Science Allies - Biotechnology, Agriculture, Ecology, Health, and Critical Thinking

The UN Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit has invited all sectors of society to share their perspectives and solutions. Independent Food Systems Summit Dialogues are being convened around the world both before and after the Summit, effectively crowdsourcing sustainable solutions to strengthen local and global food system. This summit dialogue will explore the role of agricultural biotechnology in transforming food systems for the better by increasing the yields, efficiency or resilience of staple crops.

The line up of global speakers includes: Graham Brookes, PG Economics – UK; Motlatsi Musi, farmer, South Africa; Aileen Garcia, International Rice Research Institute – Philippines; Arif Hossain, CEO of Farming Future Bangladesh; Vitumbiko Chinoko, Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology, Kenya; André Tomas Vilela Hermann, Synthetic Biology Club – Brazil; John Komen, Komen Bioscience Consultancy, Netherlands; Navneet Kaur, Indian post-doctoral researcher, Rothamsted Research – UK; Daniel Norero, Neocrop Technologies, Chile; Joseph Opoku Gakpo,  Ghana Agricultural and Rural Development Journalists Association; and convenor Pablo Orozco, Alliance for Science, Berlin.

Ray Dixon is a microbiologist at the John Innes Centre in the UK. He’s currently the Co-Director JIC-CAS Centre of Excellence in Plant and Microbial Science. Dixon has been working to understand the unique relationships between agricultural crops and nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

These special bacteria live in the soil, converting nitrogen existing in the atmosphere into a form that can be taken up by plants. Legume crops, like alfalfa, clover, beans, lentils, and even leguminous trees like locust, have the ability to create a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria if they are present in the soil, a benefit that both small and large scale farmers across the world have been utilizing for millennia.

If the symbiosis between legumes and nitrogen fixing bacteria could be engineered to work with other crops like cereals, it could provide farmers, consumers, and the environment with huge positive benefits. However, the exact functions that allow this process to happen are incredibly complex and scientists don’t know everything about them.

Researchers like Ray Dixon and his team at the John Innes Center are working hard to characterize the bacteria and their processes in hopes that specialized plants and associated nitrogen fixing bacteria could be co-developed, giving farmers high-yielding crops that preserve and restore soil health without requiring costly and potentially polluting synthetic fertilizers.

Unfounded concerns about genetically modified (GM) crops have inhibited their uptake in many African countries, resulting in major impacts on agricultural production and potentially life-saving crops. Join AfS Director Sarah Evanega as she interviews microbiologist and author Jennifer Thomson, a South African who has extensively researched the impact of these detrimental impacts for her new book, GM Crops and the Global Divide. Thomson is emeritus professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Cape Town. She has written three previous books on GM crops in Africa.  By addressing the detrimental effects that anti-GM opinions have on nutrition security in developing countries and providing a clear account of the science to counter these attitudes, she hopes to highlight and ultimately bridge this divide.

April 26 is celebrated both as International Seed Day and the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Day. It’s the perfect time to talk about seeds, the concept of seed sovereignty and the bigger question: who should decide what farmers grow? Join our panelists as they discuss the situation in the developing world in regard to the kinds of seeds farmers grow; the advantages and disadvantages of growing improved seeds; why activists advocate for farmers to continue using Landrace varieties, and what farmers want.

Panelists include Patience Koku, a Nigerian farmer, entrepreneur and farmers’ advocate; Clet Wandui Masiga, a Ugandan geneticist and conservation biologist; and Leonida Odongo, director of Haki Nawiri Afrika, a Kenya-based social justice initiative. Ghanaian journalist Joseph Opoku Gakpo will moderate.

Autonomous drones buzz overhead, creating detailed maps of canopy temperatures. Tree-mounted sensors measure drought stress in orchards in real-time. Rapid diagnostics help farmers identify crop diseases and harvest quality in the field. High quality data are sent to the cloud to be analyzed by artificial intelligence, and farmers on the ground make informed management decisions based on data and science. This is digital agriculture.  Could a data revolution in agriculture empower farmers around the world? And how can public interest research and development deliver the benefits of digital agriculture in an equitable manner? Join Alliance for Science correspondent Chris Knight in conversation with Susan McCouch, an influential rice geneticist and director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture, a multidisciplinary initiative that aims to develop applied digital innovations in agriculture to improve the sustainability, profitability, resiliency and efficiency of the world’s food systems.

How can data influence decisions by smallholder farmers, as well as policy? Join AfS’ Patricia Nanteza as she talks with Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, the 2020 Africa Food Prize Laureate, about ways in which science can have a real-life impact. Nakalembe will discuss the use of satellite technology to harness data that can guide agricultural decision-making. She will speak from personal experience, sharing moments when her data averted the potentially disastrous impacts of crop failure. Nakalembe grew up in Kampala, Uganda, and attended Makerere University before earning her doctorate in geographical science at the University of Maryland, where she is an assistant research professor. She is also the NASA Harvest Africa program director and serves as the Agriculture and Food Security Thematic Lead. Nakalembe’s work led to the establishment of food security and crop monitoring bulletins that integrate satellite data in East Africa. She also designed the trigger mechanism for the disaster risk financing program in Uganda that has supported over 300,000 households.

Davies Korboe is a mango farmer and youth agribusiness advocate from Somanya in Southern Ghana . While some folks flock to cities for opportunity in their youth, Korboe found a different path, venturing into farming as a career and way of life. He graduated from college in 2002 and transitioned into farming full-time thereafter. Only a few years later, in 2009, Ghana’s Ministry of Food Agriculture recognized Korboe with an award for “Best Farmer” in the nation. Korboe has now taken to the airwaves, with his well-cultivated messaging from years of experience, as founder and on-air host of a community radio station. The station, Rites 90.1 FM, broadcasts information about agricultural opportunities targeted for youth. He also hosts an annual mentorship program for young farmers focusing on key principles in agribusiness. Korboe’s story is one of a love for agriculture and the environment, perseverance, business savviness, and a little bit of luck. What can be done to empower the next generation of farmers in Ghana? Join Alliance for Science Correspondents John Agaba and Chris Knight in conversation with Davies Korboe to learn about how a new cohort of agricultural entrepreneurs are growing a grassroots movement for change.

Alliance for Science correspondent Joseph Opoku Gakpo will speak with Ghanaian scientist Samuel Acheampong of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Join us as we discuss Achaempong's efforts to develop a high-yielding sweet potato with increased beta carotone content, and why it matters for thousands of people affected by vitamin A deficiency every year. 

"Research on Ghana’s first gene-edited crop — a high-yielding sweet potato with increased beta carotone content — is under way at the University of Cape Coast. “For sweet potatoes, we want to look at how we can use the CRISPR-Cas9 system to increase beta carotene,” said Samuel Acheampong of the university’s Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, who has been working on the project for the past year. “Beta carotene is a big deal for us because as animals, when we eat beta carotene, our cells are able to convert them into vitamin A.” The World Health Organization estimates that between 250,000 and 500,000 children in developing nations go blind every year as a result of vitamin A deficiency, making it the world’s leading preventable cause of childhood blindness. Some 50 percent of them die within a year of losing their sight. Respiratory illnesses and infectious and diarrheal diseases in children also have been linked to vitamin A deficiency. Acheampong is using CRISPR-Cas9 to knock out the genes responsible for the production of an enzyme in the sweet potato that converts beta carotene into other products. This will leave higher beta carotene content in the crop, which when consumed by humans will allow them to produce vitamin A. Sweet potato is a very popular vegetable in Ghana, making it ideal for a biofortification effort of this kind..." Read more

The webinar will discuss the opportunities, constraints, prospects and limitations of agroecology in Africa. It will explore exactly what agroecology is, the ongoing efforts to popularize it in Africa, the likely positive and negative impacts of its widespread adoption, and its intersection with modern agricultural methods, among other topics.  Panelists include: Irene Egyir, an associate professor in the University of Ghana’s Agricultural Economics Department; Nassib Mugwanya, a Ugandan agricultural communications specialist and PhD candidate at North Carolina State University; Bernard Guri, executive director of the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizational Development, in Ghana; Pacifique Nshimiyimana, an agribusiness entrepreneur in Rwanda, and Charles Nyaaba, head of programs and advocacy for the Peasant Farmers Association. Moderator: Joseph Opoku Gakpo, a journalist from Ghana currently enrolled in a master’s program at North Carolina State University.

Joseph Opoku speaks with Dr Michael Owusu, clinical microbiologist and  lecturer at the Department of Medical Diagnostics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana  https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/alliance-for-science-live/event/covid-vaccine-whats-at-stake-for-africa/  As wealthy nations hoard COVID-19 vaccine supplies, Africa is lagging in the global effort to immunize people against the disease even as its fatality numbers spike.  Though Africa has 17 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for just 0.2 percent of the 209 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered to people across the globe. Meanwhile, the continent is experiencing a sharp rise in COVID infections and fatalities.  As of Feb. 22, some 2.66 million doses had been administered to people living in at least seven of Africa’s 55 countries, according to data from Bloomberg that the Alliance for Science analyzed.  By comparison, the United States had administered 64.28 million doses by that same date and the United Kingdom had given 18.34 million doses. Israel has administered 7.4 million doses, China 40.5 million doses and Russia 2.2 million doses, according to the Bloomberg tracker.  South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also chairman of the African Union, recently called on wealthy nations to make more COVID-19 vaccines available to the rest of the world. He criticized them for hoarding vaccine supplies.  “The rich countries of the world went out and acquired large doses. Some even acquired up to four times what their population needs … to the exclusion of other countries,” Ramaphosa observed during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum.  The European Union has ordered 525 million more full vaccinations than will be needed to vaccinate all its population, said Robin Cohen, a professor of development studies at the University of Oxford, after analyzing data from the Duke Health Innovation Center. The UK has ordered 65 million surplus full vaccinations, while Canada has ordered 156 million excess full vaccinations. Other wealthy nations have similarly ordered doses far in excess of what they need.  The African Union recently announced it has secured  400 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for the continent under COVAX, a World Health Organization initiative, bringing the total number of COVID-19 doses secured for Africa to 1.27 billion doses. However, it could take years before all those doses become available and at least 1.5 billion doses will be needed to vaccinate just 60 percent of the continent’s population.