Ag Technology Archives - Department of Soil and Crop Sciences

Adaptive swarm robotics could revolutionize smart agriculture

3Dec

Written by: Steve Kuhlmann, Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Texas A&M University System researchers are working to establish a configurable, adaptive and scalable swarm system consisting of unmanned ground and aerial robots designed to assist in collaborative smart agriculture tasks.

The use of adaptive swarm robotics has the potential to provide significant environmental and economic benefits to smart agriculture efforts globally through the implementation of autonomous ground and aerial technologies.

A rotary wing drone captures images over a weed research plot at Texas A&M University, College Station. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Dr. Muthu Bagavathiannan)

“Agricultural robots, when used properly, can improve product quantity and quality while lowering the cost,” said Kiju Lee, associate professor and Charlotte and Walter Buchanan Faculty Fellow in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution and the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M.

A swarm robotics project is being led jointly by Lee, Muthukumar Bagavathiannan, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research weed scientist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Soil and Crop Sciences; and Juan Landivar, Ph.D., center director at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Corpus Christi.

Other investigators on the team include John Cason, Ph.D., AgriLife Research peanut breeder, Stephenville; Robert Hardin, Ph.D., agricultural engineering assistant professor, Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering; Luis Tedeschi, Ph.D., AgriLife Research ruminant nutritionist, Department of Animal Science; Dugan Um, Ph.D., associate professor, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Department of Mechanical Engineering; and Mahendra Bhandari, Ph.D., AgriLife Research crop physiologist, Corpus Christi.

Funding is being provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture through the National Robotics Initiative 3.0 program.

Configurable, adaptive and scalable swarm
The entire multidisciplinary group is working to establish a configurable, adaptive and scalable swarm, CASS, system consisting of unmanned ground and aerial robots designed to assist in collaborative smart agriculture tasks.

“We will develop the technical and theoretical groundwork for the deployable, scalable swarm system consisting of a physical robotic swarm of both ground and aerial robots, a digital twin simulator for low- and high-fidelity simulations, and an easy-to-use user interface for farmers to put this CASS system into use,” Lee said.

This approach to smart agriculture, enabled by the CASS technology, could result in long-term benefits thanks to reduced waste through better logistics, optimal use of water and fertilizer and an overall reduction in the use of pesticides.

The research team believes that by utilizing smaller machines to reduce soil compaction and working to avoid herbicide-resistant weeds through nonchemical methods of control, significant ecological and environmental benefits can be achieved.

Recent trends in smart agriculture focused on the usage of large machinery have had the objective of maximizing product quantity and minimizing costs — an approach that has resulted in some economic and environmental concerns.

Lee said issues including soil compaction, a limited ability to address small-scale field variability and reduced crop productivity are some of the long-term issues that have emerged from this approach.

CASS offers flexibility in addressing challenges

By leveraging the flexibility of swarm robotics, the CASS system is intended to become a platform technology that can be configured to meet application-specific needs.

“Current trends in precision agriculture and smart farming mostly focus on larger machinery or a single or a small number of robots equipped and programmed to perform highly specialized tasks,” Lee said. “This project will serve as a critical pathway toward our long-term goal of establishing a deployable easy-to-use swarm robotic system that can serve as a universal platform for broad agriculture applications.”

Although other systems employing swarm robotics exist, they are typically designed to perform just one specific task rather than being adaptable to a variety of situations.

Moving forward, the team will have the opportunity to address several challenges related to the complex and varying scale of agriculture applications through the design and implementation of their system.

“Despite the great potential, swarm robotics research itself has been largely confined to low-fidelity simulations and laboratory experiments,” Lee said. “These rarely represent the intricacies of an agricultural field environment. Also, human-swarm collaboration has not been extensively explored, and user-in-the-loop development and evaluation approaches are needed, in particular for the target end-users — in our case, farmers.”

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Fast, accurate way to check peanut plants for healthy traits

3Jul

By: Olga Kuchment

The lengthy process of breeding better peanut plants can be sped up by using a biophysics technique, Raman spectroscopy.

Texas A&M AgriLife biophysicists and plant breeders have demonstrated the use of Raman spectroscopy to quickly scan the levels of oleic acid in peanuts. Oleic acid, a monounsaturated oil, lends peanuts a longer shelf life. The oil is also healthy for the heart.

The Raman spectrometer may help researchers screen plants for beneficial traits more quickly, easily and cost-effectively.

They also used the method to determine how resistant plants are to nematode pests.

Using Raman spectroscopy is quicker, cheaper and more portable than standard approaches of screening peanut varieties for these beneficial traits. The study was recently published in Scientific Reports.

“We’ve shown that the method can save a huge amount of time in our screening process,” said John Cason, Ph.D., coauthor and Texas A&M AgriLife Research peanut breeder, Stephenville. “You can get a ‘fingerprint’ of a particular peanut and tease out large amounts of information. The possibilities are endless.”

“Raman spectroscopy is commonplace in biochemistry but mostly unknown in the world of farmers and plant breeders,” said Dmitry Kurouski, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Yet it is portable, inexpensive, accurate and fast, and can transform digital farming.”

Funding for the study came from AgriLife Research and the Governor’s University Research Initiative. In addition, the Texas Peanut Producers Board and Southwestern Peanut Shellers Association provided funding for Cason’s group to buy a hand-held Raman spectrometer.

Benefits of Raman versus established methods

In the past, if Cason wanted to analyze the pest-resistance of plants or the fatty acid content of peanuts, he would extract DNA from plants or send samples to an off-site lab for infrared analysis. Both methods are considerably more time-, cost- and labor-intensive than Raman, Cason said.

For this project, the collaborators used a commercially available, hand-held Raman spectrometer, a device about the size of a shoebox. Raman spectroscopy measures how materials scatter harmless laser light. Each material has a specific scattering “fingerprint” that offers clues about many types of molecular information in a one-second scan. Running a scan is relatively straightforward, Cason said, but the collaborators are still developing and fine-tuning ways to analyze the data.

John Cason, Texas A&M AgriLife peanut breeder, is testing a hand-held Raman spectrometer to analyze peanut plant traits in the field.

Cason’s team received training and guidance from Kurouski and three young scientists from his lab: Charles Farber, a graduate student; Lee Sanchez, a research assistant; and Stanislav Rizevsky, Ph.D., a visiting scholar.

Scans of peanut leaves could distinguish nematode-resistant and susceptible plants with roughly 75% accuracy. What’s more, scans of peanut seeds could distinguish with 82% accuracy the varieties with high levels of oleic acid.

Other peanut projects in the works

The team is currently expanding its studies of peanut plants. The first goal is to use Raman to quickly isolate peanut varieties with high tolerance for drought conditions. The team is also looking into expanding its studies of nutritional content to help breed more nutritious peanut varieties.

One limitation of the technology is that the scanner needs to be in contact with the material being scanned. Kurouski’s team is working on a Raman “telescope” to enable scans of plants that are 100 feet away.

“Biophysicists and peanut breeders don’t usually associate in the same circles, but this has been a good project,” Cason said. “I don’t think it will be the last from this team.”

Texas cotton farmers adjusting in wake of court ruling on dicamba

23Jun

ByL Kay Ledbetter

The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service stands ready to advise producers on agronomic alternatives and options in the wake of a June 3 ruling from the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to immediately vacate the registrations of three dicamba products, Xtendimax, FeXapan and Engenia.

Cotton producers across the nation are having to rethink their management after a recent court ruling on dicamba herbicide products. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo)

Approximately 80% of the state’s cotton has been planted, and an estimated 60-80% is XtendFlex cotton – a dicamba-tolerant cotton that would have allowed the application of available registered dicamba herbicide products for weed control.

Producers are working to determine their next moves, which are somewhat complicated by the different actions being taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and the Texas Department of Agriculture, TDA, as well as those pesticide registrants involved in the litigation.

Dan Hale, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension associate director, College Station, suggests producers comply with the EPA existing stocks provisions by making allowable applications of products according to the specific product labels.

AgriLife Extension cotton specialists and county agents also suggest producers consider selecting alternative seed options with other herbicide technologies such as 2,4-D, if they have not planted their 2020 cotton crops.

Background

In 2016, EPA granted conditional, two-year registrations for these three products. When this conditional registration was set to expire in late 2018, EPA approved another conditional two-year registration for the products, with additional restrictions on use, said Scott Nolte, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension state weed specialist.

In addition to being federally restricted-use pesticides, these dicamba products were “state-limited-use” pesticides in Texas, requiring specific applicator training annually prior to use, Nolte said. AgriLife Extension has offered this training to more than 7,000 producers in 2018, 4,500 in 2019 and 3,200 this year.

Status of the cotton crop across Texas

Reports from Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agronomists from around the state provided these estimates:

In the South Plains, an estimated 80% of the producers use the dicamba technology and at least 80% of that seed is already in the ground, said Murilo Maeda, Ph.D., Lubbock.
In the Coastal Bend region, roughly 50% of the already-planted cotton crop is using those technologies, said Josh McGinty, Ph.D., Corpus Christi.
In West Central Texas, approximately 60% of the cotton has been planted, with primarily dryland left to plant. About 70% of the producers utilize these technologies, and have already purchased seed, fungicide and some herbicides, said Reagan Noland, Ph.D., San Angelo.
In the Rolling Plains region, about 80% of the producers incorporated the technology into this year’s crop, which is 70% planted, said Emi Kimura, Ph.D., Vernon.
In the High Plains, all cotton acres are planted, as the last date to plant was May 31, and at least 50% or more of the producers use these technologies, said Jourdan Bell, Ph.D., Amarillo.

Moving forward without the dicamba technologies

So, what are cotton producers to do now? They have a few options.

Nolte and Peter Dotray, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research weed scientist, Lubbock, suggest affected producers consider some alternative weed control options to address management problems considering this new development.

Preplant and at-plant soil residual herbicides were used by most growers, and it will be critical to use additional soil residual herbicides such as Dual, Warrant and Outlook early or mid- postemergence, regardless of what postemergence herbicide is used, they said.

“Based on the EPA’s order, we expect growers to continue to rely on dicamba until July 31,” Dotray said. “When dicamba is limited or not available, glyphosate and/or glufosinate may be used at one or both of the postemergence application timings. We may see more cultivation and hooded sprayers used to manage weeds.”

Producers can access the latest version of the AgriLife Extension cotton weed management guide for more information.

Additionally, Syngenta’s Tavium Plus Vapor Grip, which was registered separately in 2019, was not included in this litigation. Its registration, which allows application to Roundup Ready 2 Xtend Soybeans and Bollgard II XtendFlex cotton, remains in place. It has label restrictions that must be followed. In cotton, a single postemergence application may be made until the 6-leaf cotton stage or 60 days after planting, whichever comes first.

Federal and state reactions to court ruling

While the court ruling was made on June 3 and effective on that date, on June 8, the EPA issued an order providing guidance on the sale, distribution and use of existing stocks of the three affected dicamba products. The EPA order stated in part:

Distribution or sale by any person is generally prohibited except for ensuring proper disposal or return to the registrant. Keep in mind that “distribution” is broadly defined as including “distributing, selling, offering for sale, holding for sale, shipping, holding for shipment, delivering for shipment, or receiving and (having so received) delivering or offering to deliver, or releasing for shipment to any person in any state.”
Commercial applicators may distribute or sell existing stocks that are in their possession. Existing stocks are defined as the products “which were packaged, labeled, and released for shipment prior to the time of the order on June 3, 2020.”
Growers may use any existing stocks, as defined above, consistent with the product’s previously approved label and may not continue after July 31.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has said he will formally request a Section 18 exemption from the EPA to allow the continued use of dicamba in Texas under emergency conditions.

The Texas cotton crop is already growing or going in the ground right now, and “our cotton growers must have certainty,” Miller said.

An Emergency Exemption under Section 18 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, FIFRA, would authorize EPA to allow limited use of the pesticide in defined geographic areas for a finite period once the EPA confirms that the situation meets the statutory definition of an “emergency condition.”

Texas A&M AgriLife helping set gold standard greenhouse gas emissions measurements for Department of Energy

22Jun

By: Kay Ledbetter

Greenhouse gas emissions from sorghum fields in the Texas High Plains will be the focus of a Texas A&M AgriLife Research study funded by a U.S. Department of Energy grant through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, ARPA-E.

This $3.1 million collaborative project, led by Oklahoma State University, is funded through ARPA-E’s Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management, or SMARTFARM, program.

man in field with technology to capture nitrous oxide

Walker Crane, a member of Nithya Rajan’s team, measures nitrous oxide measurements from a young sorghum field. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo)

About one-third of the grant will be utilized in Texas by Nithya Rajan, Ph.D., crop physiology and agroecology associate professor, who is the lead investigator for AgriLife Research on this project. Rajan will be joined by Ronnie Schnell, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service cropping systems specialist for sorghum. Both are in Texas A&M University’s Department of Soil and Crop Sciences in College Station.

“We are excited about this multi-state SMARTFARM project,” said David Baltensperger, Ph.D., head of the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. “This project strengthens our ties with Texas sorghum producers and supports the goal of sorghum production in an environmentally friendly manner.”

Goals of measuring greenhouse gas emissions

The SMARTFARM program’s objective is to bridge the data gap in the biofuel supply chain by funding technologies that can quantify feedstock-related emissions at the field level and enable new market incentives for efficiency.

Rajan said the ARPA-E project will utilize current technology and sensor networks to continuously quantify field-level emissions for major greenhouse gases. This is expected to provide a “gold standard” assessment of emissions from bioenergy feedstocks in the Southern Great Plains.

“With any agriculture production field, greenhouse gas emission is inevitable — typically carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — and that increases with the application of fertilizer, manure and other management practices,” she said. “Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas that can stay in the atmosphere for several decades and can cause environmental issues.”
Nitrous oxide emissions graph
Rajan’s current research shows that there is a daily pattern associated with nitrous oxide emissions in agricultural fields. Emissions usually happen after fertilizer application and rainfall, but such frequent measurements are rarely made by scientists in production conditions due to the cost of equipment needed for continuous monitoring.

Carbon source or sink

Agricultural fields also sequester carbon. Tracking both carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously is necessary to understand if the field is a carbon source or a sink, as greenhouse gas emissions are usually expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents.

Schnell said sorghum production systems in the Southern Great Plains have an opportunity to contribute sustainable energy production in the U.S. Production environments, water use and common management practices have the potential for lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Rajan said the team is concentrating on grain sorghum initially, because Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma are three of the nation’s main sorghum-producing states. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, nationwide, about 5.07 million acres were planted to grain sorghum.

Grain sorghum acreage is beginning to replace some corn acreage in the Texas Panhandle because of its water efficiency, she said. The Texas portion of the project is designed to take measurements of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, at an 85-acre commercial production field, continuously using the state-of-the-art instrumentation and methodologies. Schnell will assist with spatial measurements of soil water, nutrient, and crop growth at the site.

“This is the first time anyone is trying to do it at this scale,” Rajan said. “We are using a farmer’s field in the Panhandle area. We will be setting up a lot of equipment to make these measurements.”

Nithya Rajan, Ph.D., in a sorgum field. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo)

She said the equipment will allow them to take greenhouse gas measurements continuously from the sorghum field. Additionally, soil temperature and moisture sensors will be installed on each sub-acre of the 85-acre field. Soil and plant samples will also be collected from each acre.

The end goal is to build a ‘gold standard’ data set. The data set then will be available for all researchers studying the life cycle analysis and modeling of greenhouse gas emissions.

The project will begin in October 2020 and continue for three years. While the data gathering will be automated and managed through the internet, Rajan said project participants will make frequent visits to the site for installation, equipment maintenance, and plant and soil sample collection. This is only one of Rajan’s projects with sorghum.

Gopal Kakani, Ph.D., from Oklahoma State University is the lead principal investigator of this three-state project. Other team members are: Oklahoma State University researchers Jason Warren, Saleh Taghvaeian, Paul Weckler and Ning Wang, all Ph.D.s; and Kansas State University researchers Peter Tomlinson, Eduardo Alvarez Santos and Lucas Haag, all Ph.D.s.

New app development could aid crop irrigation management

25Feb

By: Kay Ledbetter

Texas A&M AgriLife is developing an inexpensive and easy-to-use mobile app and irrigation management system to help agricultural producers increase water-use efficiency and continue producing cotton.

The new project is funded by the Texas A&M Water Seed Grant Initiative and is titled “A Novel Sensor- and Crop-Model-Based Decision Support Tool for Efficient Irrigation Management.”

linear irrigation system with sprinkler heads close to ground

Increasing water-use efficiency in cotton will be the focus of a new study at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Vernon. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kay Ledbetter)

The app is being developed in the Texas Rolling Plains region, which produces about 13% of the state’s cotton, said Srinivasulu Ale, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research geospatial hydrologist and lead investigator on the project in Vernon.

Yet that cotton production faces challenges from recurring droughts and declining groundwater levels in the Seymour Aquifer. Furthermore, projected warmer and drier weather in the future will require larger groundwater withdrawals to meet crop water demands, Ale said.

To sustain cotton production in this region, he said, producers must adopt water-use efficient irrigation strategies.

Design & Development of Mobile App

Joining Ale on the project will be Curtis Adams, Ph.D., AgriLife Research crop physiologist; Emi Kimura, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agronomist; and Yubing Fan, Ph.D., AgriLife Research postdoctoral research associate, all in Vernon. Also, Jim Wall, Ph.D., executive director, and Keith Biggers, Ph.D., director of computing and information technology, both at the Texas A&M Center for Applied Technology, College Station, will provide expertise.

The project is partnering with the Gateway Groundwater Conservation District, Quanah, and the Rolling Plains Cotton Growers Inc., Stamford.

Weather data collected in the field over the growing season will be used to help identify the proper irrigation management strategy. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kay Ledbetter)

“Our goal is to deliver a product to cotton producers that can greatly improve their irrigation management, but is simple and accessible,” Adams said.

Most irrigation support tools have limitations that make them less useful to producers in some way, he said, and this project’s goal is to improve upon existing technologies using a novel approach.

“Our app will collect crop information from sensors mounted on center pivot systems, use weather data from online sources, and provide a number of potential combinations of real-time updated deficit- or full-irrigation schedules and economic outcomes,” Biggers said. “Producers can choose an irrigation strategy that best suits their well capacities and expected returns.”

This field information will be used in conjunction with the historic and projected short-term future weather data over the growing season in crop and economic models to estimate projected cotton yield, irrigation levels and net returns under different irrigation management strategies.

Considering short- and long-term weather forecasts

“To our knowledge, none of the existing apps use projected short-term weather forecasts in generating real-time irrigation schedules, and our proposed app does that,” Ale said.

Once validated using data from a field experiment, the proposed system will be further evaluated by selected producers under different crop conditions, soils, irrigation capacities and weather.

Wall said their plan is to have the app developed by the end of this year, test it in producers’ fields in 2021 summer, and release it in fall 2021.

Kimura estimates if producers adopt the tool on 200,000 acres of irrigated land in the Rolling Plains, it could potentially save millions of gallons of groundwater and extend the economic life of the Seymour Aquifer.

“But we don’t think its viability will be limited to the Rolling Plains,” Ale said. “We expect the proposed system to allow modifications to include other row crops and for use in other crop production regions of Texas and beyond.”

Glyphosate myths, facts addressed

24Feb

By: Kay Ledbetter
Contact: Scott Nolte – scott.nolte@tamu.edu

Whether on social media or in farming circles, many questions linger about glyphosate, better known as Roundup, and a link to cancer.

“It’s hard to know what to believe, but it’s important to make sure the information you receive is based on good science,” said Scott Nolte, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service state weed specialist, College Station.

Nolte addressed the issue during the Panhandle Farm Management Symposium in Amarillo recently, providing insight into the “myths and truths” surrounding the issue.

The controversy began with a ruling in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC, a subgroup of the World Health Organization tasked with determining the potential of a product to be carcinogenic. IARC indicated there was limited evidence glyphosate is carcinogenic in humans and sufficient evidence in animals.

However, because risk assessment and certain key studies were not considered by this organization, this year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a statement Aug. 8 saying it would no longer approve product labels claiming glyphosate is known to cause cancer. The Agency said it is a false claim that does not meet the labeling requirements of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.

Glyphosate use and regulation

Nolte said glyphosate has been in use since the mid-1970s and is the most studied chemical ever.

“Glyphosate, or Roundup, is a very effective herbicide that works on grasses and broadleaf weeds,” he said. “It works by inhibiting an enzyme that prevents plants from making three key amino acids needed to grow. This enzyme is not found in humans or animals, so it does not hurt them.”

Pesticides such as glyphosate are regulated by the EPA; the Food and Drug Administration, FDA; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA. These regulatory agencies determine safe residue levels and regulate tolerances.

They determine exposure risk through residue in food, water, residential use and occupational use, Nolte said. Two criteria they use are lowest observable adverse effect level and no observable adverse effect level. They set the chronic reference dose, which is an estimate of a daily oral exposure for a chronic duration to the human population that is likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime.

“Studies are conducted to get an observable effect and then they cut it back 100-fold to ensure if you are exposed on a daily basis to a chemical, chronic duration, it is without appreciable risk of effects during a lifetime,” he said.

How do we know Roundup is safe?

“Nothing is guaranteed to be 100% safe,” Nolte said. “But glyphosate is the most studied chemical in use today. None of the scientific studies have been able to definitively tie glyphosate to the cancer risks it’s been tied to.”

He said studies show the relative toxicity of glyphosate is just slightly higher than Vitamin B2 and far lower than Vitamin D3.

“Just about everything can be toxic in sufficient quantity – water, salt, organic pesticides, aspirin, caffeine, even sunscreen approved for babies – so it’s all relative,” he said. “Every day we weigh the risk with the benefits, whether it is driving to work or flying on an airplane.”

“You are responsible for good stewardship and following the label of all chemicals used,” he said. “So, handle it properly.”

Each chemical is required to have a signal word on it to determine its toxicity:
– “Danger, poison” indicates the product is highly toxic by any route into the body.
– “Danger” means it can cause severe eye damage or skin irritation.
– “Warning” indicates it is moderately toxic orally, dermally or through inhalation. Moderate eye or skin irritation.
– “Caution” means the product is slightly toxic orally, dermally or through inhalation. Slight eye or skin irritation.

“In this ranking system, only the word ‘caution’ is used on Roundup. You have to read and follow the label.”

What does science tell us about Roundup?

When IARC came out with their ruling on glyphosate in 2015, they knew about some additional data that would have been useful in making their decision. However, since it was not printed yet, they did not take it into consideration.

“It’s extremely challenging to talk in absolutes,” Nolte said. “There are too many things at play. But based on scientific evidence at this point, statistically, there is no tie between glyphosate and cancer. It’s usually never one thing that is involved in causing cancer, so that doesn’t mean in an individual situation where someone was predisposed to cancer that the chemical didn’t play a role.”

The piece of missing information was the Agricultural Health Study, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in collaboration with EPA.

Considered one of the largest human health studies done, it has been following people for 20 years who are chemical applicators using glyphosate or their spouses. The conclusion of this large, prospective cohort study was “no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall.”

“You can decide if it is right for you to use or not,” Nolte said. “Genetic probability likely has as much or more to do with someone getting cancer as the environment. And science tells us if we use these things properly, the risk is extremely low. The label is the law. Follow it.”

FDA approves ultra-low gossypol cottonseed for human, animal consumption

16Dec

Writer: Kay Ledbetter

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to ultra-low gossypol cottonseed, ULGCS, to be utilized as human food and in animal feed, something Texas A&M AgriLife researchers have been working on for nearly 25 years.

Keerti Rathore, Ph.D., a Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant biotechnologist in the Texas A&M Institute for Plant Genomics and Biotechnology and Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, College Station, and his team have developed, tested and obtained deregulation for the transgenic cotton plant – TAM66274.

man in greenhouse with cotton plants in pots

Dr. Keerti Rathore in his greenhouse with the new ultra-low gossypol cotton plants. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Beth Ann Luedeker)

TAM66274 is a unique cotton plant with ultra-low gossypol levels in the seed, which makes the protein from the seeds safe to consume, Rathore said, but also maintains normal plant-protecting gossypol levels in the rest of the plant, making it ideal for the traditional cotton farmer.

Patrick Stover, Ph.D., vice-chancellor and dean for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of AgriLife Research, said this is research with a direct, positive impact on the world’s food supply.

“This demonstrates how we can make a difference in enhancing the nutritional quality of the food system for those in greatest need, while enhancing the profitability of agriculture production,” Stover said. “Our goal is to advance sustainable agriculture in Texas and around the world, and this new protein source is yet another step in that direction.”

Cottonseed as a food source

If adopted by the cotton growers worldwide, ULGCS has the potential to make a significant impact on nutrition security, especially in the poor, cotton-growing countries, Rathore said.

“The amount of protein locked up in the annual output of cottonseed worldwide is about 10.8 trillion grams,” he said. “That is more than what is present in all the chicken eggs produced globally, and enough to meet the basic protein requirements of over 500 million people.”

This FDA approval is only the fifth for a university-developed, genetically engineered crop in the 25-year history of genetically modified products in the U.S., and is the first for a Texas university, Rathore said.

Except for a few countries, most cotton producing countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, suffer from hunger and malnutrition, Rathore said. Up to now, the ability to utilize protein-rich cottonseed for food or even as feed for the non-ruminants was not possible because of the presence of a toxic terpenoid, gossypol.

With the development and approval of the ULGCS, gossypol is no longer a deterrent.

The human food ingredients from TAM66274 cottonseed can be roasted cottonseed kernels, raw cottonseed kernels, cottonseed kernels, partially defatted cottonseed flour, defatted cottonseed flour and cottonseed oil.

Rathore said initially low-gossypol cottonseed protein can be used by two of the most efficient systems to convert feed protein into edible animal protein: aquaculture and the poultry industry.

“Both of these industries are experiencing high rates of growth and are likely to continue growing for the foreseeable future,” he said.

cross-sections of cotton seeds and leaves

Images showing gossypol-containing glands in the seed kernels and leaf blades of a regular cotton plant and the ultra-low gossypol cottonseed TAM66274, approved by the FDA. Seed kernels were sliced into two halves to make glands visible. Note the lighter-colored glands in TAM66274 kernels reflecting the reduction in gossypol levels by 97%. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo)

Steps to a new protein source

Getting to this point took approval from two areas of government. First, non-regulated status for TAM66274 was required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Then, FDA approval was needed.

“This approval from FDA enables cultivation and use of this promising new cottonseed product within the U.S.,” Rathore said.

The research was supported by funds from Cotton Inc. and AgriLife Research.

Kater Hake, Ph.D., vice president of agricultural and environmental research at Cotton Inc., said gossypol suppression in cottonseed has been part of their funded research portfolio for over 30 years.

“It took time to tap the innate protein potential in the seed; time for the right technologies to develop; and time for the right research team to come along.”

Building a market

The next step, Hake said, is to get cotton farmers and the industry around the world to begin growing and marketing the special variety.

Tom Wedegaertner, director of cottonseed research and marketing at Cotton Inc., explained the dedication to this research project, saying gossypol in the leaves and stalks of the cotton plant serve as a pest deterrent, but its presence in the seed serves no purpose.

Hake said with the full deregulation approval in place, “We can now demonstrate the value of a novel food source to cottonseed processors and seed companies who are essential to purchasing and delivering the seed to cotton growers.”

More bang for the cotton buck

With expanded use of ULGCS for human nutrition either directly as food or indirectly as feed, the cotton plant can potentially become a dual-purpose crop that will be cultivated not only as a source of natural fiber, but just as much for its seed to be used as a source of oil as well as protein, Rathore said.

Importantly, he said, the ULGCS makes available a vast source of protein without bringing additional land under the plow or an increase in the input costs.

Another potential benefit, Rathore said, is that ULGCS, by serving as a substitute for fishmeal, will positively impact the environment by reducing pressure on the severely strained supply of small, wild-caught ocean fish used as a source of feed in fish farms.

Also, by serving as a source of protein, it could reduce agricultural land-clearing in the Amazon and other places to provide space to grow more soybeans to satisfy the rising demand for protein for the growing population.

“Thus, we believe ULGCS represents a unique biotech trait that will benefit farmers, the cottonseed processing industry, the environment and human health,” he said.

Reducing malnutrition

Ultimately, though, Rathore’s goal is for global adoption of TAM66274 to help address protein malnutrition in impoverished parts of the world that cultivate cotton.

Human nutrition trials conducted in some Central and South American countries, Western Africa, Asia and the U.S. in the 1960s through the 1980s show that with substantial reduction or complete elimination of gossypol, cottonseed protein can play a direct and significant role in alleviating protein-calorie malnutrition in a populace suffering as a result of inadequate nutrition.

“It is my hope, as we move forward in the commercialization process, that the protein derived from ULGCS remain affordable as a supplement in protein-poor diets,” Rathore said.

Soil and Crop Sciences undergraduate’s internship initiates urban farm on campus

16Dec

Writer: Beth Ann Luedeker

Experiential learning enhances a student’s college experience and is a required part of the curriculum for undergraduates in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. The department offers internships and study abroad opportunities to help students meet this requirement. Broch Saxton, one of the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences December graduates, created his own internship as a student leader and greenhouse project director with TAMU Urban Farm United (TUFU).

Seedlings are planted in the towers where they will remain until they reach maturity and are harvested. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Beth Ann Luedeker)

TUFU is an urban farm that utilizes vertical towers — Tower Garden — that produce high value/specialty crops in a space-conscious technique via hydroponic growing methods. The project started by Broch is housed in a greenhouse on the Texas A&M campus. It currently includes twenty-four towers on which a variety of produce was grown, and plenty of room to expand.

The urban farm project began as a collaboration between Saxton and Lisette Templin, an Instructional Assistant Professor from the Department of Health and Kinesiology.

“I have dreamed of running greenhouses in this form. Using the knowledge obtained from my degree, I want to help people have better access to greater food, all while engraining hydroponic farming into the university. My experience in this process has been completely driven by networking and passion. This, is what I want a career in,” said Saxton, who received his Bachelor’s degree in Plant and Environmental Soil Science Dec. 13.

“Hydroponics have huge potential to benefit many people,” he said.

Dr. Lisette Templin, second from right, discusses the closed-loop water system with Dr. Jacqui Aitkenhead-Peterson (L), Broch Saxton and Dr. David Reed (R) from the Department of Horticulture. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Beth Ann Luedeker)

“When I approached the Texas A&M Office of Sustainability with my idea of a vertical farm project, they suggested I partner with Dr. Templin, who had approached them with a similar idea.”

Templin has a tower garden on her patio, which feeds her family of four. She and Saxton envisioned a project that could potentially feed Aggie students and staff on campus. They submitted an abstract to the Aggie Green Fund and in January 2019 received a $60,000 grant and permission to use space in a greenhouse owned by the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology.

With the grant funds, Saxton and Templin purchased towers and the closed-loop watering system that provides nutrition to the plants, as well as 800 seedlings from an urban farm in Austin to use for their initial crop. They will be self-sufficient and seed their own plants for future endeavors.

The first crop included four different types of lettuce, kale, snap peas, snow peas, herbs, chard, bok choi, tatsoi and celery. They plan to expand the project to include peppers in the next round.

The team manages each tower individually to ensure that the pH of the water is appropriate for the stage of growth, and that the nutritional requirements of each plant are met.

Since it is an internship, and Saxton received college credit for his time with TUFU, he needed an advisor in the department. He reached out to Dr. Jacqueline Aitkenhead-Peterson.

two students putting seedlings in towers

David Hendrix, a biochemistry major, and Madison Mau, majoring in biomedical science, get hands-on experience through internships in the tower gardens. (Texas A&M AgriLife

“I had taken courses under Dr. Peterson and was impressed by her value as a teacher and her approach to education,” Saxton said. “She has the mentality of mentorship and guidance that I was looking for.”

Aitkenhead-Peterson was happy to serve as Saxton’s advisor for the project.

“The fact that this project was not research based was very unusual to me” she said. “However, this project is about feeding people and educating people on the possibilities of feeding themselves which I deemed to be a very important exercise.”

Produce harvested by TUFU was distributed by the 12th Can Food Pantry, a student-run program on the Texas A&M campus which serves all students, faculty and staff in need of assistance.

TUFU looks forward to continuing to support the 12th Can and hopes to expand to support student dining.

Genes from wild wheat relative to aid in battle against trio of pests

19Jun

Writer: Kay Ledbetter
Contact: Dr. Shuyu Liu, sliu@ag.tamu.edu

Wheat curl mite, greenbug and Hessian fly have long been troublemaker pests for Texas wheat, but a team of Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists is ready to go high tech to help control them.

Dr. Shuyu Liu, AgriLife Research wheat geneticist in Amarillo, will lead a team to develop hard winter wheat germplasm with resistance to these pests using genes from a wild wheat relative. The research is funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant.

Dr. Shuyu Liu makes a cross between TAM 114 and a wild wheat relative at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research greenhouse near Bushland. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo)

Joining Liu on the study are AgriLife Research scientists from Amarillo: Dr. Jackie Rudd, wheat breeder; Dr. Chenggen Chu, wheat genetics scientist; Dr. Ada Szczepaniec, entomologist; and Dr. Qingwu Xue, crop stress physiologist. Joining from College Station are Dr. Amir Ibrahim, wheat breeder, and Dr. Shichen Wang, bioinformatics scientist.

Wheat production in Texas is limited by the harsh and variable environment and a multitude of diseases, insects and other pests, Rudd said.

“We are now looking to the past, to wheat’s wild relatives, to find solutions to these stresses, which can reduce yield and end-use quality,” he said.

The specific goal of this project is to explore synthetic hexaploid wheat to find new resistance genes to defend against these three pests, Liu said.

“Currently, TAM 204 is the only commercial cultivar with this level of resistance,” he said. “It is critical we continue to diversify and find different sources of resistance to these pests.”

The synthetic wheat lines were developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known as CIMMYT, from artificial interspecific crosses between durum wheat and Aegilops tauschii, a progenitor species of wheat, Rudd said.

The synthetic lines are reservoirs of resistance genes not found in modern wheat varieties, he said.

“A lot of work has been done worldwide to bring genes from synthetics into spring wheat,” Rudd said. “But so far, little has been done to incorporate these into winter wheat, like we grow in the Great Plains of the U.S.”

Liu said by combining the resistance found in the synthetics with existing bread wheat germplasm, “we can broaden the genetic base for more durable resistance.”

Processes such as exome capture will help geneticists find markers that are tightly linked or even part of the gene, Chu said. The markers can then be used in an accelerated breeding process facilitated by doubled haploids to merge these genes into existing TAM varieties.

Dr. Chenggen Chu dissects the young embryo from wheat seeds to make a doubled-haploid plant. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kay Ledbetter)

Liu said because pests evolve with host-resistance genes and biotypes of insects continually change, single major resistance genes may only be effective for a few years.

“This situation pushes researchers to keep searching for new sources of resistance and new genes in currently available sources of wheat or its relatives,” he said.

In recent years, progress in wheat genetic and genomic research has accelerated due to improved techniques and knowledge, Liu said. With improved understanding of the wheat genome and new molecular techniques, the whole process of developing superior germplasm lines and adapted cultivars can be sped up.

“Research in the molecular lab, growth chamber and greenhouse, along with field experiments, will be conducted to identify and validate diagnostic genic markers linked to target genes controlling important traits,” he said.

“This project will provide a greater understanding of the pest-resistance mechanisms,” Liu said. “The genetic markers linked to them can aid in selection efficiency by breeders, who will use the superior germplasm to develop future cultivars with these resistances for farmers.”

Video series to highlight cotton education and highlight northern Panhandle best management practices

19Jun

Writer: Kay Ledbetter
Contact: Dr. Jourdan Bell, Jourdan.Bell@ag.tamu.edu

“Cotton and Conservation” is the title of a new series of videos being developed by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and North Plains Groundwater Conservation District.

Dr. Jourdan Bell, AgriLife Extension agronomist in Amarillo, said she is excited about this new partnership that will report on cotton development and irrigation conservation at demonstration sites throughout the water district.

“We’ll use the video series to describe the growth stage of the cotton, any insect or disease pressure and report on irrigation, soil moisture and any management variables,” said Kirk Welch, North Plains Groundwater Conservation District assistant general manager, public outreach, Dumas. “This will help producers in the North Plains better manage their cotton in hopes of saving water while maintaining or increasing yield.”

The weekly video series will be posted on the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District Cotton and Conservation web page, https://northplainsgcd.org/cotton.

cotton in field with harvester in background

“Cotton and Conservation” video series designed to help producers in the North Plains save water while maintaining yields.

The total planted cotton acreage across the eight counties that comprise the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District has increased approximately 283,000 acres from 2013 to 2018. Of that, the irrigated cotton acreage has increased from 46,557 to 250,221 acres during this five-year period.

Bell said as cotton acreage has expanded into the northwestern corner of the Panhandle, it is important to account for weekly development of the cotton crop and evaluate the accumulation of growing degree days with respect to key growth stages for the region.

“What we have seen as cotton has progressed further north is that the development does not necessarily agree with growing-degree calendars from other cotton-producing regions,” she said.

Growing degree day accumulation and the cotton plant development is a standard across the globe for cotton, Bell said, because heat drives the development of the cotton plant.

To help producers stay on top of their crop, Bell created an accounting process for AgriLife Extension agents to record plant development and field conditions over each week at the six locations. Weather stations were set up at each location to monitor the daily temperatures.

Helping provide information for the project will be AgriLife Extension agriculture and natural resources agents Scott Strawn, Ochiltree; Mike Bragg, Dallam and Hartley; Marcel Fischbacher, Moore; Kristy Slough, Hutchinson; J.R. Sprague, Lipscomb; and a regional agronomy agent covering Dallam, Hartley, Sherman and Moore counties.

“This is a great opportunity to increase educational programming in cotton irrigation management as regional groundwater levels decline across the Texas Panhandle,” Bell said. “Where producers may be unable to meet the water demand for many crops, cotton is a viable alternative for northern Texas Panhandle irrigated acres.”

Due to variable precipitation patterns, irrigation is necessary to stabilize and optimize cotton production as with other irrigated crops, she said, but because cotton is drought-tolerant, it is poised to increase on dryland acres as seen in recent years.

Management strategies vary between irrigated and dryland production systems, so this educational programming can help increase profitability on dryland acres and allow producers to concentrate irrigation supplies to enhance the profitability of irrigated acreage, Bell said.

Since the northern Texas Panhandle is a short-season cotton production region, variety selection is a critical decision. Texas A&M AgriLife currently has five Replicated Agronomic Cotton Evaluations, or RACE variety trials, across the water district coordinated by Bell.

These provide an unbiased evaluation of key varieties positioned for the Texas Panhandle region under different environmental and management systems. These trials evaluate not only the yield potential of top varieties but also variety stability.

“The 2019 results will be especially important because we are able to evaluate cotton development under unfavorable planting conditions,” Bell said.

She explained the abundant rains and standing water have caused planting and seeding issues. These unfavorable conditions have already caused the loss of the planned field sites in Hutchinson and Ochiltree counties.

“These varieties have a shorter bloom period and are generally more determinant than full-season varieties,” she said. “As a result, earlier maturing varieties are often unable to recover from in-season stress, so monitoring their environment, available heat units and water needs is key to helping producers make educated decisions in their cotton production moving forward.”