Posts

Posted on

Bacterial infection causes fungal resistance

Some root colonizing bacteria have been found to have beneficial effects on plant growth, and have thus been dubbed plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). Now Indian researchers have grown pigeonpea with and without a couple of different strains of PGPR, and also with and without rhizobium infection, and have then infected the plants with the fungus that causes wilt. ((S. Dutta, A.K. Mishra and B.S. Dileep Kumar. Induction of systemic resistance against fusarial wilt in pigeon pea through interaction of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and rhizobia. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, In Press, Uncorrected Proof, Available online 11 October 2007))

It turns out that pigeonpea plants infected with either PGPR or rhizobium developed “induced systemic resistance” to the fungus. But the resistance was actually best when both were present. I found this pretty amazing, but actually some googling reveals that it’s not that weird. It may have something to do with the increased levels of phenols in the leaves of bacterized plants. Or the reduced production of fusaric acid by the pathogen. In any case, “the results promise the combined use of PGPR and rhizobia for induction of systemic resistance against fusarial wilt in pigeon pea.” They are also another pretty amazing example of the interactions among agrobiodiversity.

Posted on

Garden Mosaics

Garden Mosaics is “a science education and outreach program based at Cornell University that has been thriving in more than two dozen cities” in the US and has recently spread to South Africa. Marianne Krasny, a professor at Cornell, kept a blog of her 2006 trip to southern Africa. I wonder what they think about urban fruit gleaning…

Posted on

Another bad joke

“Conserving Biodiversity – The UK Approach” has just been launched, and very worthy it is too. There are many sensible suggestions, including about what individuals can do. And there’s much talk of “joined up working across the public, voluntary and business sectors,” and of “a more holistic or ecosystems approach” which recognizes “the interconnections between living things, their environment, and the services they provide.” In fact, the press release kinda reminded me of a recent article about buzzwords whose whole first paragraph consisted of one buzzword after another.

The one buzzword that’s missing, of course, is agrobiodiversity. But you knew that.

Despite all the hand-waving about joined-up holistic interconnected strategic partnerships, in 24 pages there is one — oblique — reference to traditional farming, and one sentence on the desirability of something called “agri-environment schemes.” There’s also a weird table on the implementation of the strategy in the four countries that make up the UK, which is supposed to outline the biodiversity duty of public bodies as determined by legislation (p. 10). The word “agriculture” appears in the sections on England and Northern Ireland, but it really is very difficult to understand what that actually means. And that’s it.

Maybe somebody who knows more about this document — and the process which gave rise to it — can help us out here. Was the exclusion of agricultural biodiversity from the national strategic framework for biodiversity conservation in the UK a matter of conscious choice? Or did it just fall through the cracks, as usual?