Agriculture

Travis Bayer of Asilomar Bio in the U.S. is developing a low-cost compound that mimics the plant hormone strigolactone to help eradicate the parasitic weed Striga, which is jeopardizing food security and income in smallholder farms across sub-Saharan Africa. Striga lies dormant in arable soil, and is activated by strigolactone produced by plants including staple crops such as maize and rice. Striga then attaches to the plant's roots, steals water and nutrients, and produces toxins, and can completely devastate crops.

Tim Karr of Arizona State University in the U.S. will develop live bacterial-based contraceptive vaccines that deliver testis- and sperm-specific antigens to sterilize rodent populations that destroy food crops. They will also develop an oral bait that can safely and effectively introduce these contraceptive vaccines to the pests.

Zhongguo Xiong of the University of Arizona in the U.S. seeks to modify existing genes in cassava plants that are essential for the translation and replication of Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV). This would lead to virus-immune cassava without depending on conventional genetic engineering.

Jeffrey Coleman of Rhode Island Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in the U.S. seeks to identify isolates of the fungus Fusarium that are capable of establishing a beneficial relationship with important crop plants in Sub-Saharan Africa. These endophytes could be used to increase crop production while preventing the invasion of disease-causing pathogens.

George Lomonossoff of the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom will investigate the ability of plant symbiotic bacteria to deliver plasmids that express viral coat proteins to crop plant cells and thereby stimulate immunity against new viral infections.

Wilmer Cuellar of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia seeks to modify the autophagy pathway in plants, which is the mechanism that organisms use to sequester and degrade damaged proteins, to instead target and destroy proteins of pathogenic viruses. This new strategy for virus elimination in plants will first be tested in cassava, but could be functional in other plant-virus systems as well.

Nicholas Smilanich of Sensor Development Corporation in the U.S. will develop a portable point and click device that analyzes gases to detect the pheromones of the larger grain borer, which is an insect pest, and the mold gases associated with aflatoxin produced by fungi that infect crops. Low-cost manufacturing of the aflatoxin and pest infestation detector would be possible with techniques commonly used in the electronics industry.

Paul Dyson and colleagues at the Institute of Life Science at Swansea University in the United Kingdom will investigate the potential to exploit the symbiotic gut bacteria of the Western Flower Thrips to deliver interfering RNA that will disable the larvae of this major agricultural pest. Systemic prolonged gene silencing in thrips could be used as an innovative biocontrol strategy and a valuable research tool.

John Swaddle and Mark Hinders of The College of William and Mary in the U.S. will design and test controlled "nets" of sound that block vocal communication and hearing in pest bird species, causing them to move to other areas where they can hear each other and predators. Driving these pests away from crop areas should substantially reduce crop losses.

Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation in the U.S. will develop an engineered strain of bacteria used to ferment beans in traditional Asian and African diets, to display an antigen from the Tuberculosis bacterium. The engineered bacillus will then be used to make the traditional Asian dish natto, which can serve as a kind of oral vaccine to elicit a strong immune response. If successful, this strategy can be used to introduce a variety of disease antigens through culturally accepted foods.