Microsatellites to enhance characterization, conservation and breeding value of Capsicum germplasm

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Vulnerabilities to agricultural production shocks: An extreme, plausible scenario for assessment of risk for the insurance sector

Climate risks pose a threat to the function of the global food system and therefore also a hazard to the global financial sector, the stability of governments, and the food security and health of the world’s population. This paper presents a method to assess plausible impacts of an agricultural production shock and potential materiality for global insurers. A hypothetical, near-term, plausible, extreme scenario was developed based upon modules of historical agricultural production shocks, linked under a warm phase El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) meteorological framework. The scenario included teleconnected floods and droughts in disparate agricultural production regions around the world, as well as plausible, extreme biotic shocks. In this scenario, global crop yield declines of 10% for maize, 11% for soy, 7% for wheat and 7% for rice result in quadrupled commodity prices and commodity stock fluctuations, civil unrest, significant negative humanitarian consequences and major financial losses worldwide. This work illustrates a need for the scientific community to partner across sectors and industries towards better-integrated global data, modeling and analytical capacities, to better respond to and prepare for concurrent agricultural failure. Governments, humanitarian organizations and the private sector collectively may recognize significant benefits from more systematic assessment of exposure to agricultural climate risk

Achieving food security in the face of climate change: Final report from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change

To bring our interconnected food and climate systems within a ‘safe operating space’ for people and the planet, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change has outlined seven major areas for policy action. Throughout 2011, the Commission worked to harvest the practical solutions detailed in the many recent authoritative reports on food security and climate change. By combining this thorough review of the substantive evidence base with the diverse perspectives and disciplinary expertise, the 13 Commissioners have crafted a succinct roadmap for policy makers. The Commission offers no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, but rather points the way forward to foster national, regional and sectoral innovation that can aggregate up to meaningful global change

Achieving food security in the face of climate change: Summary for policy makers from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change

The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change has reviewed the scientific evidence to identify a pathway to achieving food security in the context of climate change. Food systems must shift to better meet human needs and, in the long term, balance with planetary resources. This will demand major interventions, at local to global scales, to transform current patterns of food production, distribution and consumption. Investment, innovation, and deliberate effort to empower the world's most vulnerable populations will be required to construct a global food system that adapts to climate change and ensures food security while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and sustaining our natural resource base. Greatly expanded investments in sustainable agriculture, including improving supporting infrastructure and restoring degraded ecosystems, are an essential component of long-term economic development. The sooner they are made, the greater the benefits will be

ESTs, cDNA microarrays, and gene expression profiling : tools for dissecting plant physiology and development

Gene expression profiling holds tremendous promise for dissecting the regulatory mechanisms and transcriptional networks that underlie biological processes. Here we provide details of approaches used by others and ourselves for gene expression profiling in plants with emphasis on cDNA microarrays and discussion of both experimental design and downstream analysis. We focus on methods and techniques emphasizing fabrication of cDNA microarrays, fluorescent labeling, cDNA hybridization, experimental design, and data processing. We include specific examples that demonstrate how this technology can be used to further our understanding of plant physiology and development (specifically fruit development and ripening) and for comparative genomics by comparing transcriptome activity in tomato and pepper fruit

Professor Molly Jahn on supporting people's food choices

Although food security for all is a widely-held goal, it has not been achieved. Professor Jahn (University of Madison-Wisconsin, USA) on bringing US experiences and perspectives to the work of the commission, and bringing the commission's work to the farming community, policymakers and consumers in the U.S

Tandem gene duplication and recombination at the AT3 locus in the Solanaceae, a gene essential for capsaicinoid biosynthesis in Capsicum.

Capsaicinoids are compounds synthesized exclusively in the genus Capsicum and are responsible for the burning sensation experienced when consuming hot pepper fruits. To date, only one gene, AT3, a member of the BAHD family of acyltransferases, is currently known to have a measurable quantitative effect on capsaicinoid biosynthesis. Multiple AT3 paralogs exist in the Capsicum genome, but their evolutionary relationships have not been characterized well. Recessive alleles at this locus result in absence of capsaicinoids in pepper fruit. To explore the evolution of AT3 in Capsicum and the Solanaceae, we sequenced this gene from diverse Capsicum genotypes and species, along with a number of representative solanaceous taxa. Our results revealed that the coding region of AT3 is highly conserved throughout the family. Further, we uncovered a tandem duplication that predates the diversification of the Solanaceae taxa sampled in this study. This pair of tandem duplications were designated AT3-1 and AT3-2. Sequence alignments showed that the AT3-2 locus, a pseudogene, retains regions of amino acid conservation relative to AT3-1. Gene tree estimation demonstrated that AT3-1 and AT3-2 form well supported, distinct clades. In C. rhomboideum, a non-pungent basal Capsicum species, we describe a recombination event between AT3-1 and AT3-2 that modified the putative active site of AT3-1, also resulting in a frame-shift mutation in the second exon. Our data suggest that duplication of the original AT3 representative, in combination with divergence and pseudogene degeneration, may account for the patterns of sequence divergence and punctuated amino acid conservation observed in this study. Further, an early rearrangement in C. rhomboidium could account for the absence of pungency in this Capsicum species