to agriculture and from a variety of unqualified groups. These groups and individuals have used fear and anxiety and have greatly exaggerated minor problems to persuade an unqualified public of supposed dangers in food and to try and change agricultural policy. Fear and emotion do not lead to good policy, and the cult of the amateur that has developed could have serious repercussions on vital food security and future agriculture in developing countries; it must be soundly rejected.     

A genetic solution for the global food security crisis

<正>Due to the rapid increase in population and the decreasing availability of arable land and freshwater resources per capita,global crop production will need to double by 2050 to meet human food demand.In early March,the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) of the United Nations released a report saying that 45 countries are in urgent need of food aid and millions of people are in severe hunger(https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-update)...     

Fungal growth promotor endophytes: a pragmatic approach towards sustainable food and agriculture

Agricultural productivity suffers a heavy loss due to plant pathogens, insect pests and various abiotic stresses. Agriculture being the world’s largest economic sector, it is the need of time to find and establish the ideal strategy for sustainable agriculture and improvement in crop growth. Endophytes are microorganisms that asymptomatically grow within the plant tissues without causing any disease to the host. Endophytic fungi live in symbiotic association with plants and play an important role in plant growth promotion, higher seed yield and plants resistant to various biotic, abiotic stresses and diseases. Many are able to produce antimicrobial compounds, plant growth hormones and various agrochemical bioactive metabolites. These mycoendophytes hold enormous potential for the development of eco-friendly and economically viable agricultural products. In this review we focused on the endophytic fungi recovered from different medicinal plants, their active principles involved in plant growth enhancement and the applications of fungal endophytes in agriculture. Moreover, we also discussed about endophytic fungi and their pragmatic approach towards sustainable food and agriculture.     

有机农业与可持续发展

从国内外有机农业研究与生产发展状况出发,阐述了我国绿色食品研究的目标、生产中坚持的原则;结合国外有机农业和可持续农业的争论,论证了“替代农业”的理论和实践意义．与常规农业高强度农业生产方法相比。有机农业生产方式能够培肥土壤,对环境的影响很小．有机农业为代表的“替代农业”的研究与实践已近一个世纪,我国的绿色食品事业的发展已历时十几年．讨论有机农业“环境友好”和对人体健康为主要宗旨的食品生产方式,以及维持农业系统的可持续性问题,对我国绿色食品产业的发展具有积极的指导作用。     

Trees,soils, and food security

Trees have a different impact on soil properties than annual crops, because of their longer residence time, larger biomass accumulation, and longer-lasting, more extensive root systems. In natural forests nutrients are efficiently cycled with very small inputs and outputs from the system. In most agricultural systems the opposite happens. Agroforestry encompasses the continuum between these extremes, and emerging hard data is showing that successful agroforestry systems increase nutrient inputs, enhance internal flows, decrease nutrient losses and provide environmental benefits: when the competition for growth resources between the tree and the crop component is well managed. The three main determinants for overcoming rural poverty in Africa are (i) reversing soil fertility depletion, (ii) intensifying and diversifying land use with high-value products, and (iii) providing an enabling policy environment for the smallholder farming sector. Agroforestry practices can improve food production in a sustainable way through their contribution to soil fertility replenishment. The use of organic inputs as a source of biologically-fixed nitrogen, together with deep nitrate that is captured by trees, plays a major role in nitrogen replenishment. The combination of commercial phosphorus fertilizers with available organic resources may be the key to increasing and sustaining phosphorus capital. High-value trees, ''Cinderella'' species, can fit in specific niches on farms, thereby making the system ecologically stable and more rewarding economically, in addition to diversifying and increasing rural incomes and improving food security. In the most heavily populated areas of East Africa, where farm size is extremely small, the number of trees on farms is increasing as farmers seek to reduce labour demands, compatible with the drift of some members of the family into the towns to earn off-farm income. Contrary to the concept that population pressure promotes deforestation, there is evidence that demonstrates that there are conditions under which increasing tree planting is occurring on farms in the tropics through successful agroforestry as human population density increases. <br>     

Plant cryopreservation: a continuing requirement for food and ecosystem security

This issue of In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology—Plant is dedicated to current developments in liquid-nitrogen cryopreservation methods and their use in plant biology and germplasm preservation. The development of cryopreservation for storage of plant cells, tissues, and organs began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Long-term storage of in vitro cultures of secondary metabolite cell cultures, embryogenic cultures, clonal germplasm, endangered species, and transgenic products remains an important requirement for many scientists, organizations, and companies. The continued development of cryopreservation techniques and their application to new plants is the subject of this issue.