Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators.

Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today's globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly--depending largely on the stakeholder perspective--as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 "integrated" issues--24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues--that are composed of 318 "component" issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework

Functional Interactions between the erupted/tsg101 Growth Suppressor Gene and the DaPKC and rbf1 Genes in Drosophila Imaginal Disc Tumors

BACKGROUND: The Drosophila gene erupted (ept) encodes the fly homolog of human Tumor Susceptibility Gene-101 (TSG101), which functions as part of the conserved ESCRT-1 complex to facilitate the movement of cargoes through the endolysosomal pathway. Loss of ept or other genes that encode components of the endocytic machinery (e.g. synatxin7/avalanche, rab5, and vps25) produces disorganized overgrowth of imaginal disc tissue. Excess cell division is postulated to be a primary cause of these 'neoplastic' phenotypes, but the autonomous effect of these mutations on cell cycle control has not been examined. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we show that disc cells lacking ept function display an altered cell cycle profile indicative of deregulated progression through the G1-to-S phase transition and express reduced levels of the tumor suppressor ortholog and G1/S inhibitor Rbf1. Genetic reductions of the Drosophila aPKC kinase (DaPKC), which has been shown to promote tumor growth in other fly tumor models, prevent both the ept neoplastic phenotype and the reduction in Rbf1 levels that otherwise occurs in clones of ept mutant cells; this effect is coincident with changes in localization of Notch and Crumbs, two proteins whose sorting is altered in ept mutant cells. The effect on Rbf1 can also be blocked by removal of the gamma-secretase component presenilin, suggesting that cleavage of a gamma-secretase target influences Rbf1 levels in ept mutant cells. Expression of exogenous rbf1 completely ablates ept mutant eye tissues but only mildly affects the development of discs composed of cells with wild type ept. CONCLUSIONS: Together, these data show that loss of ept alters nuclear cell cycle control in developing imaginal discs and identify the DaPKC, presenilin, and rbf1 genes as modifiers of molecular and cellular phenotypes that result from loss of ept

Genetic Interactions between the Drosophila Tumor Suppressor Gene ept and the stat92E Transcription Factor

Tumor Susceptibility Gene-101 (TSG101) promotes the endocytic degradation of transmembrane proteins and is implicated as a mutational target in cancer, yet the effect of TSG101 loss on cell proliferation in vertebrates is uncertain. By contrast, Drosophila epithelial tissues lacking the TSG101 ortholog erupted (ept) develop as enlarged undifferentiated tumors, indicating that the gene can have anti-growth properties in a simple metazoan. A full understanding of pathways deregulated by loss of Drosophila ept will aid in understanding potential links between mammalian TSG101 and growth control.We have taken a genetic approach to the identification of pathways required for excess growth of Drosophila eye-antennal imaginal discs lacking ept. We find that this phenotype is very sensitive to the genetic dose of stat92E, the transcriptional effector of the Jak-Stat signaling pathway, and that this pathway undergoes strong activation in ept mutant cells. Genetic evidence indicates that stat92E contributes to cell cycle deregulation and excess cell size phenotypes that are observed among ept mutant cells. In addition, autonomous Stat92E hyper-activation is associated with altered tissue architecture in ept tumors and an effect on expression of the apical polarity determinant crumbs.These findings identify ept as a cell-autonomous inhibitor of the Jak-Stat pathway and suggest that excess Jak-Stat signaling makes a significant contribution to proliferative and tissue architectural phenotypes that occur in ept mutant tissues

Revised chloropicrin use requirements impact strawberry growers unequally

Buffer zone requirements are by nature spatial and their effects are site-specific, with some fields — because of their location — more impacted than others. Using a set of strawberry fields in Ventura County that were preplant soil fumigated in 2013 as a baseline, we examined how much acreage eligible for chloropicrin fumigation would have been lost if either of two buffer zone distance regulations had been in effect: any one of the four sets of alternative distances proposed in May 2013 by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) or the buffer zone distances DPR released in January 2015. Buffer zone distances are based on several factors including the anticipated protection of human health, referred to as the percentile of protection. We find that the effects are highly dependent on the percentile of protection. From 4% to 29% of the fumigated blocks analyzed would have had an increase in buffer zone acreage depending on the percentile of protection. In those blocks, the share of total acreage that would no longer have been eligible for fumigation with chloropicrin varied from 3% to 45%. We also identify strategies that growers employed to reduce required buffer zone distances under use requirements in effect in 2013. The most frequently used strategies were using a tarp type with the lowest buffer zone requirements (“60% tarp”), extending a buffer onto a neighboring property, road and/or farm path, and reducing application rates. The results have an important policy implication: spatially defined use regulations have very different effects for different fields; aggregated industry-level analyses will miss the range of impacts on growers

Revised chloropicrin use requirements impact strawberry growers unequally

Buffer zone requirements are by nature spatial and their effects are site-specific, with some fields — because of their location — more impacted than others. Using a set of strawberry fields in Ventura County that were preplant soil fumigated in 2013 as a baseline, we examined how much acreage eligible for chloropicrin fumigation would have been lost if either of two buffer zone distance regulations had been in effect: any one of the four sets of alternative distances proposed in May 2013 by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) or the buffer zone distances DPR released in January 2015. Buffer zone distances are based on several factors including the anticipated protection of human health, referred to as the percentile of protection. We find that the effects are highly dependent on the percentile of protection. From 4% to 29% of the fumigated blocks analyzed would have had an increase in buffer zone acreage depending on the percentile of protection. In those blocks, the share of total acreage that would no longer have been eligible for fumigation with chloropicrin varied from 3% to 45%. We also identify strategies that growers employed to reduce required buffer zone distances under use requirements in effect in 2013. The most frequently used strategies were using a tarp type with the lowest buffer zone requirements (“60% tarp”), extending a buffer onto a neighboring property, road and/or farm path, and reducing application rates. The results have an important policy implication: spatially defined use regulations have very different effects for different fields; aggregated industry-level analyses will miss the range of impacts on growers

Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators.

Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today's globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly--depending largely on the stakeholder perspective--as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 "integrated" issues--24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues--that are composed of 318 "component" issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework

Percentage of integrated issues considered by each perspective.

<p>Organized sequentially by capital group. Percentage is an average all sampled documents and communications from all three perspectives. Note: Many livelihoods frameworks treat capital groups themselves as very broad issues, and these are not included in this figure. If counted, the breakdown of capital group mentions from the livelihoods perspective is Human (42%), Natural (83%), physical/financial (66.6%), social/political (75%), showing much higher coverage across capital groups, particularly for natural issues.</p

Number of related indicators per integrated issue.

<p>Number of related indicators per integrated issue.</p

Integrated issues linked to sources by perspective.

<p>Each link represents an individual source that mentions the issue. Size of node (and text) corresponds to the number of links. Issue nodes are distributed using a force-directed algorithm (Force Atlas 2 using Gephi 0.8.2) and hence closest to perspectives with which they share the most links. See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0128752#pone.0128752.s004" target="_blank">S3 Dataset.csv</a> for data on each individual source and their issue links.</p

Forty-four integrated sustainability issues (24 impact and 36 vulnerability).

<p>See Information B in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0128752#pone.0128752.s001" target="_blank">S1 File</a> for detailed descriptions of each integrated issue.</p