Meristem: Top Stories

Populations of crop pests that develop resistance to common controls is a growing problem for the agriculture industry. A key factor may be a lingering silver bullet mentality, says Dr. George Clayton, an Integrated Crop Management researcher. As a baseball fan, Clayton knows reliance on a single tool is bad strategy. A 95 mph fast ball is a pretty reliable weapon, but if the hitter knows to expect it every time, the pitcher is asking for trouble.

"There's no doubt reliance on single disease control strategies to combat a given pest is one of our greatest problems," says Clayton, of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. "You end up with a single mode of action for pest control, which is very easy for the pest population to adapt to and overcome. Genetic resistance is a good example. Dr. Kelly Turkington has done some studies where a new variety with good resistance can quickly have that resistance broken down in just a few years, if that's the only control the producer uses.

"Look at the breakdown of scald resistant barley varieties in Alberta. Look at the build-up of resistance to Group 1 and Group 2 herbicides. Look at the recent problems with Ascochyta blight in chickpea. We simply can't afford to be relying on single solutions, or even in a lot of cases double solutions. We need to take advantage of all the tools at our disposal, and take a more sophisticated approach using integrated strategies."

Economist's reality check

Funding breeding efforts to develop new crop varieties is an excellent investment. But no matter how many times that is proven, or how well it is understood, there's simply no getting around the farm income crisis and the need for a better model to sustain Canada's crop breeding effort.

That was the analysis presented by Dr. Richard Gray, head of agricultural economics at the University of Saskatchewan, in a plenary session at the 2006 Prairie Registration Recommending Committee for Grain (PRRCG) meeting.

Gray confirmed the impressive returns on plant breeding research - approximately 40 percent return on breeding investment for Canadian prairie crops as a whole - but he also delivered a reality check on how that success story is currently dwarfed and threatened by problems in agriculture.

"The farm sector is definitely facing a long-run farm income crisis," says Gray. "Despite a billion dollars in support, we're going to see negative net farm income again this year. If you take out government support, there hasn't been a year in the last five that agriculture has made a dollar."

No matter how good the returns, that situation makes the prospects slim for additional government funding for crop breeding. Still, says Gray, there's an opportunity for better funding and crop breeding models if the crop development community can come together with a unified vision and message.

"Governments are viewing agriculture as sort of a basketcase, thinking maybe if we just give it a bit of medicine it'll go away. But as others are saying, if we can get our institutions on track, if we can get further productivity improvements, agriculture can be a viable sector again."

'Rumen magic' to boost dairy and beef health value

A little "rumen magic" could go a long way to boosting the health value of dairy and beef products, says a team of livestock researchers.

Scientists in the CLA Network are taking advantage of the unique ability of the rumen to act as a virtual factory for producing natural conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a type of beneficial fat that early animal studies have linked to considerable potential for battling chronic disease in humans.

"The more we learn about the ability of the rumen to produce natural CLA, the more good news there is for consumers and for livestock industries," says Dr. Erasmus Okine, a ruminant nutritionist at the University of Alberta. "We know that rumen processes produce CLA that is transferred into dairy and beef products. We also know levels of this natural CLA can be increased substantially in these products through simple changes to common livestock production practices."

Reprintable with permission. Reproduction of this article - in whole or in part, in print or electronic - requires direct permission from Meristem Information Resources, Ltd. Contact Meristem directly to request reprint permission.

Archives

The need for curveballs

Economist's reality check

'Rumen magic' to boost dairy and beef health value