Transcript Food for Thought -outcomes of brainstorming activity

Improving food quality & safety
-omics & agricultural management:
driving forces?
At the outset of this workshop, members of COST 859 WG2 and
WG3 were asked
1.
What will an ideal plant be able to do?
2.
How far away are we from delivering it? Where are the
bottlenecks?
3.
What are the agronomical implications of adopting the ideal
plant?
4.
Are there agronomical strategies that will enhance/limit its
performance in the field?
Improving food quality & safety
1. What will an ideal plant be able to do?
An ideal plant will:
Limit uptake of As, Cd, Hg, PCDDs, PCDFs
Increase uptake of Fe, Zn, Se
Deliver high biomass
Non-food or contained processing
If it is to be accepted as a GMO, it will need to:
Be non-invasive
Have no relatives
Have reduced seed dispersion
Economic factors will drive selection
Examples of plants
for the starting
point
Tobacco
Sugar beet
Willow
Improving food quality & safety
1.(contin) What will an ideal plant be able to do?
 Plant-associated microorganisms –endophytic & rhizospheric bacteria
& mycorrhizae –also need to be considered.
 There will probably need to be several ideal plants selected for a
given set of environmental conditions
 Further options are to:
 Develop several accumulators for each metal
 Isolate the pollutant with a landscaping strategy based on
tolerant plants.
 Develop specialised crops for either micronutrients or extraction
of pollutants, with ecological fitness
 Select an ideal technology to suit a given plant
Improving food quality & safety
1.(contin) What will an ideal plant be able to do?
 Sustainability and economical viability (ie low inputs and max.
outcome, no set-asides) need also to be considered
 We need to understand perfectly how the ideal plant works, its
behaviour in the environment, and long-term stability, and avoid
creating new problems
 A crop according to the COST aims:
 exclude non-essential heavy metals and other pollutants
 detoxify organic compounds and incorporate inorganics to
innocuous compounds
 selectively take up or exclude elements/xenobiotics
 is there a possible plant with a good taste (both by its genome and
by the agricultural practice) and a good productivity?
Improving food quality & safety
2. How far away are we from delivering?
Where are the bottlenecks?
 Many genes are differentially expressed –but which are important?
 Strategies are needed to limit the expression of particular cell types or cell
numbers
 Gene expression is not all: we need to understand
 regulators necessary for protein expression and /or enzyme activity
 sub-cellular location of key proteins
 soil/seed relationships –eg. Zn story
 impact of antinutrients /promoters on bioavailability
 plant physiology in different conditions and link it with gene expression/gene
regulation
 storage mechanisms and chemical speciation in plant tissues
 plant diversity (intra-and inter species variability)
 We need to standardise plant cultures and tissue sampling to compare and link
different studies at the molecular level
Improving food quality & safety
2(contin). How far away are we from delivering?
Where are the bottlenecks?
 Delivery will be continuous process involving:
 selection of a candidate plant
 measurement of its natural variation
 development of an understanding of the mechanism of abilities
 tests using the perfected plant
 return with appropriate regulatory units to the original candidate
plant
 continue the cycle driven by food/feed requirements
 Define a combination of 2/3 species by rational criteria
Improving food quality & safety
3. What are the agronomical implications of
adopting the ideal plant?
 should be economical and high yielding
 compatible with other plants in a rotation
 As many soils are degraded through bad agricultural practices
(excess fertilisers related to the green revolution) it is necessary to
find plants that deliver good yields with few, natural fertilisers
 Relations with plant and animal communities may change
ecosystem functions
 grafted plants
Improving food quality & safety
4. Are there agronomical strategies that will
enhance/limit its performance in the field?
 Agronomic biofortification – but this could be expensive
 Crop rotation (successive use of plants with different abilities
may lead to accumulated exudates)
 Nutrient interactions in soils and plants are important
 Immobilise pollutants by soil amendments
 Optimise microbial assistance adapted to soil quality and
climate change
Improving food quality & safety
General discussion
 a case can be made for many types of culture provided energy
inputs are considered
 Hydroponic culture is cheap, safe and guaranteed;
 organic culture is perceived as expensive but can deliver high
yield with minimum input;
 sand culture?
 soil may have too many metals for plants
 consider fast-growing willow for metal accumulation
 the ‘tasks’ should be spread amongst the eco-community
 sustainability is essential: (eg consider proteins from plants vs
proteins from animals in an ecosystem context)
Improving food quality & safety
General discussion
 there are short-term goals and long-term goals – these will dictate
whether we work with a ‘real’ crop or a model
 RNAi technology could deliver short-term goals
 plant diversity is being effectively exploited
 brassica
 arabidopsis
 land IS polluted –the challenge is great
 we are close in our understanding of hyperaccumulators, but much
work is needed on eg oxidative stress; glutathione metabolism
 metabolic understanding is required