Building Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks and Stresses : A paper on Action Track 5

Transforming food systems involves five action tracks: i) access to safe and nutritious food, ii) sustain- able consumption, iii) nature-positive production, iv) equitable livelihood, and v) resilience to shocks and stress. Action Track 5 of the Food Systems Summit aims to ensure food system resilience in the face of in- creasing stresses from climate change, population growth and conflict over limited natural resources. We identify five distinct capacities that are key to a resilient food system in the face of these shocks: (i) to anticipate, (ii) to prevent, (iii) to absorb, (iv) to adapt to an evolving risk and (v) to transform in cases where the current food system is no longer sustainable. Resilience at the individual, community, government and global food system level must be built in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for current and future generations are not compromised anywhere in the world. This means that it is equitable in a financial sense (economic resilience), it is supportive of the entire community (social resilience), and it minimizes harmful impacts on the natural environment (ecological resilience). There are a number of key trade-offs which must be navigated as we strive to achieve greater food system resilience. These include the need to deliver short term humanitarian aid without jeopardizing long run development, mitigation of rising global temperatures even as the food system adapts to the inevitable changes in the earth’s climate, taking advantage of the benefits of globalization while avoiding the downsides, and encouraging agricultural production and boosting rural incomes while also protecting the environment. All of these trade-offs become more pronounced in the context of small farms operating in marginal environments. In order to address these trade-offs, cooperation and coordination across policy makers, local communities and public and private institutions and investors will be required. A range of local, regional, national and global solutions covering different parts and contexts of the food system have been reviewed to understand progress and challenges in building resilience to improve food security. The resilience framework is helpful to conceptualise complex problems related to food security and allows us to point to important challenges that need to be overcome. From this analysis we conclude that developing an operational resilience approach is always context-specific and requires the involvement of relevant local, national and international actors, organisations and agencies. Hence, there is no single game changing solution that will ensure resilience across multiple food security challenges. Instead, adopting resilience as a systems approach to support the conceptualisation and operationalization considering the respective actors will contribute to the development of context-specific solutions. Beyond that, much will be gained by highlighting successful solutions and facilitating exchange of tools, data, information and knowledge and capacity. This will also contribute to the further develop of the resilience approach as a key concept to achieve food security

Contributions of available substrates and activities of trophic microbial community to methanogenesis in vegetative and reproductive rice rhizospheric soil

Abstract: Potential of methane production and trophic microbial activities at rhizospheric soil during rice cv. Supanburi 1 cultivation were determined by laboratory anaerobic diluents vials. The methane production was higher from rhizospheric than non-rhizospheric soil, with the noticeable peaks during reproductive phase (RP) than vegetative phase (VP). Glucose, ethanol and acetate were the dominant available substrates found in rhizospheric soil during methane production at both phases. The predominance activities of trophic microbial consortium in methanogenesis, namely fermentative bacteria (FB), acetogenic bacteria (AGB), acetate utilizing bacteria (AB) and acetoclastic methanogens (AM) were also determined. At RP, these microbial groups were enhanced in the higher of methane production than VP. This correlates with our finding that methane production was greater at the rhizospheric soil with the noticeable peaks during RP (1,150 ± 60 nmol g dw ) with its high activity at RP, compared to the less activity with AM number at VP (9.8x10 2 cell g dw -1 ). Levels of AM are low in the total microbial population, being less than 1% of AB. These evidences revealed that the microbial consortium of these two phases were different

Subcellular proteomic characterization of the high-temperature stress response of the cyanobacterium Spirulina platensis

The present study examined the changes in protein expression in Spirulina platensis upon exposure to high temperature, with the changes in expression analyzed at the subcellular level. In addition, the transcriptional expression level of some differentially expressed proteins, the expression pattern clustering, and the protein-protein interaction network were analyzed. The results obtained from differential expression analysis revealed up-regulation of proteins involved in two-component response systems, DNA damage and repair systems, molecular chaperones, known stress-related proteins, and proteins involved in other biological processes, such as capsule formation and unsaturated fatty acid biosynthesis. The clustering of all differentially expressed proteins in the three cellular compartments showed: (i) the majority of the proteins in all fractions were sustained tolerance proteins, suggesting the roles of these proteins in the tolerance to high temperature stress, (ii) the level of resistance proteins in the photosynthetic membrane was 2-fold higher than the level in two other fractions, correlating with the rapid inactivation of the photosynthetic system in response to high temperature. Subcellular communication among the three cellular compartments via protein-protein interactions was clearly shown by the PPI network analysis. Furthermore, this analysis also showed a connection between temperature stress and nitrogen and ammonia assimilation

Agricultural biotechnology and the poor : proceedings of an international conference, Washington, D.C., 21-22 October 1999. Thailand: biotechnology for farm products and agro-industries.

Article "Thailand: biotechnology for farm products and agro-industries"  from "Agricultural biotechnology and the poor : proceedings of an international conference, Washington, D.C., 21-22 October 1999"

Effect of Substrate Feeding Concentration on Initial Biofilm Development in Anaerobic Hybrid Reactor

To elucidate the effect of substrate concentration on biofilm development, glucose concentrations of 500 and 1,000 mg/L were used.  At an early stage, biofilm development at both concentrations was not significantly different (P=0.621).  After removing suspended biomass at 24 operational hours, the biofilm development at high substrate concentration was higher than at lower concentration.  At 72 operational hours, the amounts of attached biomass at low and high glucose feeding were 9.04±1.17 and 28.58±2.72 g VSS/m2, respectively.  The activities of acidogens, acetogens, and methanogens at the low glucose concentration were 0.334, 0.016 and 0.003 g COD/g VSS/h, and those at the high glucose concentration were 0.145, 0.003 and 0.001 g COD/g VSS/h, respectively.  Moreover, the ratio of methanogenic activity at low glucose concentration was higher than at high glucose concentration.  The glucose utilization at low and high feeding concentrations was 33% and 27%, respectively.  These results indicated that rapid biofilm development by using high substrate concentration would be less beneficial if unbalance of methanogenic ratio was found in biofilm