Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8472 / SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2016 STATUS AUSTRALIA University of Adelaide researchers made a break- through in investigating salt tolerance in plants, which could lead to new salt toler- ant varieties of crops, and also answer unresolved ques- tions in plant biology. The researchers, also from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology and in collaboration with the University’s School of Medicine, have discovered that a protein known to con- trol salt balance in animals works the same way in plants. The research, published in the Plant Cell and Environment, found that in plants, as in animals, a group of proteins, a type of ‘aquaporin,’ can trans- port salt ions and water. Aquaporins have long been known to act as pores by transporting water across membranes in plants and animals, and they play critical roles in controlling the water content of cells. But, until now, it was not known they could do the same with sodium ions (salt). “In animals, aquaporins are extremely important in water filtration in the kidney,” says project leader professor Steve Tyerman. “In plants they can do the same thing – filter the water that goes through the plant. But under certain con- ditions some aquaporins can also let sodium ions through. “This may explain a lot of unsolved problems in plant world STATUS A look at seed industry developments around the globe. Advocates and skeptics of the seed industry work to advance their cause through policy, partnerships and plant breeding. biology, for instance how salt gets into the plants in the first place.” The researchers believe these “double-barrelled” aquapor- ins may be the elusive pro- teins that let sodium ions,─the toxic component of salt,─in and out of plant roots. Since the early 1990s research- ers have known that salt enters plant roots in saline conditions via pores in the membrane, but the identity of these pores has remained a mystery. This particular aquaporin is abundant on the surface of roots. “We discovered that it has characteristics similar to the properties previously identified for the pores responsible for sodium ion transport,” says Caitlin Byrt, co-lead author and postdoc- toral fellow in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. “This opens new possibilities for modifying how plants respond to high salt and low water conditions.” The researchers say that this discovery will help them target ways of blocking the pathway of salt into plants. STATUS GHANA Three civil society organiza- tions have called on politi- cians to make the protection of local seeds a campaign message as a sign of their readiness to forestall the pre- dominance of foreign seeds. The organizations are the Alliance for Food Sovereignty for Africa, the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development and the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana. “We want our parliamen- tarians to assure us that if we vote for them, they will resist any external pressure to ratify the Arusha African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) proto- col,” says Ben Guri, the chair- man of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty for Africa. ARIPO is an inter-governmen- tal organization for coopera- tion among African states in patent and intellectual property matters. The Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants was adopted by ARIPO member states in 2015. The protocol is modelled on the 1991 Act of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. Guri says the civil society organizations were denied participation in the negotia- tion process but were invited only to participate in the signing process, “giving us no room to make suggestions.” “We think that we should have a seed law that gives farmers some right to be allowed to select how tra- ditionalists want farming to proceed,” Guri says. Wilberforce Laate, deputy executive direc- tor of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development,