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36 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM INTERNATIONAL NEWS in Tanzania and the policy is less stringent on transgenic research there is still more ground to be covered. Uganda is yet to pass the Biosafety Bill. The menace posed by the maize lethal necrosis MLN disease is a high priority given its threat to Africas food security. MLN diagnostics and management call for concerted action by all players in the maize value chain with regulatory frameworks playing a key role. CIMMYT has an open call for MLN screening for the cropping season which started at the end of May. Led by the A frican A gricultural Technology Foundation the WEMA project is now in its second phase which will end in 2017. Source International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center STATUS AUSTRALIA A fundamental question pursued by plant scientists worldwide for the past decade has been answered by a researcher team led by the University of Sydney in Australia. Our findings have major implications for our understanding of how plants adapt to the environment says Rodrigo Reis from the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Sydney and lead author of the findings published in Nature Plants. Whats more they indicate that similar processes occur in humans so the findings should be embraced by medical researchers and agricultural scientists alike. Our research provides crucial insights into how we might improve the environmental adaptation of plants including the yields of crop species he says. It also has the potential to advance gene therapies that are being researched to address aging and diseases including cancer. Although different cells and organs have exactly the same set of genes the ability of any organism to turn certain genes on or off within each cell is central to the functioning of the organism. It defines the identity of cells tissues and organs and controls responses to the environment. An important way in which this process is regulated is by tiny RNA molecules called microRNAs. Specific microRNAs control specific genes or sets of genes. The researchers discovered that the microRNA mechanism that controls whether a particular cell destroys or simply represses the mRNA molecules in plants relies on switcher genes. Now that the researchers have found the switchers it will be possible to manipulate them. Regulating the switcher mechanism should allow them to boost the capacity for environmental adaptation without interfering with development. According to the researchers this has clear applications for plants affected by climate change. Source University of Sydney STATUS CANADA Rachid Lahlali from Canadian Light Source together with a research team from the CLS National Research Council Canada University of Saskatchewan and Agriculture and Agri- Food Canada used the synchrotron to image both healthy and infected wheat spikes and florets to understand the development and progression of the fusarium head blight disease. FHB is a huge global problem caused by a fungus that attacks the head of the wheat plant causing the kernels to shrivel up and produce toxins. The disease affects wheat and barley crops in Canada China parts of southern Africa Eastern Europe South America and the United States. What we were trying to do using the synchrotron is to understand how the fungus infects the plant and see what changes are happening. What we found are biochemical markers at the point of where the infection begins says Lahlali. The research team used novel techniques developed at the CLS to image living wheat plants. According to Lahlali they saw the differences in the wheat infected by the fungus and experiments showed that the structures could be lost or altered and traits can be changed for the plants to become FHB resistant. Source Canadian Light Source STATUS ISRAEL An international consortium of public and private partners plans to sequence the genome of wild emmer an ancestor of modern wheat according to a report from SciDev.Net. Scientists from the group say that the nutrient-rich wheat could yield ideas to address global hunger by making modern wheat varieties healthier and hardier. Wild emmer is the progenitor of todays durum and bread wheat varieties. It was one of the first crops to be domesticated during the dawn of agriculture around 10000 years ago in the Middle East. Wild emmer wheat can be naturally crossed with domesticated wheat hence it is a potential source for wheat improvement says Assaf Distelfeld a wheat geneticist at Tel Aviv University Israel and lead researcher in the project. Sequencing wild emmer wheat could assist efforts to improve the quality and yields of modern varieties he says. For example wild emmer grain is rich in micronutrients such as iron and zinc. Transferring this trait to bread wheat could reduce malnutrition among people whose diet is based on this staple crop the scientists say. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations wheat provides roughly one-fifth of the calories eaten around the world. In addition we hope to identify genes that enable wheat to grow better in tough environments thus improving our food security Distelfeld says. The completed genome could increase opportunities for breeding programs in the developing world to address hunger which is one of the UNs proposed sustainable development goals. Source SciDev.Net STATUS GHANA The Convention Peoples Party CPP and some concerned organisations went on a peaceful march to press home their demand against Monsanto and the GMO Plant Breeders Bill in Ghana. The protest march on May 23 was to demand the withdrawal of the Plant Breeders Bill from Parliament. The groups argued that the passage of the bill into law will negatively impact on the growth of agriculture in Ghana. A leading member of the CPP professor Agyemang Badu Akosa bemoaned the use of technology to endanger the safety of crops and consequently human lives. He explained that this kind of technology might end up doing great disservice to us. You have to buy seeds every year in addition to the seeds you have to buy pesticides from the same company. And these pesticides will blight everything else except that seed. Is that the kind of agriculture that we want he asked. The general secretary of the CPP Ivor Greenstreet noted that the party will continue to push for the withdrawal of the Plant Breeders Bill from Parliament. We have been fighting for the independence of this nation and now we are fighting for the sovereignty of our seeds and our foods and also to allow the farmers to use the right seeds to feed our citizens he said. For his part the communications director of the Food Sovereignty Ghana Kweku Andoh Baffour repeated the groups pledge to fight against the passage of the Plant Breeders Bill. He however denied that the protest was contemptuous to an ongoing case in court where they are seeking an order to prevent government or any state institution to create and promote the usage of genetically modified seeds. Source Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.