Something to Chew On

In this episode, we host Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at Kansas State University. Dr. Hardwidge's research focuses on understanding, treating and preventing diarrheal disease caused by bacterial pathogens. These pathogens represent important threats to food safety, biosecurity and animal health. His research team is tackling the fundamentals of biochemical interactions, leading to a better understanding of mitigation methods.

Transcript:

The Many Paths of Pathogens with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases

We have to be as scientists extremely open and and generally willing to share data be transparent about our raw data and like other aspects in life know when to ask for help. [Music] Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik. Coordinator of Global Food Systems. I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a philosopher of Science. We welcome back co-host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology. Diarrheal disease caused by bacterial pathogens is a challenge in both humans and animals in many instances the introduction of pathogens in animal systems causes illness and in some cases is carried through meat processing affecting contamination of food meant for human consumption. Studies of food safety at K-State includes fundamental through applied research. The importance of research in the area of pathogenic bacteria has been addressed in several of our podcasts to date. Most focusing on the applied research in testing, monitoring, and mitigating potential contamination of food products. However, the basic molecular biology of host pathogen interaction is not well understood. In today's podcast, we will talk with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, Associate Director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases here at K-State. His study of host pathogen interaction has led to a better understanding of the mechanisms by which pathogens enter and colonize in a host system. With studies leading to an understanding of how this impacts autoimmune disorders, cancer, and more. I would like to welcome Dr. Philip Hardwidge to the podcast. Dr. Hardwidge is the Associate Director of NIH and Cobra Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. I am hopeful that he will explain to us exactly what all that means. Before we get started in talking about your current activities, Dr. Hardwidge could we maybe get a little bit of understanding of who you are, what your background is, and what brought you to K-State. What brought you to the area of study that you're in, today. Thanks for having me on this podcast series. I'm from the midwest, Michigan and Illinois. My father was a Pfizer scientist and we happened to be living in Central Illinois when I was a high school student, so he gave me some interest in Microbiology and Chemistry, so I ended up doing a Microbiology degree at the University of Illinois, and wanted to develop a research program kind of at the interface between Biochemistry and Microbiology, so I knew from a fairly early age where my career would hopefully head. I did a PHD at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School in Rochester, Minnesota. So, Mayo is a very famous hospital. They also have a very robust graduate training program. And after that, I did a postdoc at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada. Primarily because one of the leading E Coli Microbiologists was running his laboratory in Vancouver and when I finished my education I took an Assistant Professor Position in South Dakota State University back in 2005. There were some unique opportunities to help develop their graduate program, and I had the opportunity to work with germ-free piglets which are a very nice model for some types of E Coli diseases. I was then recruited to the University of Kansas Medical Center and then subsequently recruited to Kansas State University where I've been since 2012. Great, thank you for the overview there. In the introduction, I referenced the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is at K-State and what your goals are there?

Sure, so we call this CEZID, Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. This is an NIH Center that's administered by Dr. Juergen Richt and myself. So, [Dr.] Juergen is a Virologist. I am a Bacteriologist and we're both interested in looking at virulence factors. So, namely what features of pathogens. What components of bacteria and viruses cause diseases in humans and animals. We're also looking at host pathogen interactions. And to do this we use basic science. So fundamental aspects of how bacteria and viruses work. How they cause disease, and we also take translational approaches that can be InVitro in test tube[s], lab experiments, or in large animal models of disease. So overall, we're attempting to advance our understanding of new or emerging infectious diseases, or zoonotic diseases, those pathogens that can cross the interface between animals and human beings. So Covid-19 is a great example of both cases. It has recently emerged, and it is Zoonotic. It's believed to have originated from bats, so you know within this center. [Dr.] Juergen and I administer the day-to-day operations, but we're heavily interested in mentoring junior scientists. So, there are four primary projects each Principal Investigator works on a different pathogen that examines one emerging or zoonotic infectious disease and then there are five pilot projects. So smaller projects we funded with some seed money, and then there are two research cores, uh, to help develop the research infrastructure here at K-State. Sounds like it's a great center, and could you say something about why zoonotic diseases deserve such a focus, or what's important about them? Okay yeah, so obviously we've learned a lot more, or the public has learned a lot more, with the Covid- 19 pandemic. But you know zoonotic disease diseases, or zoonoses, are diseases caused by viruses or bacteria that can spread between humans and animals, or animals and humans. So, in many parts of the world there's very close association between animals and humans. So, farming systems can be quite different compared with what we're familiar with in the United States. So, there's very close contact between humans and animals and some good examples would include Influenza. So, we have the flu circulating in chickens and in pigs. These viruses can mutate and suddenly become able to infect human cells and cause disease. Antibiotic resistance is an issue. So, we've tended to treat food animal diseases. So bacterial infections of pigs and cows with very large quantities of antibiotics to control their infections and to promote weight gain. Well, this can evolve antimicrobial resistance in these organisms and some of these pathogens can also infect human beings. So, antimicrobial use in agriculture can have a direct impact on our ability to treat human infections. And then there are vector-borne diseases. So, bacteria and viruses that can be spread or transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. For example, so that the insect, the mosquito or flea, can provide a conduit between an animal and a human being. So, as the mode of transmission. So, many of these diseases are extremely serious. They're relatively new. They're emerging, and the the life cycle, this animal to human interface, explains why they're why they are called a zoonotic diseases. Great, thanks! And could you describe two, sort of, some of the different projects you, said there's a course of on going ones, and then some pilot ones. So, I don't know which, pick a couple just to give us a sense of some of the work that's going on in a little more detail. love to hear some more. Okay, so yeah, within our CEZID program, we have four very exciting primary research projects. One of them directed by Dr. Tom Platt, in the Division of Biology, looks at a pathogen known as shigella flexneri. Shigella has a lot of similarities to the hemorrhagic E Coli, the hamburger E Coli, E Coli o157 h7. He's very interested in the environmental behavior of Shigella. So what must Shigella do to survive in aquatic environments versus survive when Shigella has colonized a human host. And many of those molecular mechanisms are very different. The pathogen has to do, you know, many different things make many different proteins depending whether it's living in the environment, or within a human. [Dr.] Stephanie Shames studies Legionella. So, many of you may have heard the term Legionnaires Disease from this outbreak in the air conditioning vent in a convention in Philadelphia many decades ago. So, Legionella is the pathogen that causes this human disease. And [Dr.] Stephanie studies some of the specific proteins that legionella uses to subvert host defense mechanisms. Bacteria and viruses have evolved very elaborate mechanisms to short-circuit or subvert our natural host defense. My own laboratory studies those mechanisms as well. So, that's [Dr.] Stephanie's focus. We also have a Flavivirus project, Japanese Encephalitis Virus, Yellow Fever Virus these are Flaviviruses. [Dr.] Scott Huang is trying to design live attenuated vaccines to control flaviviruses. And finally, [Dr.] Nick Wallace is studying Papillomavirus. Papilloma Viruses are believed to cause non-melanoma skin cancer, but the mechanism is not understood. So, [Dr.] Nick's studies are designed to start to understand at a molecular level what's going on between Papillomavirus and skin cancer. If I could ask a question, you indicate that you're looking at certain proteins to maybe influence the outcome in a human infection, or an animal infection for that matter. We have a lot of vaccines for viral diseases, but relatively few for bacterial diseases. What's the strategy for, you know, using these proteins to prevent disease? Okay so, if I understand your question right. There are therapeutic strategies so we have ways to treat diseases that have already occurred, or we have preventative measures such as vaccines. Bacterial, many bacteria, are challenging to tackle with vaccines. There can be great variation in the surface of bacteria. The outer membrane proteins, for example, are often targeted by vaccines. This is essentially the outside of a bacterium. These can be very highly variable between strains among different strains. So, it's hard for a cocktail of vaccine proteins to really be effective in preventing disease. There's an emerging strategy known as anti-virulence compounds where we attempt to not kill the bacteria using antibiotics, but we attempt to subvert the bacterium's ability to cause disease. That's also something my laboratory is developing. How does that work? Okay, so the the classic antimicrobial penicillin, for example, you know, inhibits cell wall integrity in the bacterium, so the bacterium lyses and dies. There are many antibiotics used that block the ability of a bacterium to make new protein, bacterial cell then dies. Resistance is a major problem here. So, the more often you challenge a group of bacteria with these antimicrobials. The more frequently you select for mutants mutations in the bacterial genome that will allow it to resist those antibiotics. So, one emerging concept is to not try to kill the bacterium, but try to simply block its ability to colonize a human host, or secrete a toxin that would be deleterious to a human or an animal. And that's thought it would be much less prone to the evolution of resistance mechanisms. We're not trying to destroy or kill the bacterium. We're simply targeting a very small component of its biology, namely its ability to cause disease. Some of these targets are a little less obvious to identify. So the cell wall is a very obvious and effective target for antimicrobials. Some of the mechanisms that bacteria use to block the immune system. These are being targeted for these anti-virulence therapies, but they've only been identified and studied relatively recently. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, so that's cool. So the idea is not just that we haven't targeted this stuff, yet. So it's new, but that even ongoing application of these to it's basically blocking a side effect of what the bacterium's up to. Right? And lets it still propagate and continue on, because you're not sort of killing off only a subset of them. You're not forcing evolution, right? So, that the virulence isn't part of isn't something that it would sort of act against. Exactly, that's the concept. So, a good example is perhaps the hemorrhagic E Coli this is a devastating disease. If humans acquire this organism, but it's typically an accidental infection, so through undercooked ground beef, contaminated produce, humans occasionally get E Coli infections. Extremely serious, potentially fatal disease but this organism lives very naturally in the intestines of cattle. So, it's a commensal organism. It does no harm to the cattle. So, it's not really something that one would would do a blanket antimicrobial attack on. There there may be a mechanism by which we can have a more selective targeting of their virulence functions. So prevent disease but not select for uh resistant strains of this organism. Yeah, that's that's really neat, and and you said you're looking at some of those these interactions too in your own lab. Could you say what you're working on in this area? Yeah so, I became interested in this area through some serendipitous scientific conferences, a few years ago. My lab had always been interested in the biochemistry of bacterial proteins that are able to block the immune system of the human host. So, some bacteria such as E Coli and Salmonella have a secretion system. So, they have a nano scale needle and syringe like machine that allows them to inject proteins into the intestinal cells. They are colonizing so this nano machine allows the bacterium to manipulate the human cells, and try to prevent the cells from establishing a dialogue with the immune system. So the biochemistry of these proteins, how they've evolved to bind signaling hubs in this innate immune system, what enzymatic activities they have to inhibit host proteins. Very fascinating to me, but it became clear through some collaborative discussions, that some of these proteins might be good targets for anti-virulence therapies. And they also might be good model proteins that could be used to study the immune system more generally. In other words, bacteria and viruses have evolved to inhibit the immune system. Can we use some of their examples to build other drugs that would function as anti-inflammatories. That's kind of the direction my lab has gone in the last five or six years. So, you're turning this then to not just how can we prevent more more disease, right sort of, how can we learn from from what these bugs are doing to actually address other concerns like right? Exactly, so, if we take, and that's you know that's the value of of basic science and basic molecular microbiological studies, if we really take a close look at what nature has already done. What evolutionary pressures have selected for, we can learn a lot about how organisms interact with each other. And specifically with regard to the immune system and inflammation, we can see very clear examples from bacteria and viruses. They have very very effective anti-inflammatory strategies. So E Coli and Salmonella for example, are great masters of inhibiting inflammatory responses. Well, if one looks at other diseases, other human diseases, such as Psoriasis, which is skin inflammation, cancer, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease. These all have some common features in that some of the inflammatory signals proteins known as Cytokines are overproduced in too high abundance. So, can we take some of the bacterial strategies that block the production of these proinflammatory proteins, take the bacterial proteins, modify them detoxify them make them friendly for use, and turn them into lead compounds for new new drugs. So that's an emerging area of many laboratories. It's a concept known as drugs from bugs. The bugs are the bacteria and viruses perhaps. They can suggest to us novel therapeutic strategies to controlling inflammation. Nature did it first. Nature did it first. So, let's learn from nature. There are many ways to, you know, look for potential new therapeutics. There's random libraries of small molecules, there are you know very robust computational strategies, so letting machine learning, computer strategies to predict chemical interactions, or take a look at what bacteria and viruses have already done. The work is fascinating and clearly taking a lead, from as you said, what nature has already done is obviously a very effective approach. I'm wondering, with the new N-bath Center going in, kind of in your backyard, what kind of interaction do you see going on between the work you're doing and that center? Is it going to be, kind of running parallel to one another? Do you have direct input in what's happening up there, or direct activities going on in the future? So, there are obvious parallels between the, you know, the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility, NBAF. It is literally right next door to our CEZID program, and to our laboratories. So, we're very interested in looking for partnerships certainly there will be a lot of training opportunities. So much of the workforce at NBAF is likely to come out of K-State. So, one of our missions is to train this new workforce, both with the book knowledge and the hands-on laboratory skills that will make them good contributors to NBAF. There's a lot of parallels in the mission, you know, so to protect the food supply, to protect agriculture, to protect the population against zoonotic diseases. So, there's good interface between CEZID and NBAF. So, definitely we're interested in establishing collaborations. Dr. Juergen Richt, my collaborator, he's already established several collaborations. We work with the Plum Island facility, already. This is the laboratory that's essentially moving from the Long Island area to become NBAF. So many of the projects are already in place, and certainly we'll see a lot of growth in the coming years about how to safeguard food animal health public health and really preserve our agricultural economy from various threats. Earlier, you mentioned the E Coli outbreaks that have occurred as a consequence of produce and because of those outbreaks over the past, probably five to ten years, been a lot of research looking at E Coli and Salmonella in particular, and whether plants actually play a role in their life history. And clearly they they do. That it's not really just an incidental occurrence of those organisms perhaps being sprayed on these these plants with irrigation water or something like. That in fact there's compelling data that they truly infect the plants and that they've actually documented an upregulation in expression of effector genes, and things like that. So, there seems to be some strong relationship between E Coli Salmonella and the plants. And I'm just wondering if you're aware of any evidence of that plant component actually helping to drive the evolution of those species or the emergence perhaps of new pathotypes. Because we we know that the plant pathogenic bacteria as well as as some of these share secretion systems and that some of our closely some of the plant pathogens that are closely related to the enterics, you know, have multiple secretion systems. And I'm just wondering if there's any evidence that you're aware of that there's a drive in the evolutionary process for some of the zoonotics? Some of these human pathogens like E Coli or Salmonella.

Yeah, that's a fascinating question. So thanks for bringing that up. It's very clear that a lot of what bacteria do when they interact with human or animal cells also occurs when bacteria need to interact with plant surfaces. So for example, the elaboration of surface appendages for adherence. The pili, the the swimming apparatus called the flagellum, these are all up regulated by by contact with plant surface. Gaining entrance at wound sites or cracks between root hairs there's a lot of physiological similarity between the human intestine and some aspects of plant cell boundaries where these mechanisms are conserved. Whether plant interaction drives the evolution of bacterial pathotypes, or not, is unfortunately rather poorly understood. And I think a lot of that is a function of scientists taking a human-centric view to a lot of what these pathogens do. So, we tend to take the view, and I'm also to blame, bacteria exists to cause disease in people to cause diarrhea, in terms of these intestinal pathogens to cause respiratory illness, of course that's not the case. So, most infections are accidental. The only goal, if a bacterium were to have a goal, is to replicate so to find food source and to replicate. So, our view is often a little bit warped, and we don't give appropriate coverage to what might be going on in the environment. So when new virulence factors emerge. Are sporadic accidental human infections really driving that evolution? Most likely not. More likely the interaction in the between the bacterium and its environment, whether that's in water or with produce, on spinach or lettuce, this is more likely the the driving factor to evolving new bacterial path types. But it's poorly understood. Some of the model systems are are less well developed. Plants also have immune systems, so I've mentioned a few times about an ability of these bacteria to inhibit human immune systems. Well, plants also have immune responses to infection. They essentially try to wall off the infected cells to limit the spread of the infecting pathogen. But again, these bacteria have ways to evade that plant immune system. Secretion Systems are well conserved in how they block human versus plant functions. So, I think this area should be studied much more extensively. I think if more funding were available to really look at the what forces drive the evolution of these bacteria we would learn much more. To some extent, that's a product of our funding system. In that it tends to be slanted towards immediate tangible therapeutic benefits to humans or food animals, and at times basic science inquiry can be ignored or at least underfunded. So, I would target as you suggest this area as a potential rich area of investigation.

I was just going to say your center must be a rich experience for the students. I'm just wondering, how do you maximize that? I mean with the aggregation of expertise you have there and the diversity of projects that could be a pretty rich environment for certainly a graduate experience. I was just wondering how you might comment on it? Yeah, thank you. We're very excited we're in the second year of this program and one of the main goals is to bring along the next generation of of scientists. So, not only are we mentoring the the junior faculty, you've heard some of their research projects already. Another component of that is mentoring their own students, and postdocs students, can be undergraduates, masters students, PHD students, and the mentoring can be direct or indirect. So, certainly we've seen pretty significant growth in student numbers. Each lab seems to be getting more and more students. We've started several journal clubs. We've discussion programs. We bring in distinguished scientists to speak with students and faculty. So, we try to bring in leaders of the of the various fields have scientific discussions with students. Really set the foundations for their growth, as we've discussed, we do need an immediate workforce as NBAF comes online. But, we also need the the next generation of basic scientists to populate our university laboratories. So, we're also seeing a rapid increase in research infrastructure. So, several new pieces of technology are now new to K-State. So we have single cell capability. So, we can isolate single cells from various tissues work with them in isolation do single cell sequencing, single cell gene expression, analysis. We have new live cell microscopes again. This was not available here until recently. So, I'm very excited that we have a really first-rate group of faculty. We have many people interested in highly capable of student mentoring. And we're really developing first-rate technology, so students can get hands-on experience with techniques that will make them very marketable to academic or industry careers. In many respects progress is a function of the relationship between science and technology, and probably for the last 500 years it's been kind of a push-pull relationship where one feeds the innovation of the other, or feeds off of the innovation of the other, and it is more of philosophical question. Do you think at this point though we science has become more dependent upon technology to the point where it influences the questions that we ask? I think there can be a tendency for that. So it's very easy to get excited about a new machine, and then frame scientific questions around what that machine is capable of doing. So for example, if you get a new live cell microscope the tendency can be, let's do all experiments focused on live cell microscopy. But, I'm not too concerned. I think you know good science is done through the classic scientific method, and tried and true technologies are often still the best approach to solving problems. So for example, my postdoc yesterday showed me a very nice set of data that have solved a year-long problem for us. He was using genetic techniques in Salmonella established in the 1960s. But he was he was aware of the older literature, he could recognize the value of that more dated technology, and he knew it was appropriate for the question he was asking. So, it is a challenge, technology makes it some things easier. But, they can kind of cloud our understanding of some of the basic concepts. So, I think there's room for both, but I guess I'll point out that there's been a lot of very important scientific discoveries that are essentially accidental. They're serendipitous, so really it's our job to do well-controlled experiments, have testable hypotheses, have good robust record-keeping practices, and then keep our eyes open, because if we see something unexpected or unusual we want to be able to follow that up, and be confident it's not just a laboratory mistake. So, all the fundamental training students learn in Chemistry 101, in undergraduate, keep a good notebook, rigor, and reproducibility, I think you know these fundamental issues are always going to trump any technological advance, in terms of how we move this field forward. You've been talking about basic science a lot and about the accidental things that pop up right from just doing some work. And then, you know, as you said in your own work, you know moving to how this might, some discoveries, might actually apply to treating autoimmune disorders and things like that. Right? So, how do you think about either, you know, an individual scientist or the scientific community doing this balance of the, you know, let's work on some really basic questions that we, and we just want the answers to, and we don't really know what the application will be. To then, noting where there might be, you know, some something really useful applied and sort of starting to follow down that path. To then, sort of hey we have a very specific question. Like, you know, Covid, and we have to address.So how do you balance that as either an individual, or as a research group, or as a wider community? What thoughts [do] you have on that? Thanks, that's one of the toughest aspects, at least personally for me as a professor. How focused and narrow do we get in terms of the minutia of a protein. So, do we need to understand every atom of every protein? Versus when are we ready to apply this to a disease? Translate this into a real therapeutic. I think we have to be as scientists extremely open, and generally willing to to share data, be transparent about our raw data, and like other aspects in life, know when to ask for help. So, most of my translational endeavors in terms of anti-virulence compounds bacterial proteins used to inhibit the immune system have really resulted because I shared data very early on with with someone at a meeting, or a conference, or invited lecturer, and they had a slightly different way of of looking at the data. So, I viewed it in one direction. That I understand how this protein works, and an outsider to my specific field was able to ask a broader question. So, oh if you know that this protein blocks the immune system, have you ever thought about trying this? Or, I know a friend at my institution who could take your protein and try it in their mouse model of inflammation, for example. So it is a challenge. We're constricted by funding opportunities, so it's more comfortable to kind of stay siloed, and work on what we're recognized as experts to do. But, I think it's far more important to take these leaps of faith, and try to work with translational scientists who might really see the application of your basic discovery, and be able to help you apply it to a broader application. And of course, there's a lot of complexities with university licensing and patenting data ownership, but we have all the university resources to help us with that. You've been talking a lot about individual organisms that you work with. Have you done any work with the way those organisms interact with one another different types? And what I'm kind of getting at is the microbiome activities that are being tested and looked at in various areas across campus. Does your work specifically get into that area? Yeah, thank you. We have worked a little bit with the microbiome, and that's something I haven't mentioned yet in this discussion. So, you mentioned the naturally occurring commensal, or beneficial organisms that that colonize all of our mucosal surfaces. So, the microbiota or microbiome, another aspect of the success of a bacterium or virus, if we think about a human infection it's not just the immune system of the host that challenges the pathogen. It's also the bacteria that line the respiratory tract, the intestinal tract, the genital tract, the skin. So, that's another barrier, and it's actually one of our defense mechanisms, essentially. So, how do bacterial pathogens interact with the microbiome? We've done a few studies in that area. So, we've mostly used mouse models to study where we can do fecal transplantation, to study what makes certain strains of mice more resistant, or more susceptible to bacterial infection. And a lot of that susceptibility is driven, not by the strain of mouse per se, but rather which intestinal microbes are harbored within that mouse. So, the microbiome really does play an important role in dictating disease susceptibility. So again, it's interesting to do a survey, to understand what bacteria are present in the gut, what are the correlates of resistance, and susceptibility. But, it's even more interesting, to then use that information to start to tailor different treatments, so the pre and probiotic industry is extremely robust in this area. There's opportunities for collaboration to make animals more resistant to infections, or are more robust at gaining weight over their development time. And there's also fundamental aspects of how the microbiome dictates immune responses so we may again learn a lot from how the microbiome can dampen the immune system in terms of generating new anti-inflammatory compounds. If you take an animal and you rid it of the microbiome, or you develop a germ-free animal in the laboratory, for example, you tend to see very potent anomalously high inflammatory responses. Suggesting, that one job of the microbiome is to dampen the immune system and really make it selective towards pathogens, rather than, towards random insults or challenges. So, this is a huge area to study. We've collaborated with several groups here on various organisms to do surveys of the microbiome, and we're hoping to apply some of this knowledge to potentially discover new therapeutic strategy. Fascinating stuff!

Very much so, absolutely. Do you have any questions for us, [Dr.] Phillip? I think we've covered kind of the highlights, and I think I've given you a good flavor of how I approach science, and what my main interests are. Thank you very much. I enjoyed the discussion. Yeah, really enjoyed the discussion. Thank you, Thank you all. Thank you, [Dr.] Maureen Yeah, thanks much! bye-bye bye-bye! If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website athttps://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email. Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

Keywords: Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Disease, Global Food Systems, Kansas State University, Pathobiology, Research

In celebration of World Food Safety Day, this week we are joined by researchers from the Food Science Institute at Kansas State University: Sara Gragg, associate professor; Randall Phebus, professor; Carla Luisa Schwan, postdoctoral fellow; and Jessie Vipham, assistant professor.

World Food Safety Day aims to draw attention to foodborne risks and inspire action to prevent, detect and manage risks. This important work contributes to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism and sustainable development. The World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations jointly facilitate the observance of World Food Safety Day, in collaboration with member states and other relevant organizations. This international day is an opportunity to strengthen efforts to ensure that the food we eat is safe, mainstream food safety in the public agenda and reduce the burden of foodborne diseases globally.

Transcript:

[Music]

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik. Coordinator of Global Food Systems.

World Food Safety Day is June 7, 2021. This is a day to reflect on the importance of safe and sustainable food, heed the work being done at K-State, and around the world on advancing an understanding of cause and control of food safety issues, and look toward better nutrition through safe food worldwide. Today we are excited to share with you a panel of food safety experts that work with interdisciplinary teams in the Food Science Institute here at K-State. Food safety is a major area of research in the Food Science Institute , including animal and plant-based foods. Through outreach to colleagues here at K-State, nationally and internationally, the Food Science Institute 's research team has tackled some of the most challenging food safety problems. From testing in our Biosecurity Research Institute, biocontainment bsl3 facilities, to helping teach consumers in developing regions of the world the basics of handling and preparing safe food. We welcome back co-host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology, and welcome to our panel of experts Dr. Sara Gragg, Dr. Randall Phebus, Dr. Carla Luisa Schwan, and Dr. Jessie Vipham.

World Food Safety Day is a great time to focus on the work being done at K-State in the area of food safety through the Food Science Institute. We're going to take a bit of a different tact on this podcast by welcoming a panel of scientists that have made food safety their professional passion. They will share with us a vision of food safety research carried out at K-State, and explain how K-State is participating in the recognition of this notable day. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast doctors: Jessie Vipham, Dr. Randall Phebus, and Dr. Sara Gragg and first time welcome to Dr. Carla Schwan. Give us a little background on what the 2021 World Food Safety Day is, and where K-State fits into that?

Yeah, this is a really exciting endeavor that is led out of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and it was actually envisioned and put into play back in 2018, so we haven't, I don't think, as a university, here at K-State, participated in the past. But we saw this, the date is June the 7th, it's always every year, June the 7th, and the FAO has asked people to participate, and they've given some guidelines on things that we could do. And to highlight some of the food safety work that we're doing here at K-State, which is pretty extensive. The aim of World Food Safety Day, according to the FAO is to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage foodborne risk. As we know, it's not just the health aspect of foodborne risk, but it's also how food safety contributes to food security, and human health, and economic prosperity, and success in agriculture, and market access, and tourism, and sustainable agriculture. So, there's a lot of things that are connected to food safety, and you know honestly, we address them all here at K-State in one way or the other. It's really interesting every year they come up with kind of a theme for this. For the event in this particular year, for 2021, the theme is safe food today for a healthy tomorrow. And what they're trying to do is kind of take the one health approach, holistic approach, to how food safety interacts with our daily lives. whether we're producers, or processors, or consumers, or someone transporting, or whatever we all have a role to play. And it's all systemic and integrated, you know, one weekly in the chain, start to finish, can cause a lot of people to get sick. And so, I think it's really exciting that we can do some things here, and Carla has actually kind of taken on some of the leadership as far as putting some of our activities together for that day that she'll tell you about here in just a minute. But you know, the FAO really stresses that governments, processors, consumers, and everyone in the chain has to be coordinated and focused on food safety to prevent all of these illnesses. So, just think about in a world today where we have over 600 million cases of foodborne illness annually, and as many as 420,000 deaths, and about a third of those are actually children under five years old. So, this is truly important and work that you know we do a lot of things here for the United States but our work finds its way out globally. Thanks to people like Dr. Vipham and Dr. Schwan that they're going to tell you about some of their international work

In the food security arena, we often throw around the figure that we lose 35 to 40 percent of the food post harvest. Free consumption are there analogous figures of loss due specifically to food safety concerns.

Well, you know, I don't know if there's any figures about food waste or food loss, but if you look at what foodborne illness does to things, other than just, you know, people getting sick and having diarrheal diseases and that sort of thing. You're looking at lost productivity. You look at chronic illnesses across the world. People may be, you know, having syndromes and sequelae well past you know the initial infection, so that the cost is just staggering in terms of economic loss, adjusted years of productivity losses, and that sort of thing. So, you know a lot of what we don't think about from a food safety standpoint is, you know, what does it do to young children with diarrheal diseases and setting them back for sometimes their entire life. To get past the foodborne illness or waterborne illness falls into that category too.

You know, when we think about losses in the industry, though if there is a food safety concern, the industry does have to respond in different ways. Some of which, might be diverting a raw meat product to a cook operation, for example. And in doing so, that can result in, not lost product per se, but lost income, because cook product operations usually result in a lot less income. And so, there are different aspects in the food industry that can result in different losses. Sometimes the product is destroyed as a result of a food safety concern. And so, that could be quote, unquote, food waste or food loss issue that is related to food safety as well.

Yeah, I think the World Trade Organization, oh 2017 2019, I can't even remember what the date is they had a figure that they put out that was something like 9.6 billion dollars in loss that the world experiences due to unsafe food on an annual basis.

Yeah, and then I think for especially, specifically for low and middle-income countries, I think the figure is like 110 billion on medical expenses and productivity productivity losses specifically for those countries. But, I'm sure that you know United States and developed countries also experienced that similar levels of losses.

Yeah so, it's significant, but the problem really becomes how do you begin to measure some of the loss. Right, so two, I think, some of the points that Randy and Sarah have made you have loss on a very individual perspective, but you also have loss on an industry level. And so, how do you really get figures around that and and ultimately when you look into the environment around economics, as it pertains to food safety, that's a really new and budding area of research, surprisingly. So, I think at this point in time we really don't have a lot of awareness for what the exact costs of food safety are, but I think based upon what we all know, we can really make the assumption that it's fairly large.

Yeah, thank you very much.

I'd add to that, you know, when we talk about food safety a lot of us always think about pathogens, viruses, bacteria, some fungi, and parasites. But, you know, we also have a lot of toxins and chemicals and allergens that are very important, and just as deadly in some cases, and particularly in some of the developing countries where we, you know, we have grain. You can't just you know throw the grain away but with fungal aflatoxin and mycotoxins that are produced. You know, some of what happens to consumption and chronic consumption of such contaminants, you know, it could be cancers and shortened life and you never really know that, you know, 20-30 years in advance.

Great, thank you so much, Carla. I think could you give us a bit of an idea of what K-State is planning to do for Food Safety Day and how the Food Science Institute is going to be approaching that big day.

Yes, as Dr. Phebus mentioned earlier, we've met a few weeks ago, and I think our food safety team came up with a really great idea of creating a specific video that we feature different students of our department here. And they're all from different countries of the world. For example, we have Costa Rica, we have Indonesia, Cambodia, Brazil, United States, India, Africa, all over the world pretty much. And so, we have those students, we brought them in, and we wanted to just ask simple questions to understand what is their food safety perception. Some of them are food safety students, but some of them are not. And so, it was interesting to see how different people from different countries and cultures perceive food safety in one day, or another. So, we are working on that project, and we're going to have this video ready to release on June 7th as part of the Food Science Institute Initiative for the World Food Safety Day. So, stay tuned for that. Additionally to that, we are featuring some of our students here to explain their projects, and what they are doing in food safety, how they're improving food safety, how their projects impact public health, and the significance in events and science in this area. And so, those videos are going to be released all month of June as part of this initiative, but we're going to be individual videos of our students, and then on June 7th we're going to have our group video of everyone talking about the World Food Safety event, and perceptions. And all of that. So stay tuned for that.

Great! Can one of you speak a bit to the global perspective of the food safety work that's been done?

You've mentioned, a few of you mentioned, several countries that you've worked in. And I know Carla, you and Jesse, you two in particular, have done work worldwide. How does the work at K-State impact these places around the world, and what do you learn in those places that you can bring back to K-State?

Yeah, I think so, I think I'll go ahead and take that question. When it comes to food safety, I think that one of the exciting things about food safety, and probably one of the messages that gets lost in terms of food safety education, is really the breadth of opportunities that food safety provides for students, for education. Right, you can be someone who's very interested in industry, and find a place for yourself in food safety. You can be somebody who's very interested in economics, right, or in travel and and find spaces within food safety for yourself. And so, I think that when you look at food safety it really has a very wide swath of opportunities for itself, and when we first, I guess, started our work in international spaces. Carl and I work mainly in Africa and southeast Asia, that's West Africa East Africa, sorry, and southeast Asia. I think we really began to recognize that food safety can take on a very different perspective depending upon what part of the world you're in. So, my educational background was really focused on you know us food safety focused on industry level intervention work. Right, how do we improve really high quality systems, versus, you know, we get to Africa, we get to southeast Asia and and you're really starting at very rudimentary spaces, and I don't mean to communicate that you know that those environments don't have their own successes or their own opportunities but you're just working in a very very different environment, a very different mindset for food safety, and typically very different cultures. And so, a lot of our work for food safety we had to kind of I think tear down our education and our thoughts on food safety to really begin to look at food safety in different ways. And so, as a part of that you know we've done a lot of work looking specifically at fresh food markets those are huge across the world. So typically, when we think about the United States we have these really beautiful streamlined chains of food production. Right, I have someone who produces livestock or vegetables or fruit that then goes to some form of a distribution group or processing group that then sends that through to a grocery store and that's how we access our food. And then, you get into Africa or Asia and it's like a hair of how things get produced and how things end up you know actually sold to people. And, most the time that hair ball ends up finishing at what they call fresh food markets. And so, we've spent a lot of time working on fresh food markets focusing on what are some of the main points of contamination within those markets. How do we untangle those points of contamination, and then focus on interventions that are very adoptable. And so, that's I think, back to that you know how we untrain our food safety minds. You can't go into that space and and just go, okay well, just yeah, you know, you just gotta do this right you just have to use lactic acid or you just use ultraviolet light. And you're good to go, right. You have to really think about what is going to be the best intervention for this space that is adoptable in an environment where people are living on very low incomes they have very low decision-making power the government has a very strong ability to change their mind on any given day. And so, regulations aren't very clear policies aren't very clear how do you work within some of those constraints. And so, that's a lot of I think what our food safety work has been, is to look at what are very applicable food safety interventions to solve the food safety issues that we have identified for specific environments within Africa and southeast Asia.

One of the things that I have I've really enjoyed my time working with Jesse and and Carla in their international work, but one of the things that I perceive is that people citizens, of wherever they are, they really have a desire to know proper methods, proper storage, proper disinfection. And that sort of thing and the outreach efforts that I've seen Carla and Jesse do seem to have really good acceptance and effect. And so, I think that's kind of where K-State gets thrown across the oceans is with our outreach and educational efforts in addition to the science.

I would say we do more outreach and sort of extension style work than even science. You know, I guess in one sense I think that would be, you know, we're more extensionists, yeah than scientists.

We have developed so much material even for kids. And then, if you remember Bangladesh, but just small things that you can do to prevent foodborne illness that we just sharing that information. It seems so obvious to us, but sometimes you go to those places and just share that piece of information it makes all the difference. And so, I remember in Cambodia when we were doing my project in 2018, the vendors at first they were a little bit worried why we were trying to sample their stalls, and why we're there. Then, our students, our converting students, participate in this study, they explained everything and once the vendors knew what we were doing, they would actually come to us and say please come to my cell and temple here, because you you need to help us save our children, because they're dying from E Coli. And that was to me was so impactful, because I didn't even know they were aware of all of that, and they want us to help, and they want to participate they were so friendly and welcoming in those environments. And I don't know it's such a great feeling of helping someone in this food safety area that we can impact. Even though as Jesse mentioned, sometimes the infrastructure is not as comparable to the us, but still you can impact make great impacts, and and change their environments and lives by just sharing information.

I think one of the major challenges with food safety around the world is that when you look at the population of the world, the largest population exists within countries that have compounding public health issues. And so, you're not just dealing with whether or not someone's going to come into contact with raw chicken. Right, you're dealing with someone who is malnourished, who might come into contact with raw chicken, who also might come into contact with a mosquito carrying malaria, which who also might come into contact with water that is contaminated, right. So, you have all of these compounding public health challenges that really create an environment that's hard to work in, but I think very rewarding and it kind of takes food safety from this space, and I don't want to diminish the work of us food safety, because it's incredibly important, but it does take it from this you know hey we're improving these really great systems to wow, you know, if we could unlock one of these components, and find a solution something really powerful could happen. And so, that's kind of a driving force, for I think, a lot of our work, in particularly, Africa and southeast Asia. I think that's a lot of why I keep going back. True.

Well, Jesse, I think they excuse me. I think you're also forgetting to talk about your work to help with capacity building for governments, like our project in Paraguay. Yeah, you know maybe you should comment also on that. And how working with the governments improve their food safety testing is also important.

Well, I also don't want to take up too much of the time, but I think that that is a good point and kind of speaks to you. We just talked a lot about low income food safety, and I think the point that you're making, Sarah, is a great one which is that there's also a lot of middle-income countries where the again the food safety dynamic changes. And so, you're not really talking about the same scenario that you are in Africa and southeast Asia so if we move to places in South America such as Paraguay. You're really looking at emerging economies environments in which people are looking to enter into trade, and what does the dynamic of trade then due to the safety of that food supply. What are the lenses from a government perspective that need to change in terms of regulation and the capacity that that government then needs to develop in order to participate in in trade not only for success of trade, but success in protection of their own you know food supply their own public health environment And so, we have participated I think and you could probably speak to that too right pretty heavily in parkway in terms of of looking to work with labs and help with their testing capacity and work with them on whether or not they can actually you know effectively carry out trade programs that still provide that that stamp of approval in terms of safety of the products that are coming in and the products that they're they're sending out.

One thing that's been really interesting for me participating in those types of projects, and in that project particularly is in terms of evaluating what labs like food safety testing labs, government labs, and other countries have in terms of their capacity. That's always really eye-opening as well, and learning about the challenges of wi-fi issues, and paper-based versus electronic systems, and how to convert a paper-based system to an electronic database for example. And the slowdowns that all of that creates in the pipeline in terms of not just receiving and testing the product. But also, creating the reports, and the invoices, and then getting payment. And so, when you evaluate the landscape, if you will, and then seek to provide solutions, it's very sort of knee-jerk. I guess to say, well we use this system in our government labs and it works great, and that's not necessarily applicable. Right, because no wi-fi or spotty wi-fi. And so, that's another example I think of what you were talking about, Jesse, in terms of we have to evaluate what we're working with, and then be creative, also, in solutions and supportive And so, that's always I found to be very rewarding as well and challenging from a professional growth perspective, also.

One thing, I always get to chuckle at is we talk about other countries. And it seems like we have this mindset that the U.S. food supply is the safest in the world. And you know, we have to be pretty proud of our U.S. food supply but we still have some major issues food safety wise, and when I look across the country I know Dr. Stack does a lot of international traveling, also, there are countries that probably have at least elements of their food safety system that are better than the U.S. system Australia, and New Zealand, and Japan, Singapore places like that. So you know, there's just such a broad diversity of food safety standards. And what not across the globe and trying to tackle all of them all at one time is overwhelming, but that as Jesse just mentioned, I mean, you can really make a lot of headway with some basic elements in some places. Whereas, in other places you know they're pretty sophisticated, so.

I like that you bring up the fact that we are, we'd like, to tout ourselves as the safest food supply in the world, right. But, we are always learning and improving, as well. And I really appreciate Randy, that you bring up the fact that we can learn from other countries. Also, that we're all here to share and learn together, and that inc that in turn creates a safer global food supply, which in turn improves food security, and nourishes the world. So ultimately, we're all in this together and that's what we're trying to do here in K-State. And on that note, actually I might add a few comments regarding what K-State does in food safety. So really, we're as a land-grant institution, we're involved in food safety from the standpoint of teaching research and extension, and I mean that from a global sense even as Jesse demonstrated, that we're carrying out these types of activities all across the globe. But, what really that includes is not just us sitting around the table. I want to emphasize that K-State has many experts across campus in food safety. And so, we're just here to represent a small portion of experts. But you know, in terms of extension, we actually have consumer educators that work on food safety at the consumer level we have extension experts working with processors small processors especially helping to support their hasso plans and their testing for their facilities and a lot of that also includes small food producers, who are really trying to grow from an incubator kitchen and elevating up and becoming a larger processor in the kansas or missouri areas. So that's an important part of what we do from the extension side, and then of course, food safety is incorporated into so many classes across campus. And not just here in the department of animal science, and then the Food Science Institute. But you know, there are elements of Bakery Science, for example, that they talk about food safety and brain science. And that department is a part of our food safety efforts, both teaching, and research, and extension, and vetmed, for example. I don't want to list too many because I'm going to leave somebody out, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But, I really want to really capture the essence of the collaborative effort that is food safety, and you know not to leave out research right, but we work across so many colleges and disciplines to pull off a food safety project. And I really want to refer back to something you said, Jesse, about this includes economics, as well. And we work with social scientists, and it's animal scientists, as well it's pathologists, and you know it really brings in depending upon the project and the funding agency we work with a variety of disciplines to pull off our food safety research. And I think that's a critical point to make that it's not just us doing food safety work across campus.

You know, I've been told and I haven't confirmed this myself, but if you go into some of our grocery stores here and buy a processed packaged food, say a tv dinner. Dr. Stack, you and I would refer to them. I don't think they make tv dinners anymore, but a product like that might have 40 or 50 countries represented in that one package. So, we are truly a global supply and food chain and you know the systems. Whether, they're informational systems data systems whatever you know even hot topics like climate change, and things like new emerging pathogens that we've never really seen before. You know, we can never get relaxed, we can never sit back, and say well we know enough to be effective, because everything is changing so fast now. And so, that's what makes food safety in particular food science in general and agricultural in general, but food safety is it's almost every day something new happens whether it's in this country or globally. And so, that's what you know having students coming from all parts of the world, like Carla coming from Brazil, it really makes our program stronger because we have that international flair at a very high level.

You know, over the past, say 70 years or so, we've experienced the emergence of several zoonotic pathogens from animal hosts reservoirs that have had significant impacts on human health, sars kobe 2. and there are several suggested drivers for that emergence including land use, change climate, change trade and travel for speeding them around. So the first part of this, I'm going to ask you to exclude, so excluding the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains because I'd like to touch on that later, but excluding antibiotic resistance has there been a significant emergence of new foodborne pathogens and what were the primary drivers?

Well, that is an excellent question. Who wants to address it? I'll give you the first, really beautiful, if you want to call it beautiful example. We went back in 2011 when we had the emergence of never before determined sugar toxin E coli strain 0.04. That happened in Europe mainly in Germany where we had four thousand people just all of a sudden become ill at a really high hospitalization and death rate relative to other sugar toxin E coli infections. And come to find out, it was definitely an emerged pathogen that kind of mixed the virulence properties of more human E coli enteric disease, with what we refer to as enterohemorrhagic types of things. As far as the way the organism attached in our GI tract. And so, that's a perfect example of picking up you know just a floating around piece of DNA that all of a sudden turns on the switch to make something almost a super pathogen in this case. And so, we you know we tracked that one back to the type of bean sprouts that were being produced and marketed out of Egypt. And so, you know that you always have to be aware that these genetic virulence properties can jump from one organism to the other, and most of the time they don't have much of an effect but all of a sudden everything can come together and you've got a really important pathogen at that point.

I think there's lots of examples within salmonella as well. Where we see salmonellas that we don't take very seriously from a public health perspective. We know that they, you know, exist within certain animal populations but we don't really see them show up in public health data. And then, all of a sudden you'll have a large outbreak that will occur with a certain serotype that you just really haven't seen in public health data before. And so, kind of back to some points, you know that are being made is that we have those genetic components, where you ultimately what you end up with is a strain that takes on, you know, the genetic capacity to then cause human disease. I think along those lines there is a level too, where I think, from a food safety perspective. We do need to recognize, and not to communicate that we don't, but that we are dealing with from a biological hazard perspective. A lot of little living microorganisms, and they have a lot of capacity to change, and I know that Sarah and I's advisor always makes the comment, turns out they don't read the book on themselves. Right. And so, we tend to get into a mindset of this is how salmonella behaves this is how E coli behaves and all of a sudden they don't behave that way anymore. And I think that that then pushes us as as food safety scientists as individuals within the food industry to just try to be as adaptive as possible be as open-minded as possible. Particularly, when we're talking about pathogens that have shown the capacity to adapt, and in actuality I can't really think of one that hasn't.And so, yeah go ahead.

I'll give you a perfect example of what Jesse's talking about, and related to climate change. You know, we have data showing that some of the ocean waters are warming right and used to vibrio parahaemolyticus and vibrio vulnificus which are two really important public health pathogens associated with shellfish mollusc mollux it was really you know we didn't see it much up in our northern borders of northern coast even here in North America but now we're seeing kind of a migrate migration and emergence of vibrio problems in shellfish in the harvested in what was traditionally the colder waters. And it's even more complicated than that. We're seeing what we refer to in microbiology as viable but non-culturable. So, you really can't detect some of these organisms until they're maybe in your body, you know, in doing the damage, you know, so it's, you know, all of these science facts. You can get really comfortable thinking, you know, enough and then all of a sudden you don't know, you know. It's causing 4,000 people as the E coli 104 outbreak caused 4,000 people to get sick in a matter of a couple of weeks.

Yes, I think kind of back to close the loop on your question I think some of the driving factors can include you know some natural just variation that occurs. I think that there are some factors that come alongside changes in dynamics in terms of our production and our management practices or the environment. But I think some of it also comes from maybe some dogmatic thought processes within kind of this is this is the way that it is and there's no way salmonella can be in black pepper, or in dried flour and turns out, yeah it can.

So we didn't mention antibiotic resistance, because you asked us not to. Yeah, well speaking of.

Yeah, no. I just wanted to separate them, because the antibiotic resistance challenge is substantial and you know just by parallel tracks we've learned so much about how microbes interact. And you know, the rate of exchange across taxa is just far greater than we ever anticipated. Than we would have predicted, probably 15 years ago. And so, you know the obvious concern for antibiotic resistance is the ineffectiveness of subsequent treatment for infection, but I guess to tie it to the previous question. That the question I wanted to pose is for foodborne pathogens. What are the inherent risks of transmitting that resistance to other intestinal bacteria during the course of the infection and subsequent clearing. So, I'm looking at it as you know not only are we concerned about resistance in the foodborne pathogen, but are the foodborne pathogens becoming a vector for moving those resistance cassettes. The genomic islands around just as a course of how we do business.

So, I might comment on that a little bit from the perspective of shiga toxin producing E coli actually. So, we actually don't recommend antibiotics as a course of action because a lot of times what can happen is that sugar toxins being produced in the cell and the antibiotics that then might lyse the cell and release it. And then, suddenly you have a mass release of the sugar toxin that can kind of overwhelm the body all at once and create many complications from a clinical perspective for the patient. So you might ask the question, then well why should we care about antibiotic resistance genes or characteristics in something like aztec, and it's really from a perspective of what you're mentioning Dr. Stack in terms of then if we do have s tech in cattle or in the environment or in our guts, for example. That there are other microorganisms around other bacteria that can then share those genes so even if a antibiotic resistant s tech might not get treated in a human with an antibiotic, because of the concerns I mentioned. There are concerns though that it will be sharing its genetic makeup and sharing those genes to others. And so, now we might have something that was a susceptible bacteria that is now harboring antibiotic resistance genes. And of course, the risk there depends upon what is being shared with, and then of course how broadly does that. Then share its genes, so you can see there's kind of a domino effect, but when you think about animals, and their gi tracts, and their environments, and our gi tracts, right. They're a separate sort of ecosystem with a variety of different bacteria, and other microorganisms hanging out, and that can impact the sharing of genes, and that is a concern.

Yeah, one of the big issues that has emerged over the last decade in antibiotic resistance is clostridium deficient and my father was just in the hospital, he passed, but I was actually talking to some of the doctors there at fighting clostridium deficient antibiotic resistance in a hospital environment. Whether that's in the cafeteria, whether your general population is consuming food, or the food being brought to infirmed patients. And now it's expanding to cafeterias, and schools, and places like that, and a lot of the isolates are antibiotic resistant and that makes it even more difficult to address.

Yeah, from the research we have conducted and commenting back on on Dr. Graham's point, we've seen that some of because we did some whole genome sequencing with the isolates from the research. And we've seen that some of the isolates collected from the year before. Some didn't have antibiotic resistance. And then, next year they already presented that antibiotic resistance, and really looking at the whole genome sequencing and comparing those strains they were the same consider the same strain, but acquired some of those genes they didn't have before and really this complex environment that you have many different species playing around, and they just interact so much that it's so easy to see then you know something that didn't have now all of a sudden, he has this resistance.

And you're referring to your work in southeast Asia right?

Yes to my, specifically, my work in southeast Asia.

And well, I just I think I would just follow up on a lot of the conversation with you know that this in the whole area of antimicrobial resistance and research in antimicrobial resistance is an incredibly complex area, right. There's so much to consider, and I think, the more we know the less we know. And that's just what's being made clear right is that as we begin to unravel some of the components around amr and antibiotic resistance. It really is becoming clear how well are you measuring it, how well do you know, you know, phenotypic versus genotypic can you trace back to you know source all those things become incredibly complex, right. And you almost get into you can really get into a very circular space. Where one set of isolates collected from one environment could be a lifetime worth of evaluation to try to identify what exactly is going on there. And are you measuring that as accurately as possible. And I think a point that I just wanted to make is you know when we started doing Carla's research, and looking at that whole genome sequencing of the isolates that we collected from fresh markets. I think it became very clear to us early on that there's so much out there in terms of taking that data evaluating that data, and then re-evaluating that data because they're just a lot. And you could probably speak to it better than I could. There's a lot in terms of understanding these genes, what they mean, how they interact together, what the names are, what you know there's various names for the different antibiotic resistance genes. I'm trying to ensure that you see that from a phenotypic perspective.

And not only just the genes. Sometimes, we focus on the genes that could come for a resistance to specific antibiotics, but then it has the gene. But, somehow it's not expressing resistance or it doesn't have the gene. But it's expressing resistance, and then you look you dig a little bit a little bit deeper and you find it has some pumps that were not present before that people didn't know about. And now maybe that efflux pump is helping in this specific antibiotic that we were not aware before. And so, it's very interesting to look over time, and the database that ncbi provides, and just see that you know last year we saw five different resistance five different genes that could encode resistance. And then, this year we have like additional two if flux pumps that were not that before and are helping to explain why we might might see that, or why we might not see that resistance in those isolates. So, it's really interesting how it just changes as the more gathered information, less we know. Probably, as Jesse mentioned, and yeah.

And today, the way we trade food and agricultural products. Whatever that gene is down in Brazil, could be in America in two days, right. Yeah so, then they will adapt you know I mean I think that again not to just kind of continue with the same comment but they are going to from a bacterial perspective right we have to recognize a food safety mindset that they're going to adapt. And so, we're always working with a, I don't want to call him a foe that seems harsh, but we're working on prevention of a group of organisms microorganisms that are going to adapt to whatever we're doing, and that's got to be part of that thought process.

Yeah, I had to follow up on that. In the plant world, we have of course a group of enteric bacteria that infect plants outright, and we're finding what we would have considered a species in the past, they're so variable that they're exchanging on genomic islands. They're not just exchanging resistance genes, or genes for adaptation they're exchanging whole secretion systems, so that we, you know, we can have certain populations with one or two secretion systems and all the one with half a dozen. So, those are the tools that those bacteria need to adapt, and maybe, even adapt to new host species. I, to get it to kind of bring us back to world food day, world Food Safety Day, what do you consider are the pressing gaps in our knowledge? And what are the opportunities for reducing the impacts from foodborne illness? What do we need to head what's our vision?

Oh I think that a huge one, a huge one, is understanding the role of foodborne disease on nutrition gains. And again that comes back to when you look at the population of the world and the percentage of that population that lives in environments where nutrition is a major concern major concern and I mean I think that that could be applied to high income countries, as well. But, you know my focus is really low income countries. And so, I guess I'll speak to it from that space having an understanding for the dynamics between foodborne disease and negated nutrition gains. Would I think change the discussion around investment in sanitary and hygienic infrastructure around the world. Which, ultimately, at the end of the day, I think is it's alarming that has not been a bigger conversation. That we have such large populations of the world that are living in incredibly unhygienic unsanitary environments. And so, I think until you are able to say the reason why Africa is not seeing gains in their nutrition outcomes, or the reason why Asia is not seeing gains in their nutrition outcomes has a lot to do with diarrhoeal disease. Which is a hypothesis that most people working within food safety and international spaces have. I don't know that you're going to see a huge investment in that space. And so, I think having data that really can explicitly show that would be huge.

And I'll also add to your question jim if you especially if you bring it back more toward home and developed countries, is we are in an era where we're really going toward minimal processing of foods, what we lovingly refer to as clean labels. You know, doing away with preservatives and you know really going toward fresh and local, and that sort of thing. And to me, you know, some of this technology is opening the doors to new issues in food safety. I'm not, I don't, want to just come out and say that those types of products are less safe. But, they have to be managed differently. If we're not putting preservatives and things in foods then obviously you can have more microbial growth And so, I think it's an error, that especially me, I'm really into interventions and things like that research as far as food safety. It's something that's a very pressing and real issue today, and I think it is as we look into the next five years, I don't see it changing. I think we're really going toward that more natural clean label green produced type food system, and we have to address it. And I think, if you look at fba for instance, they have just come out with a document that's kind of giving their vision for the new era of food safety is what they call it. And a lot of it is global supply chains, minimal processing, and emergence of new pathogens, things like what we've talked about today on this podcast.

And I might add too, that and this is a little biased because I'm a primarily salmonella researcher, but I feel like the salmonella problem is going to continue on our radar for the foreseeable future, you know, we've made tremendous progress on chicken toxin producing E coli, you know. Particularly, we focus a lot on the beef industry and we've made tremendous progress there. What we haven't made progress on, and you might argue we've made some progress, but is reducing salmonella in terms of public health. And as well as a in different food commodities, including beef for example, and we're making a lot of progress and starting to understand why that might be and particularly in different food products. How is it in a cow, for example and therefore, why is it a risk, so we're starting to make progress, but in terms of like the healthy people guidelines for the government, we aren't making progress there. If you look at it from that perspective. And so, I feel like food safety is going to continue to really be emphasizing funding to figure out what the salmonella issue is, why it's a problem, and then what do we do about it. And that's in a variety of products right, Jesse you mentioned flour, right and we've mentioned beef it's been in produce just to name a few of the many so salmonella will definitely continue to be on the radar for a while.

Yeah, salmonella is actually a bonafide plant pathogen based on all the genetic work done in the last few years. Yeah,

Interesting, thank you for sharing, that I did not know that.

I was just going to close the loop here and talk about I think part of the extension and outreach, you know, the consumer side. How do we educate consumers to then make sure that, you know, if we are all diligent and make our part and everything everybody's doing their part all across the chain. And then, when he reaches consumer and they don't know what to do, and how to handle their food safely, that could be very detrimental to you know preventing food-borne illness. And I think just looking at the calls of action that the World Food Safety Day calls for one of them is team up for food safety, and I think we really could use that to team up for food safety and educate people around us our friends our families. And I find sometimes hard to just communicate, and I think I have spoken enough times to my friends not to eat a raw, not raw but underdon, burger. That now, when they are eating with me, they look at me and they said "okay, yeah. Well done please." and they asked the server to be well done, and I guess you just have to do it over and over and over again until, you know, we're to a point where people just have that in their minds, and they know some of the practices they can choose. Some of the choices can be safer than what they used to do, and I think just it's as much as important as everything else just the consumer awareness, and they know what to do. What they can do to protect themselves and their families.

I just want to take a minute and actually underline that, because as we were going around I thought if no one says it I'm gonna be selfish and take a second stab, because I think that, I mean as much as that sounds a little crazy, and I don't know, I get kicked out of every food safety group I exist in. But, we need a grassroots movement back to consumer education. We really do because we've moved away from it and there is a true lack of, I think, understanding of just really basic food safety and home food safety information in upcoming generations of people. My mom always kind of takes the stance that it's because of home economics, and I think I think she's got maybe a point. But, her point is grounded in that it's due to a lack of food safety education for consumers. And so, whether that's home economics not being in high school anymore, or not right, it means that there isn't something that is providing particularly young people with some level of information on 'this is how you safely prepare food within your home' and we do we have to have a grass root roots movement back to it, because we've kind of forgotten it.

One of the scariest things, as a food microbiologist myself, is walking around the tailgates at football games and watching what goes on at tailgates relative to food safety. It's amazing that we don't have huge outbreaks every weekend, you know, in these types of environments.

You know, unfortunately, for us, people don't want to invite us over for, you know, let's be honest we don't have friends, we're safety scientists. A lot of my friends actually say that they're intimidated for me to even be near them when they're even five feet within the kitchen.

So but, when you're traveling internationally they all want to be sitting right next to you.

That's huge, and they're like if Jessie doesn't eat it, I'm not gonna eat it. That's so true.

But, I really like how you all really close the loop with that conversation, because it's something we talk about amongst ourselves a lot but really struggle with. And another thing kind of going back to one of my comments earlier about how it takes all disciplines. And food safety is one of the things that we also really need is working with our social science friends and colleagues to understand how to get the message out in a way that it will be received and valued. And because that's another piece right is I could put together all the data I wanted on salmonella in cattle and but how do I make somebody care about it? How do I deliver that message in a way that's meaningful for my mom in her kitchen? Right, and how it translates from what we do here to the burger that she needs to cook well done. So, it really takes a whole team to address that question, as well. But, I really like though, how we started out talking about processors, consumers, researchers, everybody, and now you closed it with the consumers, as well. It's really good point.

And, I guess that comment, and some of the comments that have been made throughout the discussion, brings back the importance of the Food Science Institute at K-State. Which is truly an interdisciplinary group, and you've got scientists and researchers from all aspects of research in that area, and very important approach to getting things done the right way.

The Food Science Institute is very focused on food safety, in along with general food science, and I would just like to remind everybody that as June 7th comes up, and the week before, and probably the week or two after, at our food science website, Food Science Institute, website we will have the video posted that Carla mentioned. We'll be sending that to the food and organization. Hopefully, it'll see some international use, and we'll continue to put out as much information as we can about our food safety program. And just general guidance for consumers and processors.

That sounds wonderful, and we will definitely get some connections to those sites through our global food systems website. As well, so that we can get the information out and share all the great things that you're doing, and the students are doing. I think this is an exciting time.

If you're really interested in this topic you can find a lot of things going on World Food Safety Day gotta get that hashtag in there. I really enjoyed the discussion, so thank you so much for your time today. You know there's a difference between observing human behavior and understanding it, and that's our challenge.

I agree with the comments about the need for re-engaging the public in food safety, because it seems like we're in this era of well undercooked is better. And you know, if you watch the food network shows it's almost sinful to cook things all the way through. I think your challenge is big, so good luck.

Yeah, well and I think to that point, right. It may be one of the best ways to kind of close this down, is that the whole Food Safety Day, and their big theme, and has been, you know, across the different years, has been food safety is everybody's business. And so, you know, I think that that's something that we very much believe here at K-State that food safety is everybody's business, and that we're really attempting to cultivate an environment in which we take that into our classrooms, we take that into our research, and we take that into our extension. And so, engaging with the consumer is a huge part of that, and making sure that they are a part of that everybody's business is a really important one.

Well, great. This has been a good experiment having a having a group of people discussing on an important topic like food safety, and we're really excited to be able to put this out in time for food safety International Food Safety Day and I want to thank you all for joining us, and we'll look forward to talking to you again sometime.

Thank you, thank you very much, thank you all, thank you, thanks so much, have a great day.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

Keywords: Salmonella, lymph nodes, cattle, contaminated, research, food safety, animals, ground beef, Kansas State University

This week, Dr. Sara Gragg, associate professor of food science in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry, discusses how and where pathogens access meat. The study of E. coli, salmonella and other toxin-producing pathogens has been a major focus of researchers at Kansas State University for many years. Gragg has presented extensively on the topic of food safety and studies processes in food safety and microbiology. Her research program investigates pre- and post-harvest issues affecting the meat and produce industries, with specific interests in addressing how pathogens contaminate food products and the application of interventions to prevent or reduce pathogen presence.

Transcript:

[Music]

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

The safety of the food we eat is important to everyone. Studies of food contamination with E coli, salmonella and other toxin producing pathogens has been a major focus of research at Kansas State University for many years. Questions on pathogenic contamination in meat and how the organism enters into that food system are at the center of research activities in several disciplines. Today's guest is Dr. Sarah Gragg, associate professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry at Kansas State University. Her research program investigates pre harvest and post harvest issues affecting the meat and produce industries with specific interests in addressing the manner by which pathogens contaminate food products, and the application of interventions to prevent and or reduce pathogen presence. She is particularly interested in studying the pre harvest transmission of foodborne pathogens in food animals, as well as investigating interventions to reduce foodborne pathogens in live animals. I would like to welcome Dr. Sarah Gragg to the podcast, something to chew on. We're looking forward very much to having a discussion with you here today. Before we get started on some of the technical side of what you do, can you give us a bit of background on yourself, who you are, and how you got interested in the work that you do?

Yes, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you, Maureen. And thanks to the entire team for inviting me today. I really enjoy the opportunity to be here with you and visit with you about my passion, which is food safety. So with that I'll share a little bit about how I came to be a food safety researcher. I was actually in high school and walked into my Agriculture class as a freshman didn't know what to expect. And we had a new teacher that year. His name was Todd Berkshires and he was starting us off on our Agriculture classes but also in taking our FFA program forward as well. We had a co-advisor, as well, in our FFA program. And so I got to know these two teachers interacted with Todd Berkshires the most and as part of FFA, we have to have something called a supervised agricultural experience program or an SAE for short. And, I grew up right outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. And I had like two or three acres and had some close friends that I also would show and train horses with, and so, I was definitely a part of agriculture but I wasn't per se the traditional farm kid if you will. And so, I didn't know what I was going to do for my SAE program. And his wife, Dr. Mindy Berkshires was a brand new assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln at the time. And he said why don't you go work with her in the lab because food science and technology is actually an SAE emphasis area. And we can see if maybe that's something that you want to do. And I said that sounds fantastic. And so I got to meet Dr. Berkshires and spend some time getting to know her and her graduate students and getting to know the lab and decided that was absolutely what I wanted to be doing for my SAE. And so, I was very fortunate at the age of 14 to sort of luck into food science, if you will, I don't think I'd ever heard of it or known what it was at the time. And so as a part of my FFA program and working with her in the lab, I was able to complete some different research projects for science fairs, and different other competitions and activities through FFA. And so I got to work alongside her and her graduate students while also logging hours for my SAE. And so, after several years of that, I realized this is what I want to do for my career. This is something I'm passionate about. Something's very interesting to me. And I also really enjoyed agriculture and wanted to make a career out of it. So really with that the rest is history. I stayed at Nebraska, to do my undergraduate in food science and technology. And about the time I was a junior in high school, the Berkshires family relocated to Texas, to Texas Tech University. And at the time, I knew that I was going to be following them for graduate school. So I stayed at Nebraska did my bachelor's and then transferred to Texas, to attend Texas Tech for my masters and my PhD. And so while I was there, my master's work consisted of looking at lactobacillus, and some different strains, as an intervention to control E coli. Oh, and 5787 in fresh spinach. And so, produce safety was really the focus for that degree. But at Texas Tech, we had a lot of exposure to meet safety, as well as pre harvest safety, working with cattle, and other animals as well. So then, I stayed at Texas Tech for my PhD, again with Dr. Berkshires, and worked on cattle lymph nodes, actually, and trying to isolate salmonella from cattle lymph nodes. So looking at the prevalence, which is how many animals out of a certain population have salmonella in their lymph nodes, and also trying to quantify how much salmonella was present as well. So looking at prevalence and concentration.

And so that actually was my entire Ph. D. program. So did that for my dissertation work. And we worked with both domestic cattle as well as cattle in Mexico for the various parts of my project. And we also worked with the United States Meat Animal research center in Clay Center, Nebraska, for a large portion of my dissertation work. So that was what I was up to, before I came to Kansas State University. I did a little bit of a postdoc at Texas Tech as well. And then this job at K State came available. And I have been with Kansas State ever since. And so I joined in June of 2013. And I'm currently an associate professor with a 60% research 20 or 40% teaching appointments. So that's a little bit about how I got to this point in my career.

That's great. Thank you very much. You know, looking through the research activities that you've been involved in, it's covers quite a bit of distance, I'm going through the leafy greens and the produce side of it into the animal side. You know, you talk a bit about calorie search. Have you done research on other animals as well?

Yes, actually, so cattle is definitely probably the area that I've researched the most in terms of live animals or in terms of livestock, but also have done some work with swine. We actually as a food safety team here at K State have wrapped up recently two studies looking at hog carcasses. One study was looking at salmonella from carcasses all the way through trim, and trying to identify interventions that are effective at reducing salmonella. And then we did what I would call it that project sister study where we were looking at reducing ShiGa toxin producing Escherichia E coli on carcasses. And so, that those are probably two of our most recent studies. And then we also are working on a collaborative study that just got funded with Texas Tech University to look at salmonella in hog lymph nodes, as well. And so that's going to be as I mentioned, the dual institution project, where we're going to look at a variety of different hog lymph nodes, from hogs around the country with different plants, and both trying to determine prevalence as well as concentration of salmonella. So really, beef cattle and hogs are probably my two main livestock I've worked with.

I'm curious on the the lymph node work, and this will be a question of based on ignorance. How does the contamination in that part of the animal's body impact human food consumption?

This is a great question. So I'm going to focus primarily on beef cattle because that's where a lot of the lymph node work has been done to date and that's where we have the most data. So we have looked, a lot, at what are called peripheral lymph nodes, so those are lymph nodes that are sort of on the outside of the body embedded in the fat tissue of the carcass. Now, when beef cattle are taken apart, which we would consider fabrication, there the fatty tissue oftentimes gets cut away and is sent with trim to grinding. Since those lymph nodes are a part of that fatty tissue, those lymph nodes then can sometimes get incorporated into ground beef. So when we have lymph nodes that have salmonella in them, those lymph nodes then are in the fatty tissue, the fatty tissue goes to ground beef, and then any salmonella within those lymph nodes now gets ground up and is a part of that ground product. So then for consumers who might enjoy a hamburger that is less than well done or cooked to 160 Fahrenheit, could potentially be at risk for salmonella in that hamburger, potentially from a contaminated lymph node. Now, I also do want to point out that those that salmonella is within a lymph node, and that lymph node is embedded within the fatty tissue of the carcass. So if we were doing a carcass wash at the abattoir, let's say hot water, or lactic acid, for example, those washes do help reduce pathogens on the carcass. However, if salmonella is embedded in the lymph node, and in the fatty tissue, of course, it's protected from those interventions. And so that makes it very difficult to protect against any salmonella entering the horse through the lymph nodes. So we have to really then think about, what can we do in at the live animal side? So pre harvest to reduce the chances of having someone else in the lymph nodes? Also, can we remove lymph nodes? That's been a question. Animals have hundreds of lymph nodes throughout their bodies, right? So it would be very, very challenging to get every lymph node removed from every carcass. And so some studies have looked at what if we just remove maybe the biggest six, right? So some are bigger than others, right? Some, if they are contaminated and contaminated at a high concentration could in theory, be providing a larger load of salmonella into the ground product, then a teeny, tiny lymph node that maybe isn't as contaminated, for example. So it's really kind of hard to predict and know which lymph node might be contaminated? And, and really, what's the best way to approach this from an intervention and a food safety perspective, but it's a very important area of research currently.

Yeah, that is really fascinating. Sarah, and the way that you explain it is really helpful in understanding the implications for the consumer. I'm just curious about salmonella, who knew that salmonella hang out in lymph nodes is the same? Could you talk just a little bit about the physiology? And maybe that will allow you then to get into some of your findings in terms of what can we do pre harvest? Is it? Are there particular kinds of rations that help reduce the amount of salmonella? So first, I'm wondering, is it just a natural part of the physiology of the animal? And what have you learned about ways to reduce it pre harvest?

Yeah, great question. So I will kind of start, I guess, by how salmonella even ends up in the lymph nodes and kind of talk through some of those points. So salmonella is oftentimes naturally in the gastrointestinal tract of cattle. And in most cases, cat cattle are not clinically ill if salmonella. Now we have over 2500 Different serotypes of salmonella, and not all salmonella behave the same way in every post, if you will. Now, what might make us sick, like a salmonella Newport, for example, might not cause any issues in cattle. And so it's really hard to pick up at the feed yard level because that you might walk through the pens and think oh, well if they're that contaminated with salmonella, they should be ill and I can pull them and treat them it'll be fine. That's that's just not how it works because cattle are not as susceptible to salmonella. As humans are. In general, right. There are some serotypes like salmonella, Dublin, that can cause clinical illness in cattle. So I'm speaking more in general terms that cattle generally do not get sick. And so they harbor it in their gastrointestinal tracts they pay In their feces, their feces end up in their pins, and cattle lay down, it gets muddy and wet, and so it gets on their hides. And so salmonella is very much in their environment as well. So when we think about that situation with cattle, if it's in their environment, and if it's in their GI tract, it's possible that it's also finding its way to the lymph nodes. And there's a couple of different ways to consider that. One is through the gastrointestinal tract. So salmonella can pass through actually the lining of the GI tract.

They can utilize what are called the M cells of peyres, patches in Peyer's patches are essentially like immune tissue in the GI tract. And someone will actually utilize that to pass through. And so then they can enter into the bloodstream and also be drained to the lymphatic system. Oftentimes, they're in Gulten in a macrophage or some sort of immune cell. And then those immune cells might carry the salmonella to the lymph node. And then we don't really know what happens after that. One of the problems with salmonella in lymph node research is if we're getting these from animals at the abattoir, so they've already been euthanized and are hanging on the line. I have that one shot. So if I wanted to sample cattle throughout it's, it's I can't just get a lymph node from a live animal, right? I have to get it at death's. And so it's not like I can sample the same animal throughout its lifetime to see when that lymph node became positive, and did it stay positive? And did it ever go negative? So those are some of the questions we have in terms of what salmonella finds its way to the lymph node through the GI tract, for example, how long is it positive? We don't know? Does it get cleared at some point does it pass through that lymph node to another lymph node, for example. And there's some research that's kind of looked at that but we still need some more effort there to kind of identify, but again, challenging research. Now there are some other ways that we sort of hypothesize that salmonella finds its way to the lymph nodes. Now, some of those peripheral lymph nodes that I mentioned, one that I have researched, and a lot of others have particularly is called the sub iliac lymph node. Now, the subiliac is a larger lymph node that kind of sits on the hind hip of the hind leg of the animal, and it drains the hind leg in that region. So we were always scratching our head. Why is that lymph node positive? How did why is the hind leg contaminated with salmonella that lymph node perceived it right? So there are some questions about is it an abrasion, that salmonella is entering through and then gets filtered to the resident lymph node, maybe it's biting flies, we know that flies love to hover on feces, right. And so maybe they're hovering on the feces and then they go bite the hind leg of the animal and introduce salmonella transdermally. And then it finds its way to the lymph node. Now, there has been some research done by some of my colleagues that have looked at what happens if we actually do transdermally introduce salmonella at different points throughout the body. And there's been really interesting research trying to understand where salmonella ends up if it's introduced transdermally. And it does tend to be in kind of the surrounding lymph nodes in that area. So that helps us kind of understand how it can happen not just through the GI tract. Now, it is though, like the sub iliac lymph node on that hind leg, for example, that can probably find its way into the ground beef system B just because of its location and adipose tissue, and then that adipose tissue goes to ground beef. So what do we do about this? Right? Well, we're still trying to identify what to do about it actually. So if we go to the farm level, we need to try to minimize salmonella in the environments and in these animals as well. Now, I will say that generally there are trends to when we find salmonella in cattle lymph nodes as well as in cattle feces and the general trend is it peaks in sort of summer to fall As you go south in the United States, and then we've also done some studies in Mexico, I think one study was, I think, September in Mexico, and we had extremely high salmonella prevalence. But you know, we were going south. And we were at that peak prevalence time. So, in general, salmonella is not found as often in lymph nodes or in cattle feces at other times of the year, and especially like here in the Midwest, we don't find salmonella as much as we would as we move south.

So that helps us also sort of target some of our efforts in terms of where do we think the biggest risks are? How do we help those feed yards or those avatars and then, you know, we can apply it to all regions as well to just help minimize any prevalence we have throughout the United States or throughout the world eventually, as well. So pre harvest, good, you know, good management practices, trying to help keep salmonella out of the environment, cleaning, water troughs, and so forth. But also, as you mentioned, what are we feeding the animals? And so we have actually looked at different studies where if we add a supplement, for example, like a probiotic, does it help reduce salmonella in perhaps their feces in their environment? And then of course, in the lymph nodes as well. So that is a pretty important area of research in terms of what can we get that we can feed to the animals that will not, of course, be harmful? Right? It has to be, it has to have animal welfare in mind, but also productivity, right, we don't, we don't want to also reduce their effectiveness in terms of their growth and what they're already consuming for their diet. So we have to work with like ruminant nutritionists and feed yard experts to help identify things that might work, things that could be beneficial without harming the cattle and their and their daily game in their productivity, while also trying to improve food safety. And so it's kind of a balancing act there and definitely an interdisciplinary effort to try to tack this issue. And then I mentioned, of course, you know, at the avatar, there are questions about, should we be removing some lymph nodes? What if we remove some of the bigger ones? Does that reduce the amount going into the grind, and then in our ground beef product? So we're still trying to figure all of those things out, but it's a Farm to Fork question.

That's fascinating, because it really has shows how little, you know, toward any sort of, I don't want to say global because that's not what I'm implying. But you don't have a method for for really positive controls the moment it appears. Right.

Right. Well, I mean, I will say, you know, the industry is doing the best they can, right? Oh, sure. Healthy cattle with clean sanitary environment. But yeah, we haven't quite found the magic bullet or the silver bullet, if you will, to address this issue. And I think some of us that have worked in the pre harvest space, kind of get frustrated with the salmonella problem, because salmonella just won't go away. It's and you know, when you think about salmonella from an overall public health perspective, it just won't go away. So like the Healthy People, 2010 and the 2020. And you know, now we're getting ready to hear about 2030 for salmonella. We aren't making much progress towards those. And there's a lot of effort going on to try to address this issue. Because salmonella is problematic. And we're doing what we can. We just haven't quite found the solution yet, in general.

Are any particular breeds or subtypes of in this case, cattle or swine? More or less? I don't want to say resistant because that imply something we don't know. Are they more or less likely to be hosts for salmonella?

That's a very good question. So I will say from the lymph node perspective, one of my projects that I worked on during my PhD work at Texas Tech, actually compared what we would call feedlot cattle are fed cattle to what are called Cole cattle. So cattle that maybe were like old breeding stock that were done being used in that way and then you know, sent to the avatar. So, oh, feedlot cattle versus other cattle, if you will, or cold cattle was one of our primary objectives. And what we determined there is that feedlot cattle are far more contaminated with salmonella in their lymph nodes than coal animals. And now when you think about it, I kind of describe the feed yard environment, right, we have animals and pins together, and some may have salmonella, and maybe at high levels and others might not. And then they're hanging out together. They're eating out of the same bins, and drinking out of the same water troughs. And so that kind of explains, I think, why some of our feedlot cattle are going to be more contaminated, particularly as we move south and in the summer and fall, then our cover

Is the contamination from the lymph nodes in ground beef, the major contamination point, or what are the other? What are the other major areas that contamination could occur? I guess that's kind of a two question. Question. Yeah.

That's a great question. So part of what prompted the lymph node research, you know, a decade ago, I guess, really is when we kind of got into this business, if you will, is, you know, we, we have these carcass washes that are pretty effective at reducing salmonella on the carcass. So we might have a certain prevalence or concentration, pre wash, and then it's hard to find salmonella carcasses post wash. But then when we grind up the carcass, salmonella's there, so what gives? Right, why, how is this possible? And so then started asking the question of what all is actually going into the grind? Right? And, well, it's not just lean tissue. And it's not just that oppose, there's lymph nodes in there, too. And so that kind of prompted some of that question. So to answer your question, I would say yes, we know lymph nodes can be a source of contamination. If any salmonella is remaining on the carcass, post intervention, or if it's cross contaminated after for example, during fabrication without clean and sanitary environment, and personnel working to protect against that, then, you know, potentially pathogens could be introduced, post washing of the carcass as well. So a sanitary environment sanitary tools, trained personnel. But we also have to remember that if we are using a carcass wash like hot water or lactic acid, for example, we have to use it properly, right? It has to be at the right temperature, and it has to be mixed to the right concentration, because all of those things help to reduce salmonella on carcasses if salmonella is there in the first place. And so there are a lot of different ways I guess that salmonella might find its way in. But we are particularly interested in understanding the role that the lymph nodes specifically plays. And hopefully we're going to be looking at that very soon as well.

Great, thanks.

Sure, you have other things you'd like to talk about other than salmonella, but we're obviously really interested in the nose, they're going back to the consumer end on Maureen's question. I was wondering about the effects of salmonella, you know, my awareness of food poisoning, or borne illnesses through beef sort of started 30 years ago with E coli, which of course, have very different mortality kinds of consequences. I'm wondering how sick the cells make people and how big of a problem is this for our country in general?

Very, that's a great question. So you brought up the ShiGa toxin producing Escherichia coli. Right, and, as we call them, are definitely very concerning from a public health perspective if they're present. Right. So salmonella. It's, you asked a sort of a loaded question with salmonella. You know, when you think about how there's over 2500 serotypes right? Not all of them are going to behave the same way. And so I'll comment on that a little bit more here in a minute. But what I will say is that salmonella has oftentimes been associated with the number one cause of death for foodborne illness. So that's a problem and salmonella can make a lot of people sick and it can make some people not very sick, right and so people do die from salmonella. And you know, we generally the classic gastrointestinal illness, right it are the symptoms and salmonella can last you know, three to seven days. Sometimes it can last longer than the 24 or 48 hour bug but you might kind of think is the general foodborne illness. And it can cause some issues especially in immunocompromised individuals like it can also lead to like septicemia for example, but in general, healthy immune competent individuals, stay home stay hydrated. And generally it can have in a few days or you know, a day or 234. And you might not, you know, even consider going to the doctor or the hospital just depending it really kind of varies, but a lot of that can depend upon not just your immune status, but what serotype you were infected with and at what level. So, some salmonella serotypes that you hear about in the news potentially associated with outbreaks like salmonella Newports Salmonella enteritidis salmonella typhimurium, some of those you may have heard about and associate with foodborne illness. So those are some of our most clinically associated serotypes, if you will. So for whatever reason, and some research is looking into this, they are more virulent for humans and can cause more severe illness. Not just that, but at a lower dose as well. So some outbreaks have shown that those more clinical serotypes might be around 10 100 cells versus some other serotype outbreaks have been around a million cells or more. And so it really can depend on a lot of different things with salmonella. Now I will say this interestingly, when I was doing my research at Texas Tech on lymph nodes and salmonella in lymph nodes, when I was working with the Meat Animal research center and Clay Center, Nebraska, Dr. Dana Hart high up there she was serotyping our isolates. And the majority of the serotypes that we found were Montevideo and a Anatum. And Montevideo and anatum aren't generally associated with being highly virulent, or having a lower infectious dose. To be clear, we found all types of serotypes right, we found a quite a variety, including some type of Miriam's and Newports. So it's, even though Montevideo and Anatum were the we're the largest, it doesn't mean that there is no risk associated with them. But it is interesting, though, that some of the ground beef data in terms of salmonella serotypes from the United States Department of Agriculture, Food Safety Inspection Service, in past years, has shown a higher prevalence of Montevideo and an Anatum as some of the stereotypes. Now we do know that Montevideo Anatum are often associated with cattle, we often find them in our cattle studies. But the fact that we found them also in our lymph nodes, and we know lymph nodes go into ground beef. And we know that ground beef sometimes has Montevideo in an autumn at a higher prevalence. I don't think that's a coincidence, either. But I haven't investigated that that's just my personal hypothesis and trying to make connections, if you will, to all the data that's out there.

Yes. Which gears just a bit, looking over some of the activities that you're involved with on campus. Um, you are also affiliated with the Center for Food Safety Research and Child Nutrition, which I think is in college years. Program is and what your involvement is with it.

Right. Absolutely. So I work with my great colleagues over there. Dr. Kevin Roberts, Dr. Kevin Sauer, Dr. Powell, Paula Pious, excuse me, and some others that have been fantastic colleagues and collaborators. So that center is aimed at addressing the need for like school, school lunch programs, for example, and child nutrition programs in general. And so they have as part of their center different funding. Research projects, oftentimes is a micro lab study. I'm involved with some of those studies. And so we have a good time trying to address some of the questions out there and they're a great team to work with. So what we've done in the past is looking at cooling of large quantities of food. So as you can imagine in a school lunch program, It's kind of hard to know how much food you're going to need from day to day. And so at the end of the day, I might be left with several large pans of chili, for example, why don't want to just throw that out? So how do I cool it properly so that I don't have a risk of foodborne illness for the students.

So there's something called the temperature danger zone, which is the temperature where bacteria can grow more readily in a food product. And some sources would say it's 40 to 140. Fahrenheit, some would say it's 41 to 135, I tend to say it's the 4140 rule, because I think it's easy to remember. So if a food product is held in that temperature danger zone for too long, and if there are bacteria present, they can grow. And depending upon the bacteria, it could make a toxin that could make you sick, right? Or it could grow to a high enough level that the actual bacteria might make you sick, depending upon what the bacteria itself is. So we need to make sure that we're providing resources to schools on how to cool properly when you have large portions of chili or rice or tomato sauce, for example. So we've worked together to address some of those questions, looking at different cooling techniques. Do we cover it? Do we not? Do we cover it a little bit? Do we put the pans in ice water? And then in the fridge? Do we just put them in the fridge. And so we've looked at a variety of different food products to help try to address some of those questions. And then another study that we did was looking at food served away from school on a field trip. So a lot of schools might provide sack lunches to students. Well, when two field trips start, right, usually we leave at 8am. Everybody gets on the bus and we go you know, visiting outside looking at different things while the lunches stay on the bus probably. What's going on with those lunches? Are they properly packed with ice or ice packs in insulated coolers? Sometimes these field trips might happen in a situation where it's a very hot day. And we all know how hot our cars can be at the end of a hot day. You think about what a bus might be on a hot day. So we tried to answer the question of if a sack lunch is take bank being taken for students on field trips, how are they being stored and how safe is it? So the FDA Food Code has what's called time as a public health control. So we can consider for hours as the public health control if like temperature controls not available, for example, it's called time as a public health control. Well, we need to answer the question is that effective in a scenario where maybe a sack lunch is not receiving proper storage conditions for refrigeration, and maybe it's on a hot bus for three or four hours. So we worked on a study trying to simulate what those bus temperatures might be. So worked with school officials around the country since of temperature data loggers in the month of May in June, I think it was to North Carolina, and Arkansas maybe and ask them to put these temperature data loggers in a bus and outside of a bus. And we tried to look at that sort of 7am to noon or one timeframe to see what the temperatures were doing to know what the risks might be for a cooler of sack lunches on a bus. Well then we tried to create a worst case scenario. So we took that information and then made it worse right temperature wise. And so we created a program on a smokehouse and ramped up the temperatures like what might happen on a bus on a hot day. And again, exaggerated right? Let's stress the system as much as we can to create a worst case scenario and then prepared sack lunches that had salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes inoculated on them and had temperature probes and different sack lunches throughout the cooler and tried to determine not just what's the temperature doing in those coolers and in those sack lunches, but did salmonella or listeria grow. And we had determined based upon preliminary studies that a cooler packing scenario with no ice or With ice, one layer on the bottom or worst case scenario, so those are what we also used in our study. And we determined that the pathogens did not grow during that four hour four to five hour time frame.

And so we determine there's pretty low risk in one of those scenarios of the pathogens being a problem in terms of growth. But of course, there's a huge caution there, right, we looked at salmonella, and we looked at listeria, and we only looked at turkey sandwiches, carrots, and apple slices. There are other pathogens, and there are other food products and their other different formulations of turkey sandwiches and stuff. So we still recommend not keeping it on a hot bus and having at least one layer of ice and eating, of course, within the four hours with food code recommending only four hours as the time point for public health control. So that's a little bit of a summary there. And I have to acknowledge to that Dr. Phoebus, was associated with those studies also. And so our food safety team, as a whole has worked with this group. So it's been a it's been a different approach to research than, you know, the cattle and the lymph nodes and things I've been talking about. And so it's been a very interesting experience that I've enjoyed learning about as well.

Did anybody ask you what you found in food science is a discipline that got you so hooked on it or was not there for other sources of scientific disciplines?

That's a great question. I think it's, you know, I really like pipettes, and I really like the benchtop. And I really enjoy getting to take a meat sample or a spinach sample or something and do different micro techniques that in a day or two, I can see E coli or salmonella on a petri dish, and I can count it and what can I do to treat that product to have less salmonella on the next time that I count? Right? That's fascinating to me. But we'll be what I'm really hooked on is the importance aspect, I really appreciate that what I do could impact lives. And if I can find some sort of solution to a problem, that might reduce salmonella in the food supply. And that's fewer people that get Salmonellosis and fewer people that might have serious illness or die from it, then my job is, it's definitely worth it right. And I feel like I've made a positive contribution, not just to science or to the university, but to public health and to society. That's ultimately what I want to do.

That's very well thought out.

There, I've got a follow up to that your opening narrative about how you got into food science, you framed it as sort of chance and, you know, yes, there's a lot of chance and how we end up in our particular paths in life. But I can't help but notice that it wasn't just chance that you had this exposure to an academic who was a woman in food science, who sort of got you started. I wonder if you could reflect on your time as a graduate student and now your own time with your students in your lab? I wonder, do you have some opinions about what we should be doing to encourage women to choose and to persist in science?

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually am very appreciative that you brought this up, because it's always really important to me to acknowledge that I didn't get here by myself, I had tremendous opportunity, and mentors. And I had people take an interest in me in my professional development, and in my education from a very early age. And so and so I often say I don't know what I would be without Todd and Mindy Brashears I don't know because they introduced me to food science and you know, now my career and so I feel like I will always owe them so much gratitude. And I'm always wanting to make them proud. Because it's as if they hadn't provided like, I don't know where it would be so no, it's you can imagine how important it is to me to pay it forward. And so it I find probably some of my greatest satisfaction. Feeling like I have impacted a life like I have helped a student become a better scientist, help them to be grow in their professional development. maybe help them learn themselves and about life in general. And so if I can do that for one or two, or however many students like they have done for me, then I'll feel like my job is done. Because I think that investing in the future, the way they and others invested in me, is the key to having future scientists and, and having a safe food supply. And so for me, that's really you know, that at the end of the day, that's also what gets me the greatest satisfaction. So in terms of the women aspect, yes, I will say that, you're she has been a wonderful mentor to me, in terms of what it's like to be a working mom as well, and how to balance those things and still be successful. And I've learned so much from her from a personal perspective in that way, too, that, you know, we really need to enrich and encourage that in other women also, and in young ladies who might be interested. And so for me, you know, sometimes we have opportunities to work with different young lady groups that come through at K State. And those are the types of things I think, you know, I should be going to visit and sharing my story about how this woman invested in me at age 14, and look where I am. And she still mentors me today, right? I, you know, text her, often just, and we chat often. And she's still very much involved in my life. And so we need to start that with others at a young age and provide them mentors and role models and a path forward through STEM careers, so that we do continue to have young ladies interested in being the next generation.

Very well said, Thank you.

That is fascinating. That's a wonderful testament to what you are doing as a teacher, as an instructor at K State and having the students going through your program, what an opportunity for them.

Well, thank you. I mean, they do so much right, in terms of the research in helping to teach and training new students that are coming in. And so, you know, I think graduate students and undergraduate student workers are also somewhat of the unsung heroes, right? You know, I did a lot of the lymph node work myself, so I can talk about it. But I also get to talk about the lymph node work my students are doing today. And so you can't forget to acknowledge how important it is to not just recognize what they do and their success and how important they are, but also recognize their contribution to science and how important it is to keep fostering that so that we have great scientists coming out to carry the torch in future generations as well.

I would like to ask you if you've got any final comments or any questions of us.

You know, this has been a wonderful time. I really enjoyed talking with you about my research and kind of about who I am today and how I got to this point, and I really appreciate the opportunity and thank you for all the very insightful questions and hope that we can maybe do it again sometime. Thank you so much.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University. Kastner co-directs the interdisciplinary Frontier program, which is focused on crossing disciplinary borders, and overseeing scholarly activities for several academic units. Since food production, shipping and trade are all managed through regulation and international policy agreements, students in Kastner's courses benefit from his experience in international trade policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

Transcript:

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on.

Food production, shipping and trade are all managed through regulation and international policy agreements. History lends a trove of background and information on how these agreements were reached, how the safety and affordability of food is managed through these systems, and points to the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the system in maintaining availability of healthy food for consumers. In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor in the Department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at K State.

Dr. Kastner brings a holistic perspective of pedagogical innovation in student mentoring, co-directing the interdisciplinary Frontier program focused on Crossing disciplinary borders, and superintending scholarly activities for several academic units at K State. Welcome, Justin, the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On and to get things started off, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, who you are, what brought you to the area of study that you are in and perhaps what brought you to K State?

Thank you for having me. I am not a native Kansan, but for all practical purposes, a native on, incidentally, true to the theme of the global food system. The second Food Science son of a food scientist, dad, and my brother and I both got to grow up in Manhattan, because my dad, first counselor, who retired a number of years ago, took a job at Kansas State University. So my brother and I were born in Pullman, Washington, the home of Washington State University, the home of a really, really high end, fantastic dairy product called Cougar Gold cheese, which actually the CASPER family, and all generations and all within our sphere of influence, continue to enjoy. And dad works in Food Science at Washington statement. Fortunately, providentially got a job and moved to Kansas State. And so my parents moved us I was, I think, three months old Marine, if you can believe that. And so we grew up here in Manhattan, and my brother and I were thoroughly indoctrinated and manipulated by my dad, to become food scientists as well. And when I was in university at K State, in the late 1990s, that was the time when mad cow disease or BSE was a sort of conflict filled and trade dispute filled public health issue. And when I was finishing my time as an undergraduate at Kansas State, in the late 1990s, I was quite keen on studying that issue and other related other food safety related issues in global trade politics. And so my wife and I, we, we got married, we moved overseas, and to study that issue, actually, in the UK, did a master's food safety and international trade in London and then studying public health in Edinburgh, Scotland. And, you know, I think part of my journey has been falling more in love with the policy aspects of science, including food safety, but also more and more in love with history. And so one of the things that happened after we finished our time in the UK is I was able to work for a summer in food safety and animal disease related policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. And I even now, in my job the case date, I teach courses related to the work of the WTO and its principle trade agreement that governs and sets guidelines for food safety, animal disease and plant disease regulation. But while we were in Europe as you as many people listening to this podcast who relate, we just became more and more fascinated by history. So for my PhD, which actually live in Canada, in southern Ontario at the University of Guelph I, I emphasized historical, specifically late 19th century late 1800s, trade disputes over food safety and animal disease, and kind of looking at some of the policy and on economic and political precedents for resolving disputes over food safety, which I had, of course, witnessed at the WTO. And so to sort of be quick here, when my wife and I moved back to the United States, we were fortunate to return to Manhattan, and I've been on faculty here for a decade and up close to two decades, I guess, and have been involved with quite a quite a wide array of undergraduate and graduate programs, I've developed a number of courses teaching, teach a number of courses and involved with the College of Veterinary Medicine, or I'm on faculty that run not a veterinarian involved with the undergraduate and graduate Food Science Program, the undergraduate honors program, and case data lathe as well. And I'm just really honored to get to continue to help students not to put too strongly and help students fall more in love with the policy and historical aspects of the food system, which I myself had experienced when I was close to them leave.

You and I have talked in the past. And so we've had the opportunity to interact. But I was reading through this again, and kind of getting myself back up to speed on your background. And I find it interesting with the focus that you have, where the College of Veterinary Medicine fits, how did you end up in that particular college with the background and the clear understanding that you have of history and politics and all of the things that go into that?

I think part of the story is that but you know, the early 2000s here at Kansas State, there was a real movement to set up they weren't called this but you know, basically clusters of multi disciplinary research and teaching groups of faculty that were to some extent kind of charged to and given permission even to operate outside of their home departments outside of their home colleges for the sake of the wider University multidisciplinary tackling of complex problems, including food safety and security. So one of those programs, which was actually I think it was called the targeted excellence program. And one of the targeted excellence programs was for food safety and security. And there were a number of faculty, physicians and faculty, existing faculty who were mobilized for that effort. And one of the new positions was actually here in the College of Veterinary Medicine in my department, Department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology, which is actually one of the most diverse in the sense of scientific disciplines. One of the most diverse departments at K State because we have folks studying all kinds of issues, some directly, some indirectly, veterinary quite a few epidemiology minded scholars, certainly food safety, certainly virology bacteriology in just a very diverse academic department. And as I know, I'm preaching to the choir here. But you know, part of I think the advantage that K State has had is that we have been less snobbish about departmental barriers, and very willing to think across departments across colleges, and even komentar students who advise students might have in my case, I've been involved with helping mentor, undergraduate and graduate students, many, perhaps most of whom are not even actually in the College of Veterinary Medicine, in but in other graduate programs and undergraduate programs. And then through my involvement with the honors program that was exceptionally multidisciplinary, because I spent, you know, about four years helping students from all of the different undergraduate colleges at K State, feed their intellectual curiosity about a range of topics, not just the food system, but I think the short answer is the targeted Excellence Program was how I ended up being based here at the College College of Veterinary Medicine, but one incidental and collateral benefit of that is that I have become more and more conversant about veterinary history, which is something that actually emphasized in my PhD of wealth. And we have really one of the great patriarchs of the history of veterinary medicine in the United States on faculty, faculty emeritus here, and that's Dr. Howard Erickson. I'm sure you guys know and I've really enjoyed working with Dr. Erickson. You'll see him as a as a mentor in the field of that industry.

Justin, I really appreciate hearing your background both in terms of sort of the path to took to get here as well as your PhD. I studied political communication. And your story about how you were socialized into being a food scientist really reminded me that I didn't know what a food scientist was, until my first job out of college, I worked for the National Academies Association in Washington, DC, and we had several food scientists on the staff. So my introduction to food scientists was through policy and politics, but I don't think most people probably have that appreciation for the role that food science and policy the way that they go hand in hand. I wonder if you could talk for a little bit about any how you see those two fitting together? I mean, some people might understand them to be contradictory, right? Science, purely objective policy? Not purely objective? Do you ever feel attention? Do your students feel attention? Do you have trouble convincing your more science minded students to policy matters?

Well first of all, I think you and I are very unusual, and how we came to become aware of the term food science you sounds like experienced it in no an actual policy workplace. In my case, I was you know, indoctrinated by a family member. But I always joke, or I sometimes joke that most pop culture conversant Americans know food science through the National Lampoon's Vacation series, because Clark Griswold, the Chevy Chase, playing character, he is a food scientist. And so if you ever want to see the essence of Food Science, all you have to do is watch Christmas vacation, or European vacation, and you will fully appreciate the wonders of being a food scientist. You know, I think, more seriously that one of the artifacts of higher education not just in the United States, but everywhere, is that we have these names for undergraduate and graduate programs, in my case, a PhD in food science, that, yes, is merited because maybe we take courses and we are examined, and we are expected to emphasize, like in the case of food science, it's typically you know, food microbiology, food chemistry, food engineering, and food processing expertise. But the problem with these terms, like food science is that just like with any academic program, in a complex society, in a complex world, those titles will never and should never fully convey what makes you you, I tell my students that all the time, like, you should not expect the title Master of Public Health or MS in food science, or doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, you should never let those terms be the the limiting descriptor of what you bring to the table. And that's why my favorite part of favorite part of the graduate degree titles is actually MSC or Ms. Masters of Science or PhD, Doctor of Philosophy, because those convey thinking they convey a scholarly approach. They can convey intellectual curiosity, yes, about whatever the state of degree title is. But certainly not just that. And so I think in my case, fortunately, food science by being either within a narrow definition of Food Science, relatively diverse having food, microbe biology, food chemistry, food processing, but because of that, implicit diversity, there's maybe more of a openness to true diversity, and, you know, embracing all the different facets of the global food system. So I'm very thankful to the food science discipline for that very reason. And I just might add that, I think some disciplines, you know, graduate program titles, for instance, that are very precise, they may actually be very appropriate. You know, you think about someone with a PhD in say, virology that would not necessarily expect a biologist to be conversant on healthcare policy, but what I would expect them to have an understanding of the scientific underpinnings of viruses in society and in public health's reality

That makes sense, and I would agree with your virologist example. But I would push back a little bit and say that while you might not expect the virologist to have an expert, an expertise in policy, I would expect anyone with even an undergraduate BS to have enough familiarity with the way that policy is made and an appreciation of our system of making policy with its strengths and weaknesses to be able to engage it in a particular way, right? I mean, back to your earlier point, I really liked the framing of his initials that matter more than what comes after the initials.

And I think that that is something that maybe we need to emphasize more. There was an article 20 years ago in The Economist, basically, citing I think it was Arnold Toynbee, some quasi famous British historian, who said that the land grant university system was America's most important contribution to higher education, because it was all about being practical was all about solving problems. It was all about, you know, kind of technical information delivery there in frontier America, you know, in our case in 1863, and then Kansas State Agricultural College was founded, but one of the other sides of that coin in places like a land grant university culture, is that we tend to sometimes I think, I think it's fair to say, We downplay those initials, pH, D, and s, to maybe because we're trying to be practical, right? And that's our heritage. At the end of the day, you know, I'm always mindful the fact that, in fact, one of my high school buddies, his dad, who was a faculty member at K State, an agricultural economist, he said, his name is Dr. David Barton. He told me once that education prepares you for your last job, meaning, you know, when you are an undergraduate student, or you're a graduate student, you're developing the critical thinking skills. Those MSc and PhD initial alluded to skills so that as you go on in your career, you can continue to learn, you can continue to make sense use your human faculty of reason to understand complex problems, navigate new issues, like a pandemic, which by the way, I had no courses. But I couldn't take that when I was studying public health in Edinburgh, we did have courses on pandemics, but no one really prepared me for COVID-19. And I don't think anyone has a degree, master's of science COVID-19, you know, from the 1990s, right. But we choose an MSc Xu understand. And DVM is an MDS.

I love that framing of it prepares you for your last job. I think we spent so much time and understandably so thinking about recruitment in terms of preparing you for your first job. But that's not the point at all.

One of the things that I wanted Justin to talk a bit more about is the Frontier program that he had put together. That is something I remember again, in the past, I remember discussing with you and it's it's quite an interesting endeavor that you had gotten into, can you give us about a bit of background and detail on what that one was?

Yes. Well, you know, like everyone listening to this podcast, and you're, you call you Maureen. It's a common experience in higher education in academic life, and probably in any workplace, to notice those kinds of similarly like minded colleagues that we have, and then collaborate with them. When I was in graduate school, studying BSC studying International Trade politics in London. My wife and I,we lived in a postgraduate student housing complex filled with graduate students and residents from all over the world. One of my fellow students that wasn't living there. His name's Jason Nicholson. He was studying international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And we became friends mainly because he would fly home to his home state of New Mexico and bring back all kinds of good southwest fare and beauty. My wife and Jason and I, we cook these meals to, you know, remember what spicy food tastes like as we were living in bland food, London. And as we became friends with Jason, Jason, I realized that we both had had excellent mentors. When we were undergrads. We both realized we had this fascination with interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving. And then we also incidentally, just both love Star Wars. So we had a lot to talk about all the time, a good reason to like each other. And so Jase, and I became friends. And fast forward 2004. I was on faculty here at K State and Jason was on faculty at kind of in a parallel way, his alma mater, New Mexico State, in the political science or government department, and we decided that we would start something called the Frontier program, and it was all about crossing disciplinary frontiers of kind of a metaphorical statement that had two meanings. One, we wanted to have students be encouraged to be intentional to think outside of the rooms stated, academic department or academic program, baby food science in case of a case State student in political science in the case of the New Mexico State University students, but also to intentionally studying issues at borders, including international trade of food, and other issues that happen at nation state boundaries are frontiers fronteira. And so the frontier party was born out of that kind of idea. And Jason and I and others, Dr. Avenues share case state, we were able to grow that program and through different partnerships over about a decade and a half, including, perhaps most notably the US Department of Homeland Security in their career development grants program. We build a fairly, you know, I don't think it's too daunting to say this, but just very, I think exceptional program of experiential learning and CO mentoring. So Jason and I would, with other faculty and universities, we would take as many as 2030 students, three to four times a year to international trade ports, used to be socially engineering groups, meaning we would have students from political science, sociology, public health, food science, different universities. And we would travel to international trade ports to policy centers to groups like the Congressional Research Service that you probably know about, Colene, in Washington, to historical archives. Remember, I mentioned earlier my interest in history. And we would just give these students a chance. It's not a course as a field trip, and chance to be with peers who are not in their own major, make friends with them. But it'd be a total geek out field trip, you know, learning about international trade, learning about food inspection reports, learning about what was in on the bookshelves in an 18th century, you know, Virginia archive related to food and health meeting with incredibly competent policy analysts and the Congressional Research Service in the Library of Congress. And we would do these trips we did, I think we've had today we've kind of stopped numbering because the program with DHS has ended, but we have probably had 300 400 students travel on these trips. And in COVID, you know, we obviously haven't been doing this, but mercifully, I do every two weeks have resumed based sessions that are similarly diverse in terms of academic disciplines, and we call them crossing disciplinary frontiers gatherings. And so we're encouraging the students and we discuss what they're learning what they're interested in the relevance of thinking across academic disciplines quite a bit on history, quite a bit on the history of public health, obviously, right now at the moment, and I just, I'm just really honored Maureen to have been involved with with Dr. Axelsson in this sort of effort, what we call the Frontier program, the Frontier Field Trip program and crossing disciplinary frontiers. And that also, we're also very grateful, actually, to the Global Food Systems Initiative case state, which did support a good number of these trips several years ago, including trips for not just K State students, but students from for his state. So if you're a pure state legislator listening to this podcast, please know that at Kansas State University, we took very much a non KSU only approach to our mentoring. And we were able to take students from just kstate for UC on some of these trips, and that was really underlining.

How do you say that those activities in that student learning directly impacting the global food system at the state level?

Yes, good question. I mean, I think that what the analog, of course, is COVID. How are we managing the pandemic? We're doing it with public and with private actors. We've got governments, we have local government at the Riley county health department involved. We also have private health care providers involved. We've got private pharmacies, private grocery stores, and the food system is no different. You know, the safety, security and operation of the food system in the state of Kansas is inevitably dependent on both public and private actors. So I would say that, you know, helping students, not only the certainly at Kansas State, grow in their understanding of the multifaceted nature of the food system, having an appreciation for microbiological science as well as regulatory affairs. You know, many students, many K State graduates are conversant in both domains. And, you know, some do work in the expressly public sectors. So one of my first mph students, Ryan Bradburn, graduated from K State and mph in food safety, biosecurity, he works for the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. And he's very much a government regulator, helping to ensure the safety and security of our meat and poultry Supply here in the Midwest. But then we have other students like for instance, me fairly recently, Dr. Danny Unruh, who actually was one of the students on the global food system grant. And Dr. Andrew now is working for a private firm. But just like Ryan is also a key player in the safety, security and operation food system, in Kansas and in the Midwest. So I think that we have to remember that. And we always said this to the Department of Homeland Security. And they themselves designated the food and agriculture sector, the critical infrastructure, key resources sector of Food and Agriculture as an expressly public and private phenomenon. And so K State, you know, in the words of my, my father, taste state, does many things well, but one thing that we have always done well, is graduate students who understand the food system. And that includes the so called hard sciences, as well as the so called Social soft sciences, social sciences. And those students who have gone on, like Ryan, like Danny, to work in public and private sectors are making a real difference. And you and I, we're all guilty of taking it for granted, but that they are the Clark Griswolds saving the day. Right? Can we agree on that? Colene?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I totally forgot about that. It's much cheaper to go back and watch those with a whole different twists when I'm watching those movies.

Yeah, oh, man. It's funny, soft skill. Is writing. So writing is the skill that carries everything else? What's the common experience for a graduate student whether you're doing an MPH report, an industrious thesis, a PhD dissertation, even these coursework only programs at K State, many of them have some sort of writing or written product capsule, that is so good and so appropriate, because Thank you cannot write clearly without thinking clearly. And, you know, it's back today, one of my, one of the graduate courses I teach is, is a, it's a writing course, for science students, and not just food science, and public health, but certainly those disciplines. And I just love it, you know, it's maybe it's not as immediately exciting as a trade policy course, or a history of public health course, child, grateful to teach. But it is exciting to see students refine their faculty of reasoning become better thinkers, literally, because we're teaching them how to properly use a semi colon, or we're teaching them how to be more grammatically parallel in their writing. And then what does that bring along or brings along clarity of thought to begin to understand more effectively articulate what they're interested in the problem they're tackling or the solutions they see? And that is, so the essence of education, and it's a soft skill, I'm pretty sure that writing is a soft skill. I think that's a fair statement.

Maybe the moral of the story is, you're the person who was commenting where rate was right, if we think of it, we categorize it as a soft skill, but there couldn't be anything more important than those kinds of skills. Great. Let's let's go to trade because, you know, it's kind of a big deal, and it's obviously a big deal and an expertise of yours, Justin, now that I'm reminded about your experience in the UK. I wonder if you would be willing to sort of think out loud and comment on Brexit. You know, everything that you read in the mass media about Brexit usually talks about the consequences for lower economic output in the UK and perhaps in other places, or just in the increased amount of difficulty in moving products across board. But now that you're here, I'm thinking that there could be some real serious food and food safety consequences, thanks to Brexit. And I wonder if that's true. Or if there are other things in relationship to the food systems I'm not thinking about in terms of Brexit.

First of all, I'll address the Brexit issue, I think something that has to be remembered on the practical side of international trade is that at the end of the day, trade, international trade, commerce, the movement of goods and services across nation state borders, that occurs because of bilateral have to country agreements, you have to have. I mean, in addition to the private actors involved, you know, the producers, the wholesalers, the transport station, chain, the retailers, the consumers, that's all implied and necessary, but it's only when you have a government to government agreement, which was what we would call a bilateral trade agreement. Only when that happens, and trade occurred. The inconvenience for my, my colleagues in not just the UK, but also in the European Union, is that one of the consequences of Brexit is that because Brexit was basically or you know, because the UK had really been, to some extent, and in a positive and healthy way, reliant on a lot of being on their bilateral agreements being established on the basis of European Union, wide negotiations. Now, all those bilateral agreements that Britain has enjoyed the UK has enjoyed, they have to basically renegotiate, right and and this is the big consequence. And in a technical age, which we all live in highly complex age, where you have multiple categories of trade, issues of trade, technical barriers to trade. In my case, when I sitting, sanitary and phytosanitary, food safety, animal disease, plant disease issues in trade, that that effort is enormous. And so yeah, there's definitely, and I'm not making a political comment about this. But there's definitely a bureaucratic cost to having to renegotiate all this all these bilateral agreements, is there opportunity for Britain to maybe hatch some new trade deals? That's, I'll leave that to the economists to comment on. But when it comes to food safety, there's a lot of effort because judgment calls have to be made. And now that you know, and even yesterday, one of my master's in public health students, she's a government officer from Thailand came to Manhattan to do her MPH in food safety, biosecurity, and her MPH field experience was during COVID was done largely virtually, with a colleague of mine, who's one of the SPS representatives for the European Union to the WTO Geneva. And, you know, if there's anything that was very evident yesterday, and her field experience presentation, was just how her home country, Thailand has to put forth a lot of effort to be able to have a robust trade, relationship and hurt. In this case, it was poultry export trade, poultry being exported from Thailand to EU nation states. And the amount of detail, the amount of scientific and capital intensive investment that has to be made by countries to be able to trade with others, is sizeable. And then if you can just imagine if a country like Thailand, was in a situation like the UK is, and had to suddenly renegotiate with all of those bilateral agreements, that would just be a nightmare, and very challenging. So, but I think like some of the things that we've seen with the pandemic, and in society, a lot of these decisions Brexit included, are not being made necessarily unexpressed, the economic terms of the made because of issues of identity, sociological forces that, you know, a psychologist or a political science and sort of sociologists would be almost better at describing then say a trade economy coins.

Agreed. I'll come back to that toward the end. But thanks for that. Let's go to the other side of the globe. I'm thinking about what lesson we might learn from COVID. And it's spread a Coronavirus, and it's spread from China. And, you know, it's not obviously a food system issue. But clearly, like almost everything else is connected to the food system, as I understand it, the best that we understand not a closed book and by any stretch, but it originated in what essentially is a food market and was certainly spread around the globe, thanks to movement of goods, movement of trade and services. Are there any lessons that are sort of like tentative lessons? I know it's still early, but how did we do in terms of thinking about our agreements between countries and the movement of goods? Post spread of Coronavirus or during pandemic Do you do you have like an early assessment of how we did as a globe regarding trade and the threats from these kinds of pathogens?

First of all, let's acknowledge that a pandemic is an extraordinary event that is inevitably a negative event for someone. But I think one of the good news stories, one of the bright points of this is that, and I actually talked about this in my graduate course on the multilateral trading system for food safety, animal disease and plant disease is that we really saw the vindication, we really saw the value of having what I was called a rules based global trading system. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that there's a juggernaut force, policing the world, making sure that every country does everything correctly. It's about there being international treaties or covenants or agreements on what the rules should be. When it comes to these technical science, latent issues like food safety and animal disease, and the main trade agreement for that is the agreement on the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures or the SPS agreement. One of the things that happened early on with COVID when there will these wet markets these in the market and Wuhan, but not just they're also the frozen seafood products that were being moved to large metropolitan areas. Like Beijing. There was a some alerts sort of occurred. Obviously, the news sources and people were trying to understand What's this new, this novel Coronavirus, but one of the kind of interesting but not necessarily talked about issues was the Russian Federation. And I think February of 2020. They did the right thing. They follow the rules of the SPS agreements, Article Five, which basically is is a requirement that if you're going to make regulatory changes on what you allow into your country, you have to do it on the basis of a scientific risk assessment. Okay. And this is designed to take out some of the arbitrary, discriminatory and chaotic trade practices that have plagued humanity in agriculture for years, for millennia. But there's a subsidiary or part of article five of the SPS agreement that says that when we have something new when we have a problem that we don't understand, like a novel Coronavirus, countries have the right to temporarily or provisionally just unilaterally stop trade. And then they are to do a risk assessment. And so Russia did that. They had, you know, they some of their veterinarians had gotten wind of this and they were worried like what might this be, you know, what could the spread to you know, can we will begin it through consuming certain products. And so they stopped trade from China. And, and then incidentally, they later opened up trade because in this you know, the kind of the, the kissing cousin to this as you guys all remember, early on the pandemic, everyone was hyper paranoid about wiping down their cereal boxes. I know I did that. Shame on me, right. And then but that was a kind of like what Russia did, right. They were, metaphorically speaking, wiping down their cereal boxes. They were taking extra precaution because this is a new challenge and no one understood. And it was only after the risk assessment jet eyes came in and started saying, Well, this is actually what's going on. You know, it's being transmitted prior rarely, you know, in the respiratory manner, you're probably not going to get it by ingesting, ingesting it.

And we change our behavior, you know. So now, you know, at least in the classroom, we're not actively wiping down cereal boxes anymore like we weren't in February, March, I guess, March of 2020. And similarly, Russia, they have resumed trade with China, and having a better understanding of the risk. Well, the good news story and all that is that you see the value of having science based rules, in a treaty to give guidance on what ought to be done. Will there be revisions to things like the SPS agreement? Will there be changes to say, the Paris based World Organization for Animal Health, terrestrial animal code, aquatic animal code? Because of COVID? Yes, there will be. But that takes time that you know, you get a scientific consensus. And we're still just barely a year beyond this pandemic. So I'm a big fan, actually. And of course, I worked with the WTO. But, you know, when people say things like, we don't need to have the World Health Organization involved right here, people say, you know, we shouldn't be concerned about what's going on with COVID, in Brazil, or whatever. Those are incredibly irresponsible statements. And then they also ignore what we have seen recently, and that is the value of having countries being encouraged to follow rules. And, we have a rules based multilateral trading system, doesn't mean that we're giving up all of our sovereignty to some, you know, world government. But it does mean that we have guidelines that are rooted in science, and that are rooted in good reasonable practice.

Thank you. That's really, really helpful. I think that you and I could talk for an entire graduate seminar on sort of this tension between this understanding of nation state sovereignty and this rules based system. My big question is, how do we help encourage trust in that system amongst our general population? And I'd love to hear your thoughts about trade. I mean, just as your comments here suggest, you know, public conversation about trade is not very happy right now trade sort of on a on a in terms of public discourse on a downward trend. But thanks for that happy story. I hadn't thought about the fact that the system worked, in many respects, regarding COVID. So that's encouraging. I appreciate that.

Do you have any, any questions of Colene or I, any comments about the Global Food Systems Initiative, or how what you're doing might be impacting overall. And again, our focus is on the state of Kansas and kind of, it was so interesting, listening to some of the international discussion that the two of you brought to this to this, this podcast, and it's in my mind, I can fairly easily bring that from the globe, to the state, and see where some of these things fit is from a communications perspective. And we are such an agricultural state, there's so many parts of what are produced here that don't stay here that are shared and traded globally. And it was just really interesting to hear your take on how some of these things will be impacted and bringing it all the way back down to a local level.

This is both a question and an exhortation. I think that the social justice, issues that are upon us need to be given attention. So I think, My compliments to you Maureen, for your leadership on trying to kind of turn up the volume on all the different disciplinary insights, that case date faculty and students have, whether it's food, microbiology, and trade, public health. And I think, social justice, this, this reality that we have so called Rich, so called poor segments of society that are experiencing not just food safety and food system issues, but also the pandemic differently. I think that is an issue that needs to be amplified. So you probably are already doing that. But I just wanted to ask that question.

There are things going on, and I couldn't agree with you more. I work with an organization here in Manhattan and rally county outside of the K State position that is wholly focused on the types of things that you just talked about at a very local level and the pandemic has brought out challenges in availability of food, availability of access to good health care to affordable housing, all of the things that you think that you just described, have just been exacerbated. And certainly we see it, there are activities on campus that are addressing these things. But they do need to be brought to the forefront. And those are things that need to be addressed. They are part of the global food system in a big way. These these get down to the essence of each person having enough to survive in a healthy life. And I think you're absolutely right. And I will certainly look forward to bring that to the forefront more on some of these podcasts. We've got, as you will know, we look at a variety of different takes on the system overall. And I think this is definitely a topic that could be brought forward in the future as well.

Thank you, Justin, this has been great.

Thank you, Colene. Thank you for having me on Maureen.

Well, we really appreciate it. And it was really an interesting discussion went in a direction that I hadn't anticipated in some ways, but I guess that is some of the expertise that Colene brought to this today. Thank you very much.

Thanks so much.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

Keywords: Food, Pandemic, food safety, global food system, podcast, policy, science, trade, veterinary medicine, research

How do we plan to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050? Increasing the availability of sustainable, arable land through the use of modern robotics could help to expand food production, and reduce the need for destruction of forested land.

In this episode of our podcast, we talk with Dr. Dan Flippo, Patrick Wilburn Keystone Research Scholar in biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University, about the work he is doing to mesh state-of-the-art robotic technology with food production to move toward sustainably feeding the world past 2050.

Transcript:

Robotics + agriculture with Dr. Dan Flippo, biological and agricultural engineering

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science.

I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. How do we plan to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050? Increasing the availability of sustainable arable land through the use of modern robotics could help to expand food production, potentially reducing the destruction of forested land. In this episode of our podcast, we will talk with Dr. Dan Flippo, the Patrick Wilborn Keystone Research Scholar in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at K State, about the work he is doing to mesh state of the art robotic technology with food production to move towards sustainably feeding the world past 2050. Dan, welcome to the podcast. We were looking forward to understanding more about your current research. But before we get into that, can you give us a little background on yourself and how you became interested in this area of study.

So I am actually from Kansas, they grew up near Wichita, a little town called Douglas on what's called a hobby farm nowadays, we didn't call it back then. But my dad worked at the post office all day and then came home and farmed. We didn't have too many acres. It was just enough to, it was more of a side business for him. And he wanted it, like it, for it to expand, but it never worked out. He was plagricultureued with machinery problems. And so we had, I have so many memories of broken tractors and that New Holland baler, his was kind of his bane of his existence, it caused a lot of problems. And so I kind of grew up with this mentality that farmers, you know, they're more machinists, mechanics, you know, and they cost it machinery and things like that. And so I went to, I came to undergrad here at K State, in mechanical engineering. And so some of the professors that are still over there taught me and after that I had really no interest in going back to grad school, I went to work at Cessna aircraft in Wichita. Worked there about eight years. And then I mean, my wife and for son, we quit that job and went to grad school while I was at Wichita State System paid for a master's degree in robotics, and mechanical engineering, but emphasis on robotics. And then we went to the University of Oklahoma. And I studied under Dr. David Miller, who is well known as far as planetary science, planetary robotics, planetary exploration. So nothing to do with agriculture really at all up to that point in my education. So I did a lot of wheel to soil interaction traction, specifically with robots and built a very big test apparatus. And I wanted to teach at K State actually. So the reason we went to Oklahoma, went out of state was the purpose of getting back to K State. And so I learned a lot about just the robotic world and the robotic feel soil interaction, it was regolith, really not soil that. And then after I graduated there, there was new university jobs, nothing and I was really set on being in Kansas. And so opening came up in a John Deere in Iowa, programming large tractors and so this is kind of my getting back into the agriculture world and agriculture industry. So I worked at John Deere for about two and a half years, and that's when K State job came up. And it turned out it more of a postdoc for me, kind of introduced to a lot of features and the customer world of agriculture machinery. Didn't like Iowa, it's really too cold for me. So in 2013, I applied and we got a job here K State. And Dr. Joe Harner. He's already department head, he had a kind of a vision for robotics and kind of that next phase of agriculture. So he was very intent on getting someone who has specific interests in robotics. And so I came in 2013. And we've been here since then. I teach agriculture machinery courses, off road machinery courses, hydraulics, some mechatronics. engine power transfer. My research is in robotics. And so specifically small robotics, what I mean by that is like wheelchair sized robotics, in the agriculture field, so we've kind of focused on the smaller side, just for safety reasons. Because we've found that, you know, once a robot is big enough to hurt somebody, then the amount of sensors and, and technology and complexity goes way up. And so we've kind of, we've kind of focused in on the smaller robotics, and to try to stay away from all that complexity. If my robots ran into you, they would just either stop or run over your toe or something like that. But they wouldn't, they wouldn't hurt you. So we've been successful. We've been successful with that. We've gotten several grants through USDA, some corn commission grant and some EPSCoR grants with and throughout this time here at K State, I've had some really good collaboration with people. Dr. Stephen Welch has been kind of a mentor to a lot of us. He's got some fun stuff going on. And he's always big into dreaming. And so he's, he's on several of my grants. I'm on his EPSCoR grant, Dr. Brian McCormick over an entomology, we've worked a lot with him, he's always fun. To come up with crazy ideas. We had some ideas about shooting lasers at aphids and things. And so he was all about that he enjoyed that. And so this is where we're at, you know, right now we're trying to finish several of these big grants we got one of them is the high sloped hill, where we're trying to increase our arable land, by farming on on hills that conventional tractors can't go is wouldn't be safe. And so we have these smaller wheelchair size tracked vehicles that plant wheat on hills, and either lead cattle graze on that weed or are harvested. So we're working on that we're working on a Dr. Ajay Sharda, who's my colleagricultureue, he's got an NRI grants, National Robotics Initiative. Both those are and it's, we're have a robot that looks for aphids on sorghum and using machine learning. And this, when it spots an aphid or thinks it does, it sprays just that one plant. And so we have a spray rig on a four wheeled robot, and this will save an immense amount of chemical, both for costs for the farmer and environment. And so I think with you know, it kind of brings up a point where these robotics, we're kind of in a new world, as far as farming goes up into this point, we've progressed, you know, we started with just scattering a seed, then the horses and oxen, and then there was a phase change kind of facing that's assessment term, aircraft term phase changes, when you go from one look to another, a big change in design. He went to two mechanical tractors, you know, there's a lot of farmers thought that they we had cabs on our, on our farmers and we had auto steer, then we had bigger and bigger tractors. And we've come in some some issues with just making tractors bigger and bigger. And we, we've done that because of labor shortages and skilled labor shortages. And so we run into problems with the road, and you know, transportation, getting those big tractors, on Highway, soil compaction, things like that. So what we're really trying to focus on is the smaller vehicles, and this has allowed us to kind of open up the world and kind of get rid of a lot of assumptions about farming, you know, really is you're just getting the seed in the ground. And then you're taking the yield from that plant. And so how do we do that? We have a small vehicle, so we've had to kind of rethink how to plant were we thinking, you know, the options are kind of open right now we can we can think about multi crops in the fields and more environmental conscious farming. You know, one thing that we kind of talked about here is that we're able to do more environmentally responsible agriculture, because we're bringing in technology because we can rethink how we do things with the smaller robots and stuff. That's kind of where we're at.

I'd like to hear just a little bit more about what you think this opens up. So you know, you mentioned the phase change and You know, each of these new technologies really changed the way our culture was done right and a change sometimes change what was what was actually grown change how it has grown change the, you know, economics and, and the nature of farms. And so, you know, with all the openness of the future that you just talked about, it's hard to say, but I'm curious just about what kind of where you think we're heading with all this change? You know, what, what is it? What is it set up for us?

Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, right now, with my robots, I'm trying to think through how we can redo things but want for instance, I was just having a conversation with Dr. Sharda, the other day about, you know, the whole Native American, they do the three sisters method where they grow beans, squash, and corn all at the same time. And those three crops help each other one fights off bugs, the other one gives, you know, the corn gives the beans, some of the verlon with the small robots and automation, you know, we can think about multi crop fields, and not just mono mono crops. And so that kind of a lot of people, you know, I think farm and they take it a certain way. And right now, there's a lot of startups with, with agriculture robotics. And there's tons of them, a lot of bigger companies like the company I worked for, and even the other two big companies that do agriculture equipment, they're a little scared of having their tractors being autonomous, and then they do concept vehicles, things like that. But, it's a big risk to have a big tractor, computer controlled risk. And for the people that are there, you know, if there was a Sunday there in the field, which has happened, you know, things like that. So, there's a lot that has to happen before, I think these big companies are going to, really sell on autonomous tractors. But the startups are crazy. And they're mostly smaller vehicles. There are some like mid tractor size startup companies. But I think it's going to kind of generate this startup level of people coming ideas and ask them questions like, Why do we have to do it this way? And maybe they're not farmers, maybe they maybe they're just either hobby farmers or urban farmers? You know, why not? I saw a gantry farming thing where it just has like a small bed that you put in your apartment or somewhere and it has a gantry, that plants and that takes care of all the plants and things like that. Um, where are we going? Yeah, that's, an interesting question. I, I don't see us getting rid of tractors for quite some time. I mean, the, the amount of power and work that is done in one pass in those tractors on a flat field is amazing. And I think the tractor companies have really come a long way as far as technology and things. And they're expensive, too. I think for a long time. These smaller tractors, these smaller robots that we're working on, are coming in kind of augmenting, either like on high school Till's or farmers that are just getting going, you know, that scalable, you know, they, they want to farm more land, they just kind of bind the robot, things like that. Right now, we're trying to just get people to rethink because farmers have the kind of the tendency or reputation of being somewhat stubborn. And so they do things the way their dad did data, data is another one. I mean, there's so much data right now, coming off of agriculture vehicles, and fighting over who gets that data. Other companies will say that, that data is the farmers. But so there's so much data that no one knows what to do with. I mean, we have images of fields. And so right now, I think there's going to have to be some people really picking up the data, data analysis part of it to try to help farmers make better decisions.

Do you see the initial use of your work? You mentioned urban farming and that type of thing. And kind of the difficulty in introducing this into the very large scale? Do you see it first being introduced into the smaller urban farming or, you know, smaller farming type systems prior to and then kind of building up from there?

I do. I think people that enjoy that technology, you know, the people that get the iPhones and stuff like that, they all kind of think this is really cool. And start there. I see a big community doing that. That's why with this grant, we kind of try to focus on sloped Hills because this is not any place where a tractor can go. And so this kind of helps feed the world. A big push, you know, I'm sure you guys have heard the 2050 push where, you know, we have to feed over 9 billion people by 2050. And so this is kind of an industry rally cry, you know, John Deere kind of talked about that a lot. So we have really, he tried to bring awareness about that as well. And so one way of doing that is, is opening up these little pills that no one's using.

So do you conceive of these as being scalable? If, if a large producer wanted to take them on rather than having to do, I don't know, how many passes on a, on a three on one subsection field, that there'll be multiple of these units is that?

Yes, yes, it's kind of the scrubbing bubbles, technique. Remember that commercial. So you have, you'll have a bunch of a swarm of robots that will work day and night, to get the work done. And now, my robots are pretty slow, you know, they make one pass really easy, but you can have a bunch of them. And so we're gonna have to, you know, networking, as far as wireless connectivity, you know, in the rural areas, and things like that, is gonna have to be extended quite a bit. So right now, you know, thanks to the bigger tractor companies where we have RTK GPS, which is, you know, very sub centimeter accuracy GPS, and that's, we have a lot of stations and stuff. And so we're able to use that, but we're gonna have to, we're looking at right now, you know, different wireless technologies, Dr. Sharda, especially, is looking at different wireless technologies to get to talk from, you know, inside the canopy of like corn. And so one one, not another nice thing about these small robots is that we can be under the canopy of crops. And we're not looking down at the leaves that are healthy, we're looking at from up and seeing where the bugs are trying to see where water stress is, and try to get to a better health picture of what's going on underneath.

So I was wondering if you could share a little bit more of the details of what has to be done to make these workable, I mean, so we've got some of the promise, right? Sir, we can open up areas like the soap pills, that can be more scalable, you can think about doing things differently, right, in terms of, you know, planting multiple crops, and you can reduce the use of pesticides. Right. So he's awesome, super positive. Right? So, what are the challenges for making it work?

The biggest one, I think of right now is how to keep these guys powered, and how to service them. What I mean by services is, if they're planting, get them seed to plant, if they're harvesting, get that seat away from my vehicles are all like electric, so how to get batteries to them, without them coming back and having to do that. And so we're looking at some different things that actually, I don't know if they're gonna work or not, but we're looking at UAVs, you know, unmanned aerial vehicles to be carrying batteries to service and swap on these on these ground vehicles. And so that's one way of servicing the robot. So you can keep working. We were trying to stay away from fossil fuels, we're trying to keep you know, it all electrical. But the power density for diesel is so much more than a battery. And so it's just a big challenge. You know, if you have other robots, UAVs or other ground robots that are servicing, then you have to have quite a bit of communication between the two, you have to have routing plans. And things get a lot more complicated. And so I kind of see that once you work with multiple robots, them all working together, you know, that's going to be quite a task. And we have some very smart machine learning people working on this. And yeah, just getting them power and getting them seed or getting the heart the yield back from them. I think that's one of the things that it's kind of holding us up right now. You know, one thing I will say is that one thing we didn't see coming is getting seed in the ground in a no till situation like on a hill, my robots weigh about 180 pounds 200 If you load them down batteries. So a normal conventional planter, you know, takes at least 300 pounds to push down. And so we tried it, we loaded down with weight even and so we've had to think of some different ideas. And so now we're going with a powered Tiller planter that actually is is more or less a disk with with teeth on it. And it spins, I think it's about 240 rpm, and it it cuts a furrow do this ground and then we put seed in it then recovered back up. We just can't press a disk in there like a normal tractor. Good. So this takes up power. It's not ideal. It's not what we're going for. But we try to, to go with the simplest possible design and then kind of if that doesn't work, we kind of work ourselves up to more complex issues, but that's those are the biggest things that we run across right now is you know, you could have robots that when they ran out of juice, they come back, get recharged, and then go back out. But for a bigger field, that kind of becomes an not very good solution.

What we see is the major push backs that you might get from farmers have spent 3035 years using different approaches in the mechanics we expect to have to answer to.

Most of them don't believe that this will work. So yeah, and a lot of them, you know, my dad was same way kind of your link to the land. That's John years phrase, but they see farming as you're on a tractor. You're out on the field, you know, your field.

Bouncing over the phone. Yeah.

But the thing is, a lot of these bigger farmers have five 7000 acres, you know, doing their field? Is it them on the tractor? Can they really see how their crops are doing? And they can, in certain instances, you know, for what, for example, we have this duck shares, we're going on this NRI grant that spots, aphids. And so right now, you know, an entomologist, you call them up, he'll come to us a few places in your field. And say, either, yes, it's bad enough, you need to spray or no need to wait a little while. So either spray the whole field, or you don't spray enough, you know, and it's just issues like that. And so I think the pushback is, is people, you know, Agra culture, it's a culture and so people are kind of back against, that's not farming, you know, that's not sure. And I think, I think I wasn't around when this happened, but talk to my dad, you know, when people went from horses to tractors to this kind of the same tune. Yeah, attitude, same, you know, you're working together with your horse to, to work the land, you know, I read somewhere where, when calves come on tractors, people were like, you know, I want to smell the dirt, I want to smell the earth. And the auto steer, you know, it's not me steering, it's just a computer, how is that farming, you know, it's kind of kind of a fight every time, I do see a lot of the younger farmers just really be a lot more open to technology, a lot more able to do that. One thing is UAVs. Now UAVs exploded into the agriculture market, because, you know, farmers one, they thought oh, not to walk as much I could see my whole field is a huge help. And it wasn't really farming, it was more of a help for farming. And so I think maybe they didn't have to justify that they weren't farming anymore, but they just this is something that helps them. And so one way for us to kind of get in or not us, but you know, robotics to get in is kind of scouting, if we have these scouting vehicles that go out, and it's a lot like you UAVs scout over the top, but they Scout underneath. And it's kind of it's not farming, but it's more of a help to the farmer. And I really think farmers are all about help.

I've talked to an old rancher actually, a few years ago, and we were talking about advances in this and then the other civil kind of give me an example. That well, there was a time when a PTO shaft was very high technology in the forums I was working on. So you know, what's, what's normal, and what's cutting edge continues to evolve. So I think the trick is to be able to survive that first party evolution and get some buy into it.

Yeah, and tractors themselves have become so complicated. And you know, that's a lot of different forces are pushing their emissions and things like that and features but I don't know if how many farmers can actually work on the tractor nowadays, not like we had to. Yeah. So the technology is there. They're just still driving now. So I understand the pushback there. And I probably feel the same way if I was a farmer. Sure. So we're just trying to trying to help you know, we're not gonna, we're not taking over farming. We're just trying to help, you know, help spray aphids help on uphills, you know, get a little more yield. Right.

Now, then you mentioned that you were working with Dr. Wells on some of the activities you're working on. And a minute ago, you talked a bit about working with people on machine learning, what you've got specific activities that you're focused on in building these types of things. What other kinds of expertise within the university do you bring in in helping to solve some of these problems or work through some of the challenges that you're facing?

Who else have I collaborated with?

Yeah, yeah. One great thing about my job is that I have such good people around me. See, well, Welch is one of them. Brian McCormick entomology. We have a lot of people in engineering. So, Stacey Kulesza. She is in civil engineering. She does a lot of soil sensing for us, Jared Hobeck. In mechanical engineering, he's, we're talking about some ideas with with genetic algorithms for for tillage tools, some we work with Terry Griffin, who is a agricultural economist, yeah. Then we have, you know, the computer scientists, and they do machine learning, genetic algorithms. Lior Shamir, Bill Hsu, Sanjoy Das, he's an electrical engineering. So we will work with most anybody and some, I really enjoyed, I've learned a lot, a lot of things we also have. So our departments, sorry to interrupt you there, our department is we have machinery, which is what I am. And we have environmental and biological. That's three options of our, our department. Now we're all very much different. But it's been really fun to work with, let's say the environmental group, one example. That is they look for blue green algae, how to predict that happening on on lakes, and reservoirs, things. And so we have, we actually just got a grant, we build a kind of a robotic boat that takes sensors at different depths, and trying to get data for them to actually put that together to predict a bloom happening. So that's another fun thing. I'm working with these environmental people, and I get to make robotic boats and things like that. So I really love my job. A lot of fun.

Oh, before we know what this will look like the pollutes of the Midwest, if you can get the hills farmed.

That's right. Weeds everywhere.

Yeah, really.

I remember talking with Steve Wells about that idea about a year ago. And I clearly it's the same thing that you're working on describing exactly what it was you were you were talking about doing an increasing? I mean, basically, what he was explaining to me was, you're increasing the amount of arable land substantially, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Interesting.

We have to worry about, you know, erosion and things like that with hills.

And so sure

I'm sure concern. And our robots rolling down the hill uncontrollably. That's another concern.

Do you have any feel for the impact of having worked in the industries you worked in, prior to coming to a university setting? How that how that may be swayed or impacted or affected the job that you're doing now? Or was it just kind of a building block to get where you are?

Ah, yeah, it's had a lot of impact, you know, well, so I worked in several different industries Cessna aircraft, I was just a design engineer for the interiors. And so I learned a lot about how a company works as far as drawings, numbers, you know, engineering changes and getting a drawing released all that dealing with, we did all very custom stuff, interiors for the these people. And so it was good kind of get a sense of organization. So that's kind of what I'm brought to. Sometimes I teach that and then I also right now I'm also a coach for battle bot team, and Junior Senior High battle bot team. And so we use that in the battle bot team and then work in a John Deere, I learned a lot about you know, the, the relevant cut, you know, conventional features of tractor, a lot of customer feedback, a lot of kind of issues that are going on with the tractors nowadays, especially with the missions and things like that so they know more about farming than I do and so they know they have a lot more equipment than I do or or can get hold of, but you know, explaining like for range here, what that means what's going on in that transmission. So that's been really good to take that and then also like I talked about the 2050 kind of cry You know, I really brought that to our department and really have I made a big deal out of it and I got that a John here but so it's been good all that to say it's been a really good experience. I would I would highly recommend, you know, he got me started late here at K State late in my life but I would highly recommend the experience you get from working in industry. And so I would not want to go back to industry. Good experience.

Well, I was wondering, since you just mentioned being back at K State here, something I didn't ask you when you opened up, but want to ask now, so, why so interested in getting to K State? Or you said that was, that was your goal, right? When you went to get your last degree down in Oklahoma, and you left so that you could come back here? So, what are we looking for here? Why, why K State?

Well, it's nothing more complicated than me just loving Manhattan long. I, you know, I came here from undergrad and fell in love with it. I tried to stay tried to get a job here in Manhattan. But at that time, there wasn't anything. I mean, I think McCalls had a factory or something. But there was nothing much. So I like the AG. Ag school. So, and I've always had a I've always loved case study. And I want to be home, I want to be close to home. I did not enjoy being you know, Iowa was too far for me. I didn't mind Oklahoma so much. It was warmer. I like that. But I don't know, I don't know that I don't have a better answer than I just like it here.

It's been a good of an answer. So then. So then let me ask the flip side of the of question about what you brought from industry, which is, what's different about working on kinds of things you're working on now? In a university setting, right, as opposed to what, you know, you mentioned all the startups working on, you know, robotics and agriculture. Right. You know, what, what's the difference between, you know, working on maybe things that are, you know, like this are related to this. So you mentioned that a lot of the companies aren't necessarily going to sort of adopt some of the things that you're talking about right away? Because they're, they're focused on different things. But what's the difference between working on this kind of stuff in a large, you know, large established industry versus a startup business versus university setting? Are you exploring different kinds of questions and the kinds of, or different kinds of, you know, pushing the boundary more and the kinds of robotics you're working on, you ask them different questions, how would you describe the difference?

Well, it's probably different for different people who are different jobs, but my jobs were fairly, very structured. And so you are given tasks to do and maybe a feature to work on, you know, I programmed tractors or thing problems to fix, there was very little creativity that I could put into play. And, you know, we tell our students all the time and worked for a big large company, you work for a small section of that product. And you do it a lot more times, like for a small company, you would kind of be on, you know, designing it, testing it, marketing it, selling it, you know, supporting it, here, you know, a large company work on one little spot, and everybody else handles everything else. And so it, I didn't feel like I had much freedom there to try things, especially creativity wise. So here at K State, so much freedom, you know, and and some people don't like, the, the freedom, some people don't like the lack of structure that you would find in industry and, and so there's so much freedom that I have no one cares when I come to work, no one cares, my leave. But yet I have got a lot of responsibility to get stuff done. And, and that really fit me a lot better than and work in a certain time during the day and really not having the chance to dream and think up new things. And so, this morning, I worked on a new kind of a brad program for our department, that probably never happened. But it is fun for me, and kind of really good for me to think through that. And I like that I like to design, I like the I guess freedom to be creative is the biggest change for me. And it fits me. It's not any better than industry or worse, it just fits me better than the industry did. And so, you know, with a small company, you know, you probably have more freedom, and a little less security, but a little more freedom to, to work on products and things and create.

So how do you think this applies to the future of robotics in agriculture? So what's the are you working with startups or any industry on this? Are there other people who are doing this in this area? And what like, what are the different roles that are being played out by, you know, by the startups and industry and university in research settings of sort of kind of envisioning where we could be going in agriculture and sort of working on particular solutions.

Well, now that we are working with several startups, We're working with big in industry as well. So several of the big industries had their own small robotic projects going on, you know, fence and AGCO, they had the Mars program, I hear that John Deere has one going on, but I can't confirm that. But we work with some small startups, as far as there's a, there's a company and Topeka it, it's working with vineyards. And he's doing some fun stuff there with robotics and spraying. So there are a lot of it's a lot of roles going on, and you know, to kind of rethink what agriculture is with, with a whole new set of tools with, with automation, and small robotics. And I think a lot of these ideas could be taken up and used in startups and things and, and then, you know, it's like the electric car, people are getting more and more used to it. And so I see the same thing happening with agriculture robotics today. Did I answer your question?

Yeah, oh, that's great. Thanks.

The only other question I had, and this may be similar to one that Scott answered, asked him a bit ago, but if you had a way of looking into the future, what comes after this kind of technology? Where is this technology leading agriculture overall, let's assume that it's picked up and it's used, and what's coming next?

So if this was fully adopted and used, it'd be a lot more lobby a lot more probably, farmers at home, keeping track of their robotics swarms, you know, doing robotics, and doing agriculture. One thing that I would love to see is that kind of a robotic farm, you know, for ag for university purposes. We proposed this a while back, it was called case utopia that was kind of, I was very proud of that name. But it was just a piece of land that was fully run by robots and for farming. And I can see, I can kind of imagine a class where we teach a class and data would be coming in off this farm from these robots. And the students would take the data and analyze it and see what needs to be done. And, maybe a student would be in charge of a certain plot of land, you know, to control the robots and, and, and how to do the fertilizer, and when, when to plant and keeping track of the soil. You know, I see that as an amazing teaching tool for students in agriculture, you know, automation. You know, I could also see the downsides where we lose our farmers. And, you know, would that happen when we have big huge corporations that just run robots? I don't think so. I think there's always going to be farmers. Just like, there's always the hobby farmers now, you know, it doesn't make sense for them to be hobby farming, but they are, because they love it. And so not a really good answer for that. I'm sorry. It's

No, it's there was a fine answer. I guess, as I've been listening to you talk over the last period of time, just thinking about the, you know, the potential of multi-cropping in the field, or the potential of improving the environmental impact. It's, and then you you talk just a minute ago about these huge corporate owned farms that may or may not be separate for I mean, that's what I'm looking for opposite of one another and their approach on things, but possibly could be, it's just, it's an interesting, it's an interesting mix of potentials and possibilities that you've been describing that could come out of this. So it's, I'm sure that some of this technology will be picked up, it's just going to be very, very fascinating to see where and how it's used most frequently.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think there's a lot of government regulations coming down the road with, especially with pesticides and herbicides. So I think we're gonna have to get creative with how we keep that yield up, and how we make more yield to meet that 2050.

Now, it's been great, it's fascinating stuff. It's just there, there are so many, there's so much potential, and I'm excited to see what happens, those other effects are dealt with, right? So we've got the positives, but then, you know, there'll be there'll be shifts, there'll be shifts in what's planted, right, you know, there'll be shifts in you know, in labor, right, sort of you were mentioned labor drives, was driving, you know, some of the technology but then technology drives labor changes, too, right. And so like, it's just going to be so many differences. It does feel like I guess actually, this is one of the if you've already said it, I guess feels like a more substantial and some of those other technology changes that you've described. And I wonder, wonder if you think it is just, you know, then the next step in the chain of, you know, technological changes that have, you know, shifted farming, but it's not, you know, hasn't obviously hasn't gone away, right? Or if it is something a little more substantial than what we've seen before.

Does it fall into the disruptive change? Category?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, as far as labor, I mean, we'll go away. You know, we, with robotics, you won't need somebody to drive a skilled labor to drive the tractor, but you will need skilled laborers to run the robotics, right? And keep track of them and service them. And so it's, this has been fascinating.

Thank you so much.

Do you have anything for us, Dan, before we sign off here,

No, good luck, thanks for what you're doing.

Well, I appreciate your time. And thanks, Scott, for coming on. And no, this was great.

Really exciting. Thanks. Thanks.

Thanks a bunch. Bye. Bye bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email. Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Stephen Higgs, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State University. On this episode, Dr. Higgs discusses interdisciplinary biosecurity research programs, agrosecurity and collaborative research. Higgs, who is director of the Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, also highlights the role the BRI will play in transitioning work to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, adjacent to the K-State campus. Dr. Higgs' research is focused on mosquito-related viral spread, but through his oversight of the BRI, he has expanded to the areas of food safety and security, plant and animal disease and zoonotic disease.

Transcript:

Yeah, never quite know in this way of research, right? You never quite know what's going to happen. And any day I walk into the BRI maybe a day when one of our researchers makes a discovery that changes the world makes it a better place. I honestly believe that's how I feel every morning.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science.

I would like to welcome today a guest host, Dr. Jim Stack, Professor of Plant Pathology, and Director of the Great Plains Diagnostic Network. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast, we are joined by Dr. Steven Higgs, director of the biosecurity Research Institute, and a University Distinguished Professor in Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology. His research is focused on mosquito related viral spread. However, through his oversight of the VRI Research Center, Higgs has an expanded association with activities carried out in various sectors of K State to include food safety and security, plant and animal disease and zoonotic disease. In this podcast, Dr. Higgs will discuss interdisciplinary biosecurity research programs, agro security initiatives, and the development of collaborative research. And the BRI's place as a platform for transitioning work that will be conducted at the new national and agro defense facility here in Manhattan, Kansas, and adjacent to K State and the BRI. Welcome Dr. Steve Higgs to the something to chew on podcast with the Kansas State University Global Food Systems Initiative. And we really appreciate your time and your willingness to chat with us today.

It's a pleasure to be here.

That's wonderful. Before we get started, it's part of the discussion I'm sure we'll get into some of the details of your work that you're doing and the facilities that you oversee at K State. But I think before we head down that path, maybe get a bit of a background on you, who you are, what brought you to the type of research that you enjoy doing and maybe what brought you to Kansas State University.

Okay, so, yeah, so I just go by Steve. I've been here at K State since 2011. And my background is from the United Kingdom. I grew up in a very small market town called Wantage and Oxfordshire about 20 miles from Oxford within 60 miles from London. I, it was a small community, it's a country community, which is why I love Manhattan. And I you know, I was a country kid, eventually went to university to study zoology, and then specialized in parasitology. Actually, parasites that could potentially infect livestock. I was studying them in mice, but it was Coccidia that could infect chickens and cattle and so forth. I then went to the London School of Hygiene, I ended up in the environmental microbiology facility in Oxford, and then I was sent to the United States to Colorado State University to learn genetic engineering of mosquitoes. And I'd never been to the States before I came here I stayed a month and then I came back the following year to do a course and was offered a job and so I briefly went back to England came came back came to the United States with the intention of staying no less than a year and some 25 years later, 30 years later. Here I am, I worked at Colorado for 10 years, then University of Texas Medical Branch for 10 and then visited K State to see the Biosecurity Research Institute at a time when I was not really looking for a job and just was one of a better term blown away by the facility and the people here and and what could be done here.

So what was it about the facility that wowed you?

So, you know, my background in terms of research and education and training has been focused on viral diseases of people and virus viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes. And that's obviously very important because hundreds of 1000s of people are infected by these pathogens every year, I came and looked at the BRI and thought, well, this is so much more of a broad scope and broad impact potentially, because unlike any other facility in the world, and I mean that there is no other place like the BRI we can study foodborne pathogens, we can study plant pathogens, as you Barbara Valent, and Jim Stack. And then they studying viruses here, which is what my background is, but not just of people, but also of animals in particular, livestock, the bread was just incredible. As far as I'm concerned, never seen a lab that could do all that because there isn't one. And I thought well, coming here as a matter of this, that it is a truly global impact on and it touches everything. It is a Global Food System in one building, because we work on those pathogens that affect pre harvest, post harvest food, plants, animals, foodborne pathogens, everything. If it was wider than I'd ever sort of, considered before.

Steve, the connection between food security and public health is very tight. And when we look at the goals that collectively the global community has set in terms of enhancing public health, improving food security, and raising standards of living, all of those things really are integrated. And it's hard to tease one out, if you don't address all of these things, we're not going to reach a goal. So the question, looking back, say over the last 20 or 30 years, where do you think we've made a lot of progress on the public health side? For some of these mosquito borne, you know, vectored viruses, where have we made the most progress? And where are we still needing to make progress in order to achieve those kind of global goals?

Like, like you say, Jim, these are very tightly interconnected, that they're inseparable in terms of, human health and well being the pathogens and the effects of food and diet, we know that if you don't have the diet, you don't get the food and your susceptibility, and the consequence of the disease can be very different. In terms of the mosquito borne pathogens, one area where there has been obvious progress has been in mosquito control, there have been some, you know, techniques that have arisen that we're not even thought of, but not not on, on the radar, I talk about things like not genetic control, necessarily, but technique of using, for example, or back here to reduce populations or to drive populations down. And we, you know, you look at 100,000 cases of dengue. And, you know, there's probably been two and a half million people, just in the United States infected with West Nile, each one of those infections essentially starts with the very simple process of one mosquito that happens to be infected biting somebody. And clearly reducing the population as a hazard. Its goal and consequence reduced numbers of infection. And so we have made considerable strides in that particular area. It's remarkable to me, it's remarkable to me sat here still having this career in mosquito borne viruses, just of how much we don't know. You know, we've known about some of these diseases since the late 1800s. You know, so 120 years ago. And, you know, I got into this in about 1985. And thought, well, this is going to be a short career. If we've known about him for 80 or 90 years, there can't be any questions left to answer. And that is so untrue. We don't know some of the most fundamental things about these viruses and how they interact with the mosquitoes, and how they spread, and how they cause some of the diseases. It's sad and it's remarkable. There was hoping in genetics, when we started getting genome of mosquitoes. And this includes anopheles for malaria, it was like a huge hope of, oh, well, if you understand the genetics of the beast, then we will understand the diseases and we can manipulate it and, you know, maybe make mosquitoes, it can't be infected. And really that hasn't transpired. Which is, which is sad. We don't know, something that I'm particularly into, we don't know why some types of mosquito can be infected by some viruses, and some can't, you know, put it the other way why some viruses infect some mosquitoes and others don't, that seems pretty fundamental, because you want to control the species that are responsible for the diseases that you're trying to fight. So basic research has to still be done. One area that I look at my career, and I'm, I suppose my research, my group's research has been more diverse than most other groups. And I'm, I'm very proud of that, because we kind of invented a term a long time ago, you know, virus vector vertebra interactions, I came up with that. And that's what we've been doing. We haven't just looked at the these diseases from the perspective of a virus infecting a mosquito. But we've looked at the interactions between that virus and the mosquito, the interactions between the mosquitoes and vertebrate hosts, sometimes people that they buy, and the relationship that the broad scope of that relationship, but it's very complex, and still lots more to do.

So oftentimes, progress is a function of innovation in technology. And over the last decade or so, we've seen the application of some new technologies, for example, Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes, and more recently, the gene drive technologies. What are your thoughts on the adoption of those the application of those in the real world? What are the pros and cons of that?

Complicated question, Jim, you know, this has been something that has been discussed for many, many years. Like I say, I came to the United States in 1991. Because the there was getting to be technology that could maybe predictably, engineer mosquitoes that has progressed in leaps and bounds as new technologies came in gene drive was being discussed, then, even though you know, just as a concept with no idea that something like CRISPR, Caste Nine would come along and actually provide that capability. So it's been discussed. And the ultimate goal has always been to release those mosquitoes with reduced capacity to, to be infected and transmit the different pathogens, particularly malaria. I mean, that's been a huge focus, especially for the Gates Foundation. And there is still a hard push, I've been involved in some of the CRISPR Caste Nine discussion in the context of malaria and other pathogens. discussions have been supported by the foundation's National Institutes of Health, and then the Gates Foundation and others. It's, it was gene drive on the horizon. I think that's what the book was called. And it's still very much on the horizon, the horizon is getting closer. But we still haven't quite got to the point of having those resistant mosquitoes that could be released unreduced reduce the incidence of infection. We're at a point where genetically engineered must be there's a technique called redl has been widely used, and it's actually been approved for use in the United States now to question but that depends very much on constant release of mosquitoes in absolutely huge numbers to push down the population. The wall back here, technology, which was one of those strange things from you know, Gates funding, that it was kind of a not exactly a back burner, but it wasn't a front runner, and then everything came together, but that it worked. And not only could it suppress populations, but it actually made the mosquitoes less susceptible to infection in some cases. And so, that is certainly something that is has been moving forward to combat for example, the Zika outbreak in Brazil and things like that. So that is actually, you know, happening as we speak. On a regular basis, those types of mosquitoes, you know, I'm always a little frustrated by that term innovation, you see that in, in grant requests a lot, you know, it has to be innovative, but sometimes old and well tried things still still work. But I do understand, you know, that we, we need to look at novel techniques and novel approaches, because, frankly, some of it, some of the old ones are past their time, if you like.

What are your views about the effects or possible unintended consequences of doing things like reducing or maybe drastically reducing mosquito populations? Right, so this is that that is a different way of attacking the problem rather than, you know, preventing bites or infections. Right. And, and are there are things to be thinking about in terms of, you know, ecological consequences, etc. So how does that all factor in?

So, in terms of ecological consequences, Scott, it would seem to be that there are no species of other organism, you know, predators or whatever, that wholly depend on the mosquito, I mean, we are never going to get to the point where there are no mosquitoes out there. If we can alter the species composition of the populations, to, for example, reduce the incidence of disease. So if you were, for example, eliminating the Anopheles Gambi population in Africa, that would reduce malaria incidents, the chances are, there's another mosquito species that might bite, but not might not transmit, that will probably fill the spot of the one that you'd remove. But there really are no even bats if there's no animal that holy depends on mosquitoes that couldn't switch prey, I guess, as far as I can understand, but as much as I've read.

Yeah, so it makes these interventions, a fairly safe and certainly worth on your view, take it whatever those effects might be sort of in terms of the outcome is like very much worth.

Yeah, and one technique that, you know, I saw firsthand in when I visited Africa a few years ago, was Gates Foundation, kind of pushed and promoted the use of insecticide impregnated bed nets. And, you know, relatively simple technology, I mean, had to be sort of fine tune in terms of usefulness of the nets, and, you know, education of people to use those nets. But I went to a village in Africa, there wasn't, I didn't see an insect the whole time I was there. They hadn't had a malaria deaths. You know, this is something that kills, you know, half a million children a year, some, you know, a child dies of malaria, I think every 30 seconds, still, these these bed nets, eliminated the mosquitoes and reduce the incidence of malaria to two to zero in this village and, you know, kind of low tech, but extremely effective.

I'd like to take the discussion out a little bit further in, in your backyard today is being built the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center, the NBAF Center, which I'm sure you've been watching happened over the last several years. Where's the intersection between the VRI and NBAF? And how do those two organizations fit with one another?

So, right, right from the very beginning, at the time, when I was interviewed, I was asked what I thought about NBAF. And, you know, I was very pro NBAF because of the impact it will have in terms of protecting United States providing new knowledge, vaccines and so forth, to secure our food supply, and it will have a global impact on securing global food supplies in many respects. So right from the very beginning, we've had very open productive discussions with the people involved with NBAF, you know, frankly, at all levels, from, you know, senior Homeland Security and USDA. People and we've had lots and lots of visitors from Homeland Security as they were building and an even before they were building it in discussion, design and so forth. And then USDA ever since I got here, because they were USDA people here in Manhattan, the US Department of Agriculture, ARS, arbitrary, Arthropod Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit. When I got here, they helped build the insectary in the BRI. We're doing their research in here. So we all understand that you can be an expert at one thing, but collaboration really gives the power to move research forward, we understand that and we've always had that very open discussion of how we can help him valve as its as it's moving forward. One of the things that happened early on was the state of Kansas, dedicated $35 million to develop research capabilities here at the BRI, in collaboration with the USDA on diseases that were priorities for NBAF. Unwell, we used it in NBAF study to NBAF but which we could all also handle the BRI there was some very significant hurdles in terms of approvals for us to be approved to work with these pathogens, whether I mean, just like Jim Stack wheat grass, we know were the first non federal non government lab that able to work with some of these pathogens, like African and classical swine fever has never been studied a non federal facility. So we'd be breaking new ground. We have a number of USDA people who are here in town and are at Plum Island and who embark including, for example, the director, Alfonso as adjunct faculty, to different departments in K State that gives them the ability to work closely with us to be on committees and so forth and interact closely. BRI is not just research, it's education and training, we do a huge amount of training. On one of the conduits that link, the BRI and NBAF is educational programs or training programs. So early on, we received an award from Homeland Security to train Principal Investigator scientists. You know that NBAF is a modern replacement for Plum Island, Plum Island. I've visited plumb a few times. But the first time I went up there to meet the scientist, it was a very small room. And like seven people showed up, and I'm thinking, wow, where's everybody else? They said, Oh, well, the other, the other person, the other two people can't make it today. So I was amazed that, you know, in that 350 person facility, there were really only about nine principal investigators. Well, NBAF will have certainly double that, maybe more. So it's critical that they have the right expertise. And we've been involved in the training of principal investigators. Like I said, we got the Homeland Security grant, there was then a USDA award that came out. So we've got five more scientists, graduate students being trained at the moment. The wonderful thing about that particular program is that they are guaranteed positions with the government, but for most certainly NBAF after they complete their degrees. So we're still training those people when NBAF opens, ultimately, we're going to have good case data is going in to, to direct some of that research. Obviously, researchers have research teams. And so we also have another award, largely based here at the BRI. That is training laboratories support staff. So that's, you know, that's an incredibly impactful relationship before and bath ever opens its doors and starts research. And we certainly hope and I was, I now have regular meetings with the director of NBAF and with other USDA, people. We certainly all intend that relationship will not end when NBAF opens its doors but will continue long term.

I can certainly see the need and the importance of kind of being connected at the hip between the two facilities.

You can ask them again, because then I don't have to answer them off the cuff as it were. Right.

Well, one of the other things that you mentioned the Arthropod Borne Animal Disease Unit here in Manhattan, there's several other units from the Center of Excellence for Emerging Animal Diseases on the Center of Grain and Animal Health. How do those programs work into what you're doing at BRI? What kind of intersection do you see? Does that overlap with NBAF? Are there any intersections there? We've got obviously a concentration a lot of efforts going into these areas. So just curious how you work together on those?

Those, okay. So, CEZAD and then now CEZID in particular are groups that focus on, on diseases of animals. And that is very relevant obviously to, NBAF Global Food System generally but also inbound, I tell people that the BRI is you can either say the BRI is a smaller and baffle and NBAF is a bigger, bigger BRI, because we have very similar capabilities NBAF has level four. But the reality is that the BRI maybe a smaller version but has a much broader portfolio in terms of research, education and training. Now NBAF will work on a relatively narrow range of of diseases, it won't work on on poultry diseases, it won't work on foodborne pathogens, and it won't work on on plant pathogens, all of which the BRI will continue to work on the this seed is, is new, it's NIH funded, it's 11 and a half million dollars run by Juergen Richt and Phil Hardwidge, it's training people supporting innovative research on some of those projects are here at the PRI, which is which is always good, good for us. And CEZAD was funded last year, so it's got it, you know, almost another five years to go. So some of the research that is supporting is on those and NBAF priority pathogens. So that just consolidates a relationship with NBAF scientists, we know the people involved, they come here like, like I said, you have that average true unit, who staff regularly work at the BRI we are at the BRI their biosafety level three research facility. I've got multiple projects planned this year that are happening at the BRI, and some of those are specifically being conducted by USDA Arbor Drew Research Sciences as principal investigators got one coming up imminently. So it's an all round, productive, collaborative relationship between all of the people that are involved. Does it answer the question?

Yes, it does. Thank you so much. It does. And I have just had the opportunity just recently to start a discussion with Dr. Hardwidge. I was very excited to start understanding what he was doing and where that works fit into the overall picture of safety. And it certainly fits into the food safety area, the more I learn about what's going on in some of these areas, the more excited I am about it.

It is so exciting. You know, I mean, I come to work full of enthusiasm, everyday, sometimes more enthusiasm and less enthusiasm than other days, but always with enthusiasm. Because, you know, as a scientist, you can plan things, you can hope for a particular result. But you're never white, nothing in this way is research, right? You never quite know what's going to happen. And any day I walk into the BRI, maybe a day when one of our researchers makes a discovery that changes the world makes it a better place. I honestly believe that that's what that's how I feel every morning. I go home at night thinking well, it wasn't today sometimes. But I still go home, you know, happy and looking forward to the next day.

That's great. I'm gonna put Dr. Stack on the hot seat here for just a moment. You've had a couple of questions that you had for Steve, what kinds of activities are you involved in there, Jim? And how, what's the relationship between the work you're doing in plant pathology and the BRI?

Yeah, sure. So I, from the plant perspective, I think we've been very fortunate that right from the beginning, the idea at BRI was to be comprehensive with respect to agriculture, public health, looking at that total package and not just isolating, which is very common. In the scientific world, we you create these silos, not necessarily by intent, but bits. As a consequence of the practice the funding streams and all of those things. You tend to get isolated, but the intent right up front with BRI has been to house all of the disciplines that are critical to sustaining our agricultural systems that then support public health. And so I think You know, we've been lucky that we came into the building right as it was going operational. Our first project was in 2009, with the wheat grass project. And, you know, we had, we're lucky to have on staff, a world renowned scientist, Barbara Valent, who has now been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, to lead that project. And her knowledge of that system was critical. She was the first one to look at this emerging population in South America and say, We need to be paying attention to this, this is a critical issue. And it's a good thing she did, because she, through her leadership, we assembled a team that conducted some of the fundamental research that is being applied now, as in fact, as was predicted, this pathogen began to spread around the world. So up until 2016, it was confined to South America, but now it has spread to Southern Asia in 2016, hit Bangladesh 2017, into eastern India, and in 2017 18 timeframe introduced into Zambia in East Africa. And that's a critical issue in East Africa, because that's part of the wheat belt there. So the risk of it spreading into Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia is quite high. And again, this goes to the ability to have a facility like BRI on campus that allowed us to do all this early research. We developed the diagnostic the detection assays that are being used globally. So again, having a facility that puts all that under one roof is quite good, because we share we use the same technologies. I mean, we use the same technologies, we oftentimes use the same approaches to the pathogens, even though the pathogens themselves are fundamentally different. And so they're the discussions we have. We're also fortunate that Marty Vanier and Bob Krause established a program called BRI fellows, and it's the leading researchers at BRI that get together on a regular basis have launched and discuss research. And it's an opportunity to say, wow, I didn't know you were doing that. Tell me more about it, I might over use that in my program. And so things like that happen, where we're able to get more out of it than just a building with individual laboratories. So it's been fundamental to us, it's been a critical asset for the scientists in plant pathology. I hope that answered your question.

It absolutely did. And it's given me a couple of ideas. And I'll probably be reaching out to all of you on a later date. No, it's wonderful. And as you know, Jackie, or I'm sorry, Jim, you and I have had discussions on a few occasions about the importance of interdisciplinary and thinking outside of the box. And I'll take this back to you, Steve, when, clearly you've got a lot of different areas that are feeding into the BRI. And different approaches, different types of research are happening there. Do you ever get outside of the basic sciences with what you're doing? And with that, I'm thinking of Scott here, and I'm thinking of some of the sociological research activities going on campus? Is there ever an interface between some of those types of activities that work at the BRI?

No, we haven't really opened up that collaborative avenue if you're like, I mean, we know that these some of the decisions that we work on are the types of diseases have very significant impact on on communities, obviously, and cluding sociological aspects, but, you know, the facility itself is very much designed to safely contain what we affectionately call high consequence pathogens. So it it does not have that component to it, although, I go to all sorts of enjoy, I used to go to all sorts of meetings and you know, inside K State and and outside and discuss our work I was, you know, I had a Zoom meeting and I did a presentation to the University Distinguished Professors Group on Tuesday. And we're always looking for new ideas, new partners, new ideas, new things to write grants and get money on. And we would certainly welcome that we've got a group in the National Cultural Biosecurity Center led by Dr. Venier, that very much interact with communities in Kansas with, you know, for the purpose of emergency preparedness. And that takes in, you know, the aspects of those small rural communities up to big cities. And then they've worked with people who run feedlots and processing plants, all that sort of thing to to develop that preparedness, you know, they've got, you know, considerable money over the especially Homeland Security, to prepare us as a nation against in, in currencies of potentially devastating pathogens. I was going to just build on, I was delighted when Jim mentioned the Marty Vanier and Bob Krause Fellows Program, because how fields move forward is quite often that diversity of ideas where you know, somebody who's never worked with mosquito borne diseases, viruses before, suddenly says, oh, have you ever thought of this? And, you know, you're so wrapped up in your own field that you sometimes have almost blinkered vision. And that sort of that's the innovation and the creativity that we need. And I say this, in all honesty, but what we do here, and this is my work Jim's work on yourselves on Global Food Systems. This is something that is too important for politics, and it's too important for egos. It's something that affects us all. And one of the significant joys for me here at K State is that we have a nominal expertise, we have great personalities, but they pulling in the same direction. I haven't seen the personal agendas, the personal politics, I mean, everybody wants to make a contribution and perhaps be known for it like our recent work SARS, Covid too, and mosquitoes. But it doesn't get in the way of collaboration. And that's it's something we take for granted, I think, here at K State. But it isn't something that happens everywhere.

I wanted to make me want to back up just a little bit and ask why. Why BRI is so unique in this comprehensiveness. Right, so you said you and Jim both talked about the benefits of these interactions, and the benefit of there being the possibility of jumping in right in an area and you know, plant pathology, and then next to people studying mosquitoes. But but it's not typical, right? Or it's maybe, you know, particularly unique, so why is that? And what could you say a little bit more about, like, how it happened to come this way, and maybe what the challenges were, because we've talked about the benefits here. But so what happened?

So, um, I guess simply put, it's visionary leadership, you know, I can't take credit for any of this. I arrived at a going concern, you know, maybe at its infancy and it's certainly grown tremendously since I've been here. But in the early days of developing the BRI, Jim GEICO was involved. President refold was involved on trim which evolved. And, and subsequently, thank goodness, all of our our senior administrators and leaders. There is a sketch, I think, on a napkin of us facility like this. That was Jim, he probably knows more about this than I do. Because he Jim was actually a previous director of the BRI. So he knows more about how it came to pass in me. But there was that vision that these things are compatible. I mean, you know, inseparable in many ways from a Global Food System, perspective. Plants, animals, foodborne pathogens, they all affect us, they're all interconnected. And somebody said, you know, it should be under one roof, and that I hate using the word unique because the minute you say, Oh, it's a one of a kind, you know, oh, it's unique, then somebody hit lashing, you know, there's this place elsewhere that also has this, but in my experience, I can use the word unique with some conviction because I really do not know of any other facility that under one roof has the ability and the expertise to safely and securely work with foodborne pathogens, plant pathogens, and those animal diseases including zoonotic pathogens, that affect people. There are other facilities that you know, have a narrower portfolio and a much bigger footprint but There's nothing like the BRI. Jim, any comments?

You covered it fairly well. I would say why? Why that was the strategy here. I think it does go to what Steve said the, the leadership, at the time recruited a number of faculty to tackle this idea. And in the idea, the stimulus came from Senator Roberts, who came to K State and said something to you know, don't quote me here, but it something to the equivalent look, every year, you asked for this basket full of things, why don't you give me something big that that we can really sink our teeth into. And so the leadership basically looked at what we were doing at the time, and they pulled together people like Curtis Kastner, who's director of the Foods Science Institute. And, you know, I think, you know, other faculty were involved in it got together and said, what we really need to be, you know, the one thing we can't do yet, is work with some of these very high consequence pathogens that are either emerging or on the horizon that we should be paying attention to. And that's where that sketch on a napkin came from. So what that looked like, and literally, you know, sketches started to appear, well, it would look something like this. Well, of course, that went through many evolutionary steps. Before it got to a blueprint of what we see now is the BRI. I will re-emphasize, I think the point I made that is, I think the silo effect that you see in academic institutions, is not really this intentional, designed to keep people apart, it goes to some very basic things like our funding streams, and we don't apply to the same grants. We don't publish in the same journals. We're not oftentimes evaluated by the same sets of criteria. I mean, overall, yes, but there's a lot of variation in there. I think it's a you know, it's the island effect in ecology, where things diverge, to kind of evolve in their own tracks based on the selection pressures that exist inside, I think some of it is just the way we do our work. We don't have as many platforms for interaction. And fortunately, for the types of things I do, we now have to be BRI, that is that platform, it's the incubator building for thinking where we can sit together and think out loud and say, well, that's not gonna work. To come up with that one Stack, you know, but it's a good opportunity to, to learn what other how other people look at similar problems. So I think I don't think it's by design, I don't think people want to be siloed I just think it there are fundamental aspects of the academic institution that lead to that.

On a course in recognition of, of Senator Roberts contributions, and being a catalyst for these discussions and the creation of the VRI, we are based in Pat Roberts in hall

I was wondering how much that interaction benefits, if we talk a little bit more about how those benefits accrue. So some of its just from ideas, right from other people that maybe have not been working in the same area, but Steve you also talked about the complexity of the problems. And so for example, like a mosquito borne disease, it's not just the genetics of the virus that matters, or this or the genetics of the mosquito that matters, but interactions. And I know, you've done work on like, the interactions between the host and the mosquito in terms of right sort of that really affect the, you know, have an impact on the infectiousness of the virus, right. So I'm wondering how much having a bunch of different kind of work happening at the BRI might potentially help when you turn to look at these complex systems and looking at multiple parts of the systems, right.

Yeah. It's like, it's like Jim said, we do meet through our work and sometimes socially, and, you know, it's sad, but true that we were never far from our work, are we, as scientists, you know, you go out socially and most of the time all you talk about is work and, and that's what happens. I was involved in a conversation yesterday about, you know, a well put, could these pathogens of plants influence pathogens of animals and pathogenicity. When I did that UDP meeting the other night, I was specifically asked, Well, are there plant pathogens out there that can affect humans or, or animals and Dr. Stack immediately came to mind because he'll tell you he's working on this most bizarre pathogen radiobacter tops occurs, which bridges that that relationship between plants and animals in seems to have its foot in all kingdoms if you like. But Scott, to answer your question, just those casual conversations, being able to express, you know, frustrations of something that didn't work, and then having a different point of view with without the the dogma of, you know, people saying, Oh, well, that doesn't work because it never has, you know, for the mosquito side of things. When I first came to the States, it was a group funded by the John D And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It was a parasite group. And then there was an arthropod borne diseases group. And the innovation there was it brought in people who knew a lot about insects in particular to software, but nothing about mosquitoes. Nothing about the diseases that they spread, but had a tremendous capacity to work with an organism that was relatively easy to genetically engineer. And that was where the breakthroughs come. It was, you know, you grow up in the sciences. And you know, you get convinced, oh, well, this has never been done before. And everything has been tried. And it just doesn't work. And I won't give up but it isn't where you focus your efforts, because often isn't where the funding is. But then you get to talk to a plant pathologist, or, you know, a food microbiologist. And you have to sort of press that reset, because they can throw out something at any time that you go home at night and you wake up Saturday, wake up at two o'clock and monitoring dial, I wonder if that would work and if that would apply. And that's what happens. And you agree, Jim?

Yeah, absolutely. And more recently, for me, the bacterium that Steve just mentioned Rathi Pachter hypothesis I'm kind of working on for how we describe the new genetic population of this bacterium. And the hypothesis I have is that it most likely occurred within an animal. And so that's outside my area of expertise. And so I've been talking to the scientists that VRI on how we could explore that how we might figure out if that's where this rather substantial genetic change occurred in this bacterium? So I think, again, it's an opportunity to learn from other people.

Well, I guess that's kind of what it's all about, isn't it? Is getting groups in the room talking to one another, and learning from other people, understanding the diversity of where research can take us.

I have one more question for Steve. So certainly, within in the plant world, there is accumulating data on the ability of viruses to actually alter the behavior of their vector of their arthropod host. And I'm wondering if you see the same thing with some of the viruses and the mosquitoes, does the infection of the mosquito by the virus actually change its behavior? Say it's feeding behavior for conduct D something like that?

Good question. Yeah, I mean, so when I was a parasitologist, a long time ago, you know, there were some fascinating parasites, I launched it for infected and made them run up glass grass stems, late at night so that they could eat be eaten by sheep. So there's been discussion on how viruses might manipulate mosquito behavior in such a way that it would favor transmission. The, you know, these so the interest in these viruses can infect an animal at a very low dose, you might get one West Nile virus particle, and three days later, the animal is dead. And yet in a mosquito, you might get, I mean, serious, you might get 100 million or 1000 million virus particles in that mosquito. And it infects it for life, the whole life of the mosquito and some of these mosquitoes can live months and does not seem to have any of the pathological consequences to the vector. We have noo, we have no idea how these mosquitoes couldn't be infected and churning out. That's a technical term right? You know, having virus replicating enormous titers, and yet really just play about as normal. It's been suggested that maybe the viruses could disrupt feeding patterns in such a way that a virus would a virally infected mosquito would feed more frequently than a non infected mosquito. And the advantage to the virus, there would be that it would be transmitted more frequently and more efficiently. Is it possible that viruses could influence longevity, that wouldn't be obviously to the virus's advantage? Because the longer that mosquito lives, as long as it's infected for life, the longer it can be transmitted. So that would be not a good thing. It's been suggested there have been a few publications that say, Yeah, infected mosquitoes breed more often. And then there have been equally reputable publications. So well, no, they don't. We looked at mosquitoes over a long period of time with West Nile to see if there was pathology. And we had to take those mosquitoes out to become geriatric mosquitoes before we saw maybe a little bit effect, but it was inconsistent. We discussed at one point looking at mosquito behavior in infected mosquitoes. Technically, we never quite figured out how to do that to be honest, because the one thing you want in an infected mosquito is for it to be closely contained. I tell people, you know, one time mosquitoes are infected every week, we count those mosquitoes frequently, maybe every day, as we take samples, because we always have to, we take that safety and security very seriously, you have to know where your organism is, at all times. And so most of our studies are done in relatively small containers. To study the true behavior, a mosquito would need large cages. And maybe remote observation we talked about cameras to track must be no Flight Behavior and so forth. And, and we never really were able to figure it out. Because if you've got a very large cage with 100 mosquitoes in that it's difficult to keep counting them, you know, occasionally they die, they're on the floor, it's easy to do in a small carton, but not in a big container. And all of this is done in a laboratory setting, I had a very nice friend who said, you know, you can say that this happens in a lab with this species of mosquito, this type of virus, this period of time, but you cannot extrapolate beyond that. And the truth is, we don't know what mosquitoes really doing in the wild very, very thoroughly, you know, just to study them in the wild, you have to be in that environment with them, you know, some of the the Para domestic mosquito patterns that are indoors, but some of the mosquitoes are in you know, jungle environments, for example, or in in grasslands, where are they? How often are they flying? You can take snapshots, but not really know what the true behavior is. The bottom line at the moment is there is no consistent there are no consistent data that suggests that the behavior old or the feeding patterns, black pants or anything are consistently changed by viral infection.

So I am not asking you to comment here. But I mean, just as a as a working hypothesis, you might predict that though, since the virus is dependent upon the vector to deliver it to a toast for replicate, unless evolutionarily, the the virus in say, the human host, or the animal host is incidental, and it's its main focus is the vector itself. And so those are some of the hypotheses that are being kind of tossed about in the plant. So well. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, appreciate that.

Lots to talk about Jim.

Indeed.

There's lots to talk about.

The only thing that I that I wanted to get an opportunity to ask you about was no, there's some work on SARS, Covid to BRI, and sort of in the current world that we're in sort of any, any thoughts you have about about some of the complexities that we've talked about about you know, host virus vector. I mean, there's not a vector here that we're worried about, but complex interactions, that there are lessons that We might have for SARS Covid. Two and COVID. Going forward.

Yeah. Oh, Scott, I could have paid you for that question. So, you know, so last year, as the university was, was closing down, you know, personal interactions very much, and many other facilities and buildings were being closed down. It was early. I mean, we knew we knew this was the case, but it was quickly realized by the bar leadership that the PRI isn't the sort of facility that you can just close down and open up again, it's not like, you know, you flip the switch is such a sophisticated facility in terms of air handling and safety, security, everything and keeping our pathogens secure, that we really just couldn't close it, and then turn the turn the lights back on and parently generate generators and or the HVAC system. And I'm be back to normal. So, you know, thank goodness, we were able to rearrange our stopping slightly with a reduced stuff. But we've never closed we've always had people on site. An Luckily. Again, the administration said, well, this research that you do, on the expertise that you have can, could be turned towards COVID, we already had investigators sort of knocking at the door saying I can work we need the answers. For COVID. It's a new pathogen in a new environment, and there's so much that we don't know. So one of the beauties of being a University is that we can be nimble. Government labs probably don't have that luxury. But we were very quickly able as an institute, and I mean, as a university, the K State Institute, not just the BRI, to enable research to be done on SARS, Covid too, you know, the IBCs, the IR cooks met, especially to review proposals and protocols for us. And we were very quickly able to wind down and complete a couple of research projects, but start projects on SARS, Covid two. And my theme, obviously, was mosquitoes. And I posed a very simple question, can this virus can infect mosquitoes and could it be transmitted, because if it could be transmitted, then that would potentially have a huge impact on transmission dynamic, you know, mosquitoes bite, feed on almost anybody indiscriminately, if they can find them. And it's the right mosquito, they will feed on people. So that means that children and you know, different age groups, you might not be susceptible to being exposed to the virus would all be exposed. So we did? Well, we say it's relatively simple. So we actually inoculated the virus into three species of mosquito, which is the most rigorous test of a virus capacity to infect a mosquito, we get three different species. And whereas as a researcher, as a scientist, you, you hope for positive results. There was a, there was a big part of us, basically saying, Well, I hope the experiments work because we know what we're doing, and we're gonna do them properly, but please, please, that this virus does not infect mosquitoes. And that, that is, that is what happened. And we were the first researchers to do these experiments and publish it in a peer review. Journal. I got the data on this with a UDP meeting the other day. So we, we published the work, the university very quickly wrote a journalistic piece to highlight it. And today, that work has been reported in 618 news outlets in 42 countries and been translated to 18 different languages. You know, that's, I mean, it gives me personal pleasure. But in terms of highlighting the capabilities of what we can do at the BRI, in a relatively short space of time, that really puts us on the map. I mean, that puts a university on the map, which is, which is good for all of us to get that sort of attention and recognition. And then we had other researchers, notably Juergen Richt team, you know, doing studies on pigs on in cats. Early on, there were a few cases reported that companion animals could be infected. And so it was important to do that research to just, you know, get the data so that decisions could be made based on data and not just on assumptions.

Great work.

I suppose just a comment that, as you said right at the beginning, the Global Food System Initiative is something that I think more broadly touches all of us at the university than maybe any other initiative. Jim does brilliant presentations on the impact of food insecurity, local and global scales, politics and everything. I mean, it's so impressive. And for you to for us to have this program here and for you to have the leadership roles in this is so important at all scales for K State and for and for the world. Really.

I want to thank all of you. This has been really interesting discussion. And thanks so much for coming on for giving me your time.

Thanks a lot for your time today. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks very much.

Take care. Yeah, bye bye. Bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Christer Aakeröy, university distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University. Dr. Aakeröy's research lab focuses on supramolecular and crystal engineering. By translating molecular function into predictable intermolecular recognition, he is creating versatile pathways for improving processing, performance and shelf life of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, dyes, and energetic materials.

Transcript:

I'm thrilled to bits with the way that this is working out. And even if we don't make the world's best new fertilizer, I'm still perfectly comfortable with learning so much more about what is required. And maybe I can't make the difference but my students and Ganga's students and postdocs can take this to the next level and I think that's the legacy that is worth pursuing.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast we will visit with Dr. Christer Aakeröy. Dr. Aakeröy is a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at K State. His area of research is focused on the science of communication and change between molecules. This work emphasizes the synthesis of organic molecules, some of which are used in the formation of cocrystals. This versatile material can be used in creating new methods for delivery of important components in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and other areas where controlled directed releases useful. In this podcast we will discuss Dr. Aakeröy's interdisciplinary work with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, Professor of Agronomy here at K State on the targeted release of soil nutrients in crop production.

I should say before we start that, unlike my usual self, I'm going to be rather the mirror today. I'm just fascinated by the work that Christer is doing. But I know that you're a chemist. So I know that you'll have a lot smarter questions about Reno that presupposes a lot of don't question. Fair. But you know, and Christer, just for your edification, as I, I'm really fascinated by you have to know that. Obviously, I'm not a chemist. And it's probably the weakest of my subjects when it comes to scientific understanding. I'm really I understand what you're doing. But the CO crystallization that's, I'm, I need some help on that. So just definitely specific growth as we go along to get that but I'm really curious. And I hope that when we leave here, I understand this idea of CO crystallization better.

Okay, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna attempt some ill advised or ill conceived analogies in that case, to try to put that science across. And yeah, it might get a little risky at times, but we'll clean you be happy to know that chemistry is only about communication. That's all there is to it. There you go. There you go.

I was struck by that. As you know, the first word on your description is communication. And I think, Oh, really? I'm intrigued, but I'm not sure. So let's find out more.

To welcome today, our guest Dr. Christer Aakeröy, who is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University. In welcoming Dr. Aakeröy, as I get started here, I would, I would like to say that I have people ask me how something like chemistry fits into the Global Food System. And from my perspective, it's a critical piece. And this is critical as any of the other pieces is as critical as transportation, or Agronomy or Plant Pathology or any of the above. One of the analogies I use frequently is to discuss food from a grocery store or from a farmer's market being at the very tip of the iceberg. And that's where we interface most frequently with the food that we however, the fundamentals that happen in research in the basic sciences and chemistry and physics and those types of areas are at the base of the iceberg. And those are the things that support ongoing abilities to move forward with technologies and that type of thing and it's as critical a piece of the food system as anything. So with that being said, I will then jumped into, again welcoming Dr. Aakeröy, and asked if you could give us a little background on who you are, how you got interested in the work that you're doing. And then maybe we'll just take it from there.

Thank you very much. And thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast as well. Maybe we should warn the listeners to this particular episode that I have relatively limited experience with farming or food science, food production, and food distribution. But as a chemist, I still believe that chemistry is underpinning all of these different efforts that we are looking at. So maybe there's going to be something that can be useful to the listeners. At the end of the day.

My own background is quite, quite diverse. I grew up in Sweden, I have a Norwegian passport. And I was never ever ever going to be a scientist. My goal when I was in high school was to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I didn't really know the difference between the two at that point. I applied to go to do psychology at Uppsala University in Sweden, they had only 10 positions. And I was the first on the reserve list. So I didn't get introduced ecology unfortunately, as a result that I decided to take a year off. And maybe this was my first contact with food because I took a job in a meat processing plant meat packing and meat processing. I learned a lot about the sort of rather harsh end of the Global Food Systems industry. And I can't really say that it was love at first sight, I have to be perfectly honest. It was long hours hard work. But I learned a lot about people I learned a lot about different skills. And it wasn't really something that I ever thought I do. But I spent a year in a meat packing and meat processing plant. After that I decided to switch so I became a substitute teacher and stuff because I still couldn't get into psychology at Uppsala University. So I became a substitute teacher. And I don't know, if you remember what it was like, at school, when you had a substitute teacher. If you had a substitute teacher, nobody would do anything. But it was to me it was a really, really interesting and valuable experience because you walk into a classroom with maybe 30 or 40 students. They're not interested in you if you're not interested in the topic. And it is really a challenge to try to basically have maybe 30 seconds or a minute to win or lose that battle. You walk in you try to read the room, you try to figure out who how you can communicate with these students. And it turns out that I, I think I won more battles that I lost by and large, which made me realize I wanted to become a teacher at the end of the day. So I went to University eventually. I did Chemistry, and I had minors in Mathematics and Biology and in Pedagogy. So I actually got myself a teaching degree from Uppsala University, I started teaching still never had any intention of becoming a full time proper scientist. Long story short, I had a chance to travel to the UK to do some Chemistry at the University of Sussex, which is south of London. It wasn't really because I was interested in Chemistry, per se. It was more a case of having an opportunity to do live abroad. First London which is which was a fantastic experience. One thing led to another I was offered a place to do a PhD at the University of Sussex. I didn't quite know what a PhD was, unfortunately. So of course I had to say yes, so I accepted Teamspeak and that was in Chemistry. I still didn't really know what I wanted to do at that point, which is strange, because at that point I had a doctoral degree in chemistry. I applied for two jobs. One was the British Petroleum. And one was at Queen's University of Belfast, I interviewed at both places. My interview at Queen's University in Belfast is probably was the other of the whole podcast itself. But I was offered a job at Queen's University Belfast and I stayed there for three years did Inorganic Chemistry. I got tenure. And then I resigned two weeks later because I had been sort of headhunted by Kansas State University. I couldn't really refuse. To be perfectly honest, I never saw myself moving to your living in the United States, let alone in the Midwest, in the middle of the Midwest. But now I've been here for close to over 20 years and certainly from a career perspective and a life perspective. It's probably the most definitely the best decision I ever made.

I have, like I said, I've lived in that K State now for over 20 years. My research spans a wide range topics, food size is bad in minor, minor, minor minor, out of that. We did a lot of fundamental research in chemistry. And we can talk more about that in a while. I teach a variety of freshman classes I do, like I still really, really enjoyed the teaching. The bigger the class, the more enjoyment I get out of it, I think. So I can't wait for this particular lockdown and, and zoom based educational methodology to be over so we can actually get that teaching in person again, because luckily, the research is going my students are in the research labs on a regular basis. So we haven't been too badly affected by that. But yeah, I mean, so difficult times, but we're going to get through it. And we're going to get through it because of big science and STEM research. That's basically what's going to help us out in this process. So that's a little bit of a starting point.

Well, thank you for that background and overview. i It's interesting to understand the directions and different directions that people take and getting from, you know, what they think they want to do when they're 18 years old, where you actually ended up today and certainly ending up in Manhattan, Kansas is taking you a long way from where you started.

Actually all senses that he senses. Absolutely. In reading through the research that you have been most heavily focused on at K State. I keep seeing the term cocrystals over and over again popping up. Can you explain to us in layman's terms a bit about what that research is? What is the cocrystal? And how does it impact research?

Right, so let's in that case, we have to probably go back to basics a little bit. So making a contrast is essentially trying to convince different types of molecules to coexist in a crystalline or solid material. And that might sound relatively straightforward. But it turns out that molecules more than likely are not keen to coexist with other molecules that are different from themselves. In the same crystalline, solid environment. In many ways, molecules are rather selfish. They like to hang out with molecules that look exactly like themselves. They are a little bit suspicious. Molecules, they don't look like themselves. So in some ways, they are a little bit like people as well. So one of the one of the buzzwords that we use in my research is that we think we like to talk about the Chemistry that we do in terms of molecular sociology, or psychology, we are basically, we're basically trying to figure out how we can convince molecules to interact productively, to recognize other molecules to bind to other molecules. Because when different molecules bind and hang out together, they can perform and do very, very different things. And there are many analogies that you can make with this. For example, if you have a football team, with only quarterbacks, that football team is not going to win anything at all. But if you have different molecules or players in different positions, then as a whole team, then you can do very, very, very different things. And the same is true for molecules. I think one of the illustrations that we sometimes refer to is that, let's say, let's say if you have a cup of coffee in the morning, and some people for some reason like to put sugar in the coffee. At the end of the day, you forget about a cup of coffee, and you leave the coffee cup sitting for a day or two, you come back to it and the water is gone. And at the bottom of the cup, you will have crystals of caffeine. And you'll have different separate crystals of sugar. Now each trickle contains billions upon billions and billions of molecules of caffeine in caffeine crystals, and billions upon billions of dollars of molecules of sucrose, no sugar in the sugar crystals, you will not find a single molecule being able to fit in to the other type of crystal because they're the molecules are so selective and so specific about what other molecules they're willing to spend time with, and what other molecules that are willing to recognize and bind with. So in that sense, molecules are very, very selfish. So making a cocrystal to figure out what molecules want. And what we tried to do in my group, then we did for a longest time, that was the basic research that we did was to try to interrogate individual molecules and find out. So based upon the shape, the size, the particular functionality of a molecule, what would that molecule look like in a potential partner? Is it something to do with shape? Is it something to do with size? Is it something to do with the different elements that make up that molecule? So in many, many, many early experiments, we played a molecular dating game, if you like. But it's really like a dating game. So we essentially, we introduced one target molecule to another set of molecules, maybe three or four different potential partners. And we let them spend time together, we dissolve them together in some solvent. And as the experiment, figure out, if they did crystallize together in a cocrystal, or if they just went their separate ways. So based upon hundreds, if not 1000s, of experiments, we can begin to figure out dating guidelines for molecules. So this point, we are really treated, that knowing what a molecule wants. So if you can draw a molecule, if you can describe a molecule to me, I can probably give you a pretty decent idea of what kind of partner is the best fit for that molecule. And that is the basis for how we make country schools. So calculus is just a macroscopic overview of that. So we convince one type of molecules to form a new solid material with another type of molecules. And the reason why we want to do that is we want to make new materials where the properties of that material is taking the best of both worlds. And that's really the driving force for making cocrystals. And that's just very, very briefly what a country's length, this might sound a little bit like, like, regular dating, as well. And, um, we have actually made the molecular dating. I'm going to tell you about that.

Fascinating. It is fascinating, Christer, this is really helpful to me, I find myself wanting to follow up on several different possible threads of the, you know, human social analogy that you suggest to us. So when you say that you had a dating app for Oculus? I can I assume them that the rules that you have discovered, for what molecules like to hang out with other modern molecules are fairly contextualist or objectives? In other words, I would think that whether or not size or shape or whatever other characteristic is relevant to a good match would depend by and large on what kind of molecule or what class of molecule? I mean, how hard is it to sort of abstract out these rules to other kinds of molecules and larger groups?

Yeah, no, I mean, that is that is the the big question, because, obviously, in order to have these, in order to identify these guidelines for molecular dating, they have to be somewhat transferable between classes of compounds and between classes of molecules, you can't just have one set of guidelines for molecule A and then have another set of guidelines for molecule B, because then you're not making any progress. But it turns out that, by a large molecules are just like many of us quite superficial, in that sense, is looked for, for a few couple of key characteristics. They don't really worry too much about personality, initially, at least it's usually about looks in some usually about a trade. And it's usually about appearance. And that typically most frequently leads to a recognition event, which leads to binding. And once that binding takes place, the chances are that you are going to poetry's to where both partners are present together, whether the properties of that material are going to be better or worse than those expressed by the two individuals. That is difficult to predict. But the big thing the molecular dating app that my students put together, essentially will be really, really, really somewhat frightening. primitive in essence, because you've put in a few descriptors of your molecule, and then the program will list a set of potential partners as likely, very likely or highly unlikely to be suitable candidates. And that's it. So it's, it's a swipe left, swipe right kind of deal. But just for molecules. Wow, you didn't know that about molecules. So they had personalities that had a social life like that, did you?

I had no idea. No, I did not.

Ultimately, the reason why we want to pursue this is that, for example, if I can, there is the first application we looked at here was actually in the pharmaceutical industry. Because it turns out that a vast number of potentially useful pharmaceutical drugs fail to reach the patient, because they have, they may have a really good biological properties, biological activity, but they have very poor physical properties, physical properties, like solubility, for example, you'd be astounded at how many compounds fail in development, because they're not soluble in water. Now, if a drug isn't soluble in water, it's not going to be good to water based organisms like us. So what we tried to do in that context was to try to combine the biologically active, maybe a cancer drug, which was poorly poorly soluble in water, with a co former, a partner that was very, very soluble in water. Now, if we convinced the two to live together in one crystalline material, we could take advantage of the favorable biological activity of the cancer drug, and the favorable physical water solubility or the other component. And that will then take us from something that couldn't possibly make it to the market into a formulation that potentially could make it to the market because now, it combined the best of both worlds, trying to figure that out in advance, is still something that we can't do with too much certainty. For the longest time, we would still be trying to work out how we get those molecules to live together, and that we have a pretty good handle on.

you, in some cases drives the process by a solvent that is almost partitioning, or do you have to add energy to the system to get it to just fleetingly change? Its its three dimensional property, so it would then start it would interact? And then once it's sort of caught?

Yeah, I was gonna say, Yeah, well, not to push this analogy too far. But initially, we made we do all these experiments in solution. So we have to have a solvent that we can use. And more often than not, it's the solvent is some sort of alcohol. I'm not saying that that is helping the molecules to get together. But you need to find a solvent, it could be, it could be an alcoholic, could be water, it could be acetone, it could be chloroform, it could be all sorts of things. But you need some sort of solvent in which both components are reasonably comfortable. Because if they're both reasonably comfortable, then there is no partitioning or no segregation, within that experimental space within that mixture. And that will then facilitate the close proximity of the two, or the different types of molecules. And that's ultimately going to make it easier for them to nucleate or to bind to recognize them to nucleate. And ultimately, to crystallize together. solvent is an important choice, but we don't have to add, we don't heat them up. We simply rely on the sort of improved the ability that Partner A and Partner B have together to the stability they have with themselves. Okay, yeah. So this is pretty much like a partnership between humans as well. I think the idea is that two humans in a partnership will be stronger than the individual components by themselves. And I think the same applies in many ways to molecules to so there's an energetic benefit to having different components together. So molecular diversity in this sense is a really strong driving force for what we try to accomplish.

Gotcha. Okay. And how do you measure the outcome of the experiment? If you now have a solution that has a compound B, compound, see this the cocrystal have that?

Yes. Yeah, it's relatively straightforward actually. So in the case of, so you can measure some simple things the left if we take the example of caffeine, which is pure, solid, and sugar, which is the pure solid, so we can measure their melting point meaning there thermal stability separately, and we can make measure their solubility of water separately. And then we make the country school. And then we can measure the melting point of the cocrystal, which is inevitably going to be different to the melting point of individuals we can make, we can measure the aqueous solubility. And by doing those kinds of measurements systematically, we have, we fixed the target. And we test it out with a series of different core formers that are a little bit different from each other. And that way, then we can begin to correlate physical properties of the bulk material to some sort of feature of the individual molecules. Because ideally, at the end of the day, we would like to be able to predict basic properties that are fundamentally important just by looking at the molecules themselves currently, that cannot be done.

Yeah, right. Otherwise, it just be a series of giant survey experiments every time.

Exactly. And I'm too lazy to do 1000 experiments, I would rather just do experiments to do the right experiments. These guidelines and the way we're developed now, structure property correlations, is helping us to do that. And I think having multiple components in one Christian crystalline environments means that we can make these we can tailor make the properties. And we can make them more or less suit or more suitable to a specific target and to a specific application. So for the pharmaceutical applications, we typically we're looking for increased aqueous solubility, so solubility of water. In many agrochemical applications, we're looking for the opposite. We're looking for maybe fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides that are less soluble in water, which means that you have a slow, much more controlled release of the active substance. So if you have a sudden rainfall, which can happen all over the place, the whole, all the pesticides and herbicides that you've sprayed on the crops in the fields is not going to disappear overnight, it'll still be slowly slowly released over an extended period of time. Now, if we can tailor those kinds of simple properties, stability, mechanical strength, melting, temperature, ability to withstand moisture, heat, then we have something that is classified or can be thought of as smarter or more responsive material. And that can be an issue anti cancer drug, it can be a fertilizer, it could be pesticide, it could be an explosive, it could be all sorts of things.

Great segue into discussing a little bit about the seed grant proposal that you received funding for recently, as the title of this is exploring cocoa crystal technologies for efficient and sustainable nutrient management. And this project you're doing in conjunction with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, and in the Department of Agronomy and in the Agricultural College, can you give us a bit of background on how you ended up working with Dr. Hettiarachchi on this and kind of the direction that that proposal is taking.

But again, it's it's I think it's random, I think that's the best way to describe it. Actually, I actually met Ganga at a sort of a Buddhist ceremony. It was not a Buddhist, but she was hosting a ceremony for Ali was the sort of funeral service for a parent at one of my students. And Ganga was kind enough to host this in our house. So that's where we met up. And it turns out, the first thing she said to me is that I was your student at one point to which made me feel incredibly old, obviously. But it turns out, Ganga, who is now a full professor in Agronomy was in my very first class that I taught in Inorganic Chemistry here at Kansas State University. But anyway, so yeah, we had met before. And we started talking about the things that she was doing, and the things that we were doing, and we realized that there was an interface that we might be able to explore and exploit because she is sort of world famous world class soil scientist, and she knows everything there is to know about sorry, chemistry. I know nothing about solid chemistry, but I know how to change physical properties of materials such as fertilizers. So that made us think that maybe if we can make some new formulations and new or different types of fertilizers with slightly different properties, then she would be able to test them out in her lab with her expertise. And figure out if these new formulations, actually, they made a substantial significant impact on performance in such a way that we could maximize efficiency and minimize negative environmental, environmental impacts of over fertilizing, for example. So that's how that little project got started. That's great.

They had in looking through the proposal that you submitted on this, I know that you're in the process of working through this project at this point in time and don't have results yet. But there were three separate approaches, is can you step through some of those and explain a bit about how the cocrystal portion of this is going to be working with an interfacing with what the soil science pieces of it is doing? Right, I'm referring to the organic urea cocrystals for ionic cocrystals And then you have organico crystals for developing both nitrogen and phosphorus. It's there's some background you can give us on those.

Yeah. So, the starting point for this is very simple molecule called urea, urea is the is the probably the most common fertilizer, I think approximately 220 million tons of urea is produced every year globally 90% of that is used as fertilizer. Now, urea has a lot of great advantages, it has the high nitrogen content 46% of the weight of urea is nitrogen. So, it has the highest nitrogen content of any fertilizer, it is cheap to a large extent, but there are several drawbacks with this particular fertilizer first of all, it is really soluble, which on some level is good, but it also means that it can leach out into the groundwater really rather quickly, which is a disadvantage. Urea by itself is not absorbed or taken up by the plants urea has to go through several steps, which takes place in the soil. So urea is converted to ammonium ions to hydrogen carbonate and to nitrates. And then in those formats, then the plants can make nitrogen be more accessible. Now, the breakdown of urea is usually done by a naturally occurring enzyme that will break down urea, but a large amount of the urea that is being broken down does not reach the plant ultimately, because the breakdown is too fast, some of the urea is going to be into greenhouse gases. So some of the urea when it breaks down produces ammonia, and dye nitrogen oxygen, oxygen oxide, which are both greenhouse gases. And nitrate ions contributes negatively to eutrophication as well. So there are plenty of drawbacks with urea. And at the end of the day, it turns out that almost 50% of the RIA that is applied to crops globally is not going to reach the farm. So if we do the math, then it means that we are spreading maybe close to 100 million tonnes of fertilizers that will never reach the plant. Now that is not efficient. So, the way we're going to try to tweak this a little bit was to try to make cocrystals of urea, where the CO former or the partner would tailor their solubility in such a way that the unwanted breakdown of urea was going to be slowly slow down. So, a smaller portion of was going to disappear into the atmosphere and a smaller portion of the urea was going to disappear into the groundwater. So that would maximize the efficiency of the transformation from urea to nitrogen that plants could actually absorb. So, initially, our job is to try to make a large number of different characteristics of urea.

So the what we are trying to accomplish in my group then is to try to change some of the physical properties or the Yeah, some of the physical properties Urei itself, notably its solubility and stability, because we want to try to minimize urea breakdown in such a way that we don't siphon off a lot of the nitrogen into unwanted products that will have a negative environmental impact. And we don't want to siphon off nitrogen in forms that will lead to increased eutrophication. So we want to max it really would like to have 100% of the nitrogen that we put on the crops end up in the plant. So we call for most that we combined with urea are primarily there at this point at least to try to reduce Use or control the solubility of water in such a way that urea goes in much more slowly. And there is more of a controlled release of the fertilizer over an extended period of time, which, in principle then should maximize the efficiency of the formulation and maximize the distribution of fertilizer onto the fields. Ultimately, if we can limit the amount of fertilizer that we distribute, without losing any of the beneficial effects on food production and food supply, that is obviously the ultimate goal for that particular part. And for those other two projects that we have funded in that seed grant, it's going to be very, very similar. We haven't done a lot of work in that area, because we really only started a couple of months ago. So initially, our focus had been primarily on making these organic crystals. I'm happy to report and I just found this out literally a couple of hours ago, because I was on a Zoom meeting with Ganga in the agronomy department. And her and her students or postdocs have started to work on exploring if there are notable differences in soil samples that have been treated with pure urea compared to those that have been treated with cocrystals of urea, because you can imagine that the worst case scenario for us would be that once they go into the soil, there is no noticeable difference in their effect. But I'm happy to report that it turns out that the formulations that we've made, these countries and stuff we've made, make a significant difference in terms of how the breakdown of urea into these different components take place. And this gives us a lot of encouragement, because now we can begin to tailor make partners, because we know that it works, the proof of principle is in place. So we can now begin to target co foremost that can provide additional value to the fertilizer, we can provide micronutrients, we can provide components that would control the way in which the enzyme breaks down the array itself. Which means that again, we can dial in release and transfer and transformation of nitrogen that can be utilized by the plant to nitrogen, it can be utilized by the plant in a much more manageable manner. And I think long term, that's really what we're hoping to do to better manage the nitrogen cycle. And ultimately, the goal to do that is to provide more sustainable food supplies, and maximize efficiency.

And also to minimize the environmental impact we I personally live in the country, and we are water comes from a well. There's farmland all around us. And nitrates is probably my biggest concern about the water coming out of that.

Well, right. Yeah, to pick up on that point. And if we can, if we can more, or if we can better control the release of nitrogen into the soil and make it more available to the plant when they needed, then of course, we can address both environmental issues, cost and sustainability all at once. So it's kind of a it's a, in some ways, is a blue sky project. But I think the results that we've seen, even after a few months on working on this are actually quite promising. Wow. And we couldn't do any of this without thinking that global food systems avoided us and I couldn't do any of this without the expertise that can get a heterogeneous group are providing us as well. So it's yeah, it's a really, really good interface between two areas where she's in the field in a very, very different way. And I'm in the lab, doing very fundamental science and I in a million years, I didn't think I was going to do something that you one day might be actually be able to buy in a store. But here we are, may not be too many years down the line.

The initial results that you just stated are really exciting. I think that the potential for having a major impact is as you said, it's kind of a blue sky project with the sounds like demand the potential is high. What are the other things that I know from this and really through the Global Food Systems we're trying to promote in a big way one of the things we try to promote obviously, is the interdisciplinary activities which clearly you and you and Ganga have have taken to a great level. But the other thing is with the students and I was you know in thinking through how the students are interfacing with one another, I thought you know, the soil students have most certainly taken chemistry classes. So the chemistry has been important part of what they do, but the chemistry students, chances of them having background in the soils area is probably pretty limited. Where do you see the benefit of that kind of interaction are the students having the ability to work together and kind of broaden their base understanding of things as you work through this project.

But I think every time Well, first of all, every time you step out of your comfort zone, you learn something about yourself about what you do and what above what other people do. But I think in practice, so we spent 10 years developing molecular dating rules. And then suddenly, we go over to agronomy. And we, we look at actual samples of sand of soil. And we begin to realize what the challenges are, and how we might begin to address those by changing what we do in the chemistry lab, in order to better suit and better serve the requirements and the challenges that real life scientists face on a daily basis. And ultimately, then, the real life challenges that the farmer or the consumer are facing on a daily basis. If you don't walk out of your lab, if you don't physically see smell, I should say taste. But almost if you don't feel that in your hands, you don't really, really understand what you need to be able to do in order to make a difference. So I think I know that my students has, has really started thinking much more differently and much more deeply about how she can use her skill set on making these concrete skills into being able to translate that into products, to translate that into something that will have a huge benefit, not just to know the local economy in in the Midwest, but also to people back in her home country. So she's from Zimbabwe, and she there is a very agro driven country as a learner, we've been having several conversations about that maybe one day, she would like to go back and educate, teach and make a big, big difference in terms of how farming is done in the faraway place 1000s of miles literally away from Kansas State University. And I think the students in the agronomy department also get a different understanding of how you make these particular compounds and what is needed in order to characterize and classify and, and develop new materials. So I couldn't really think of a better connection between real life out there and synthetic fundamental chemistry in the lab, in my group, I mean, I'm thrilled to bits with the way that this is working out. And even if we don't make the world's best new fertilizer, I'm still perfectly comfortable with learning so much more about what is required. And maybe I can't make the difference. But my students and Ganga students and postdocs can take this to the next level. And I think that's the legacy that is worth pursuing.

Absolutely.

You are singing the Global Food Systems Initiative song.

I didn't realize you had a song as far as I know, I mean, it's, it's so critically important. And I recall, when I first started working in this position, I'm talking to somebody out of the chemistry department. And so that was there was a physicist or the chemist and I was telling them kind of the work that we were trying to do in bringing interdisciplinary groups together. And one of them looked at me and said, We don't have any impact on the food system. We're in this area. And I thought, oh, goodness, there's work to be done. And convincing on both sides of that equation, that there's so much interaction that's so critical.

Well, I mean, I think as a chemist and I, obviously a little bit biased here, but I think chemistry forms a critical part in every single scientific pursuit because we can make new things. Yes, we can make new molecules, we can make things that never ever existed before. And as a funny aside, actually, I never realized this until I started working with Ganga on this project. So you Raya, this molecule that I've been referring to several times, was first synthesized in 1828, by foolish Birla. And this was essentially represented the birth of organic chemistry. This was by and large, the first organic molecule that was synthesized in the laboratory. So there is there's a historical arc here that I that I quite like as well. Yes, indeed.

Just to follow up on this point about collaboration and interdisciplinary research, you know that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of, I don't know, four or five of these podcasts now. And it really is interesting for someone who has a life outside of the scientific enterprise, to come to a new understanding about how science works. I mean, even, you know, from outside of science, I think of it as a competitive venture. So, early on in our conversation, I was thinking to myself, I wonder if there's anyone else in the world who has a lab that's doing similar kinds of investigations with molecular dating rules? Surely there is, but maybe not, I don't know. But now that we've come full circle, for the end of the conversation, I'm realizing that the most important point was that this collaboration happened. And you might not have ever discovered the ways that they would have been applied without this kind of collaboration. So I'm glad we got this thing.

To address your point as well, of course, there is, I mean, science and getting to a certain result or finding a cure for COVID-19, or finding a better material, there is a competition. But I think getting gaining an advantage. You do that by collaborating with other world class scientists. And we have a lot of those on this campus. And right now, we can do different things with our cocrystal technology, purely because we're collaborating with soil scientists that we couldn't do before. And as a result, other groups that might be working in similar areas that were trying to do similar or related things on a fundamental level. Now as Grambling because they don't have the same sort of soil scientists working with their materials that we have. So not only is it a friendly collaboration, where we learn something and the students learn something, it does give us an advantage, a competitive advantage, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie about that. That's, that's part of the equation as well, of course.

That's part of what you know, through working for the global through the Global Food Systems at Kansas State, being able to I mean, that's agriculture is one of the main areas that K State offers, I think that probably internationally, we're known, known well, for those things. And so wherever we can, we can find ways to, to build off of that, and, and take advantage of, as you said, world class research in the areas that we'll be impacting that system overall, is, is something that we want to continue doing.

Yeah, I mean, even though I have, have a relatively recently evoke an interest in, in Global Food Systems, I think having this kind of umbrella, where a lot of different scientists from different areas can meet to exchange ideas, really leverages the expertise in different departments and different colleges even in unique and highly productive ways. So of course, I'm very grateful for that. And I'm delighted to be part of those.

It's wonderful. And it's interesting that the way you and Ganga came together was so random. I'm hoping that over time, we will be able to take a little of that randomness out of the equation and find better and better ways of connecting folks together to have some discussions to see where, where, where the fit that works, or doesn't work.

Well, maybe you can design an app for how to get different faculty together.

I've got some ideas on how to do that. Let me know, I would be happy to take that on.

It's probably being licensed as we speak. I'm not quite sure if I can reveal that in public.

Yes. Just one more sort of like, big picture question, after urea, what's next? I mean, do you see yourself continuing with working with other molecules that might have applications in the food system setting? Can you imagine what that might be next? Or do you think you might go back to focus more exclusively on some of the work that's more applicable to the Cancer Center? I'm just curious, what's next?

Well, I have a relatively short attention span. So I tend operate with numerous projects all at once. So we have projects going in, that are sponsored by the Department of Defense for making more stable explosives. We are working with Yeah, I mean, that's another that's another I was not gonna say impactful because that's what we tried to minimize impact sensitivity. But we're working to improve stability of explosives. We are working with pharmaceuticals. We are working with agrochemicals sometimes it's difficult to plan ahead and I'd like this random walk through the scientific world and the real world and sometimes you just come across an opportunity to do something. Right now we are potentially looking at fragrances, which is a whole different story where we can try to control the release of fragrances in a more fashion. So there's a lot of things I mean, every time we think about how can we control or improve the physical properties of any material or any substance, we might be able to make a difference, it's just a matter of finding enough hours in the day. And it could really be that there'll be looking more closely at pesticides and herbicides, to make them more targeted, to make them more efficient. And to make them more environmentally friendly.

I can think of dozens of applications of something like this, all the way from the agronomy of the agricultural system all the way up through the finished food product, things like like flavor enhancement, or flavor compounds coming coming out at different times during the during the the eating process of things like managing the chemicals that are used to extend shelf life of products. They're just there's so many applications that something like this might fit nicely into.

Yeah, I think all you need is curiosity. Yeah.

Yeah, I think getting the Christers and the Gangas of the world to sit down and talk over a glass of wine.

You call it random, and the way that you tell the story of how you ended up in science and at Kansas State, and you know, there's there does seem to be a sense of randomness to it. But, I have to think that there isn't that not that it's preordained, or anything like that. But as you very well say it's curiosity and expressing interest in those around you, that leads us to these seemingly random discoveries. And I can't help but also observe that, you know, 10 years in your lab, developing these technologies, so that now that you've got this really strong base that can be applied in so many different places, I find that really inspiring as well. It's like, it's sort of like you have empowered curiosity. Now that's really going to help in all kinds of applications.

Yeah, I mean, I never planned to work with explosives, to work with soil scientists, or to work with agriculture, anti cancer drugs, I think you just need to listen. You just need to listen to the challenges around you and listen to the presentations that other people give and the work that other people do. And I think then you can begin to find a niche for yourself. And if you're lucky, then you find the right collaborators, and things tend to work out. But listening, I think is almost as critical as the curiosity part.

Absolutely. Do you have any questions of us there any thoughts on the program at this point?

I hope you're planning to can continue it. I think that's a request more than a question. And what do you what do you need from the projects? I mean, what would you ideally see happen with each and every single project that you fund?

Yeah, I have to go back to my funding source, which is the state of Kansas and what the status looking for is expansion of business expansion of jobs in the state, but also helping to to improve the ecological impact of the food system in the state there, you know, just all anything positive that will help move things forward within the state of Kansas. And, as you know, and you know, we've worked with groups with a Feed the Future labs and other groups, things that positively impact the state of Kansas are not just from the state of Kansas, there are there are things that are happening all over the world that researchers at the University can look at and bring back to help us better understand what's going on within our systems within the state.

Was, I think that's, I think we should try to pursue that as much as we can. Because that clearly is a real driving force for what we do here as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So and I think what you're doing, he's got a direct potential direct impact. So this is wonderful.

I was just thinking that doing podcasts like this ought to be a basic requirement. And I think it essentially is an informal sense. But in all seriousness, being able to communicate the value of this research, and the way that it happens is, I think, really important for the public to have a sense of the way that this work is done. It won't be funded by the state of Kansas, if there isn't a greater appreciation for the ways that teaching and research go together for the ways that their deputy sometimes seems to drive these innovations. I just, I really appreciate marine that we're doing this and thanks for being here, Christer. I think it's really important.

Can I just add to that as well, and since we might have listeners who are not necessarily in their labs, I think sometimes you do not have any idea if your research is going to have a real life application or not. But sometimes it happens. And I think it's therefore it's incredibly important to support fundamental research. Because you don't know in advance where those findings and those results are going to take you. And we will not improve quality of life by itself. That can only happen through sustained research efforts, driven by universities, that's where all the exciting stuff happens. And I hope that we can continue to get resources, or even more improved resources to do what we do, because ultimately, some of us will find something that will have an incredibly important impact on the lives of people in the region, or, more broadly speaking, nationally, and globally.

Could not agree more. And I'll just follow up on that quickly before we have to sign off here. But you know, the, as you know, Christer research isn't done in a bubble. So you've got I'm sure colleagues, at other universities, within the US and around the world that you work with, and collaborate with and learn from and that type of thing. And it's just so important for us to be able to do that. And these podcasts at this point in time have been picked up since we started that picked up in over 60 countries. So I'm really excited that there are people around the world that are listening and understanding and interested in what we're doing. And hopefully the you know, when there's a collaboration that makes good sense, we'll be able to facilitate some of that as well.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Christer.

Okay, well, thank you for inviting me and putting up with my analogies and otherwise attempts at explanations.

I think that that background in psychology has served you very, very well, even if it didn't happen at the graduate level. It's made you a fabulous explainer of chemistry so much appreciated.

Thank you. This has been absolutely fascinating. And it just opened so many different channels for further thoughts that I'm grateful. And I think that's one of the characteristics of good science. With this really is so thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to appreciate it.

My pleasure. Great.

All right. Thank you so much. And hope to see you all soon. Thank you. Bye bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in The Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health at Kansas State University. Dr. Rosenkranz's primary research is focused on the influence of physical activity, sedentary behavior, nutrition and obesity on cardiovascular and metabolic clinical health outcomes. Her work has assisted in a successful application to the Food and Drug Administration to have resistant starches four added to its definition of fiber.

Transcript:

Focus on Nutrition, Behavior and Lifestyle with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health.

If you're an expert in one area and not the others, it's important to have a strong team around you who can help understand the other behaviors because there's such an interaction between them. And if you're not accounting for those other behaviors in some way, shape or form, you actually may come up with an answer that's quite a bit different than where the truth actually lies. And so I always think having nutrition and physical activity in or you know, information or expertise on your team is really important, no matter if you're, you know, on one side or the other at that interaction.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. From an individual's perspective, all of the things that go into producing, transporting and distributing food is only supportive of what we consume. The food we eat directly affects our health and along with lifestyle food is a major component in influencing overall well being. In today's podcast we visit with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz. Dr Rosenkranz is an associate professor in the Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health here at Kansas State University. She's a recent recipient of a Global Food System seed grant where she is studying the effect of fiber and resistant starch concentrations in food and their impact on the cardio metabolic outcomes in humans. Her broader area of interest includes behavioral aspects of lifestyle on health outcomes with a focus on nutrition and dietary intake. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. And welcome to the Global Food Systems podcast, Something to Chew On. Could you give us a little background on who you are and how you got interested in your area of teaching and research at K State?

Absolutely. So I feel like I've been around a long time at this point. And my background goes way way back in terms of where my interests kind of come from. So I'll try to give you the short version. But so I graduated from Manhattan High School here in Manhattan, Kansas, and basically did my undergrad in psychology and then did a master's degree here at K State in kinesiology and specifically kind of exercise physiology area. And there I got, you know, I became really interested in taking some nutrition courses and I had been an athlete pretty much all of my life. So between my master's degree and my PhD, I went to work for USA Triathlon, I traveled around and put on coaching education clinics, and my husband was involved in junior national team triathlon training. And so obviously, with sport, nutrition became a really critical topic. And so building off of my master's degree, I decided that I wanted to come back and actually get a PhD in human nutrition. So my two loves our exercise physiology and human nutrition. And my research really is exciting to me, because I often combine those two primary loves that I have so kind of looking at both mechanistic as well as applied approaches to understanding the influence of, of lifestyle, on the whole on cardio metabolic health outcomes. And so that's really kind of what drives the very large umbrella under which my research sits. Specific to this project. I was really, really fortunate that Dr. Mark Cobb was a mentor of mine for quite a long time and we knew each other speaking of small worlds that we were just talking about, he and I did triathlons together for a number of years and he helped to mentor me and he introduced me to this current collaboration that I've got going on sort of multi pronged across the grain sciences and industry, they bakery science and working with MGP ingredients. So we were really interested in looking at the effects of fiber consumption on cardio metabolic outcomes. And then we got really interested in this resistant starch kind of world. And again, this is all really I owe this connection, this collaboration to Dr. Hobbs. So I would be remiss if I did not mention that. And so really, some really exciting findings that we had led me to continue on in this work. And it was an opportunity to allow my graduate students to obtain training that was really transdisciplinary, which is also really exciting to me. And I think one of the real goals here is to help to train students to fulfill the industry needs at the end of the day. So understanding those connections between brain science and industry, and human nutrition, metabolic health out, and how that interfaces with the FDA and their regulatory processes, has been a really big learning experience, not only for myself, but for my students. So there's a very long winded short answer to your question.

No, that's great. So the what you were talking about on the resistance starch is that the seed grant, the GFS seed grant that you're referring to are is more expensive than that. Okay.

Yeah, so the GFS seed grant is kind of the latest development in terms of that collaboration, because we've worked on a few different projects with the same team partners leading into the latest efforts for the seed grant, which the seed grant is really meant to examine the opportunity for making further health claims related to resistant starch for being able to meet the FDA regulatory guidelines for making such health claims and involve a little bit further work from from where we've been, which we were involved very, very recently, just within these last couple of years in helping to get Rs four resistant starch for designated as a fiber. And so that was sort of my introduction into this real regulatory world at the FDA. So I was really fortunate to have some strong partners who obviously had done that quite a bit before. So yeah, the GFS grant is kind of our next steps. So things that we started to talk about while we were doing some shorter term studies, while we're working on that fiber classification, kind of like, well, where are we going to go from here and say, we developed this collaboration together to work on the longer term consumption question and how that impacted cardio metabolic health and in more particularly, our bad cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol, as well as blood pressure. So in terms of FDA regulations, those are the two primary outcomes that they're really in, they're really interested in in terms of being able to make that cardiovascular health claim.

That's fascinating. As I was reading through this, I was thinking back to the work I did over the past. I mean, I, in my past life, I did a lot of work with the food industry and with FDA on exactly what you're talking about here, and would be really interested in understanding how your interaction worked in getting that process in place in the classification. I, the discussions on fiber are ongoing with the food industry, as you probably learned in that activity. And interesting to know where the university fits in those kinds of discussions. And how about that piece work?

Yeah, absolutely. And so as a cereal chemist, you probably actually have a much more in depth knowledge in terms of some of the structure function interfaces when it comes to fiber. So part of our team, not only Dr. Mark Cobb, and myself but Dr. Ody Maningat who works with MGP ingredients and Atchison, Kansas, and he's their vice president for ingredients or research and development and he's their Chief Science Officer. He's a K State alum. And, and you guys probably already know him and then

Also classmates of both John and mine.

So that small world keeps cropping up again and again, doesn't it? Along with Ody or Dr. Maningat I should call him his formal title, but Dr. Paul Seib, who's also emeritus professor of grain science and industry and then Dr. Yong-Cheng Shi has been a part of our team as well. So sort of together with them. We're talking about it You know, things that are going to be beneficial to MGP ingredients that also are possible with the expertise that we have at K State. And certainly I defer to Dr. Seib and Dr. Shi and Dr. Maningat when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of the structure of those starches and how they intersect with human health. And my heart is really, as a clinical researcher, and I work exclusively with human subjects, I really haven't done much with rodent models, although a little bit on collaborative teams. So really kind of understanding how we would translate these questions into projects that are going to meet the requirements of FDA and what they're looking for. So I had the opportunity to sit in on some calls with the FDA with my whole team around and then and then we would be able to meet up afterwards and talk about what the primary concerns from the FDA perspective were based on the existing literature and why in the initial classification for resistant starch, really resistant starch types, one, two and three were indicated as fiber but resistance charge for was not and sort of understanding why the studies that had been done previously, were not enough to make the case for a fiber classification for that particular type of resistance starch. So my job really is working with Dr. Haub, who's the other human clinical researcher on the team to come up with ways that we could design a study that would allow us to assist MGP and grant scientists and industry in translating that work that they're doing based on crystalline structure based on processes that they use to create this resistant starch type that comes really from wheat, which obviously has a huge impact on on the state of Kansas, in more ways than one to translate that to a project that's going to be acceptable, according to the FDA criteria. And I don't know if that answered your question or not, but if not, I'm happy to follow up.

No, that's great. Thank you.

Yeah, sometimes when I'm talking with relatives, or friends, or people I don't even know. And they find out that I'm a food scientist, or cereal chemist or whatever. They'll ask me to de convolute some terms that we use all the time and understand and they don't have a clue. And one of them, you mentioned, I think about the second sense of your when you started speaking and it was a lifestyle. It's an umbrella term, but what are we actually saying? What components go together to make different lifestyle?

So obviously, that's a great question. And I appreciate that so much, because I think as a researcher, we sometimes forget how much we know and how specific our research vernacular is. So when I say lifestyle, I've got something really, really specific in mind. And they're really a compilation of different behaviors, that definitely have strong research support behind them in terms of their ability to impact health outcomes, and in particular, health outcomes that are, you know, non communicable chronic diseases that are really in the top 10 or so of our most prevalent causes of death. And so I am really talking about physical activity or exercise. I'm talking about your dietary intake, talking about sleep, I'm talking about, you know, some of the cancer preventative behaviors, like wearing your seatbelt, not smoking, using your sunscreen. And so if we kind of take a look at those things together, then that's what we're really kind of trying to look at is what are the effects of these behavioral aspects on really important health outcomes? And obviously, I've focused primarily on the nutrition or dietary intake, and then I, I still dabble quite a bit with physical activity and exercise and the interactions that are specific to those two key critical energy balance related lifestyle factors.

Excellent. So there's no single, one single definition and if the researcher developed that, in the best way to utilize it to to get the answers that they hoped there were to get the answers they're testing for.

I suppose. Yeah, it's a great point because I think if you're an expert in one area and not the others, it's important to have a strong team around you who can help understand the other behaviors because there's such an interaction between them. And if you're not accounting for those other behaviors in some way, shape or form, you actually may come up with an answer that's quite a bit different than where the truth actually lies. And so I always think having nutrition and physical activity in or you know, information or expertise on your team is really important, no matter if you're, you know, on one side or the other at that interaction. Great. Thanks.

Sara, if I could follow up, I had a similar question to John, as I reviewed your data and your research, a term kept coming up that occurred to us a couple of times already, and that's cardio metabolic outcomes. I frankly, I thought about that a lot. And I thought I don't know what those are now, I've heard you mentioned them. And I'm getting an idea LDL and HDL levels, blood pressure, could you talk a little bit more and maybe provide a few more concrete examples of what cardio metabolic outcomes are? And maybe that will provide a chance to sort of talk a little bit even more about the interaction of nutrition and exercise in relationship to our cardio? Cardio metabolic?

Absolutely. Another really great question and, and friendly reminder to me that I need to not speak in the way that I speak sometimes, and I apologize for that.

No, no, you don't apologize. I just, you know, for someone who doesn't deal with these issues every day, it's pretty understandable that we come up with specialized languages, right?

We all fall prey to that. It's more efficient.

Yes, that's exactly right. And I know that I'm speaking to a whole bunch of very knowledgeable people. So for me, cardiometabolic is, is kind of, if you speak with young people, today, they have this term, it's probably already out of vogue at the moment called shipping, where you're kind of putting two things together. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And that is, you know, cardiovascular risk factors, and then metabolic risk factors. And so we know that there is a lot of shared risk when you're talking about people who have cardiovascular disease. And people who have diabetes mellitus type, type two diabetes is a one that we're most familiar with. And so cardiometabolic risk factors for me are ones that we would understand from the research literature can help to predict risk for cardiovascular mortality, or cardiovascular morbidity or sort of complications related to cardiovascular disease. And we know that people with type two diabetes mellitus often have stronger, much stronger risk of death from cardiovascular disease related issues as compared to people without type two diabetes mellitus. And so these risk factors that I think about are you know, you go to your doctor and you get your blood test, and you get screened for your total cholesterol, your bad cholesterol, your your healthy cholesterol, your HDL, your triglyceride levels, they'll test your fasting glucose, which definitely is related to not only cardiovascular disease, but also to that diabetes mellitus issue, blood pressure, would be another one that crosses over quite a bit. And then we think about things like body composition, or waist circumference, BMI. And then, you know, really, there's some specialized things that I've looked at a lot with my research, and that is markers of inflammation. And we know, for example, that C reactive protein is a global marker of inflammation. And that inflammation in the body is sort of what connects the risk for a lot of these different chronic diseases, which are big causes of death for us in terms of the United States and other westernized types of countries. And I think the other one that I look at often is things like insulin, and that's probably familiar to most people as it relates to diabetes and you know, controlling blood glucose. So insulin and glucose outcomes would be definitely sitting more primarily in that metabolic world, but certainly crossover into cardiovascular disease too. So the reason I kind of combine those into one term is because there's so much commonality there. So those would be really the primary things that we look at is insulin, glucose, inflammation or oxidative stress, and then our lipids and blood glucose, blood pressure, and other things related to the metabolic syndrome, which again, crossover between cardiovascular disease and And the more metabolic types of disorders or diseases that we have.

One thing and again, reading through some of the background that you've got in your training, the Bs in psychology or BA in psychology has me intrigued to understand where that fits into what you're currently teaching how you're doing, how you approach the work that you're doing.

Now, what a great question. And something that I often talk to my students about. And, you know, that is, my path toward where I am now has been quite circuitous is how I would describe it. I definitely didn't follow that trajectory of, you know, bachelor's to Master's, straight on to PhD and on into my academic career, I've traveled a lot and had a lot of experiences, but my BA in psychology is still foundational to the things that I do, and I think allows me to understand not only the mechanistic or physiological side of the work that I do, but also the behavioral aspects. And so I think, for me, I think about, for example, I used to teach a class called exercise testing and prescription when I was a student within the Department of Kinesiology. And one of the things that I would often mention to my students was that I could write the perfect exercise training program that would, you know, be almost guaranteed to get somebody the results that they wanted. But if they didn't do it, then it was literally worthless. And, you know, similarly, that holds true for a diet, like if I prescribe somebody or write a specific diet for somebody to follow, but it's impossible for them to adhere to, or they're unwilling to, or unable to, for some reason, then it's not worth anything at the end of the day. And so when I was getting my undergraduate degree, I really had in the back of my mind, that I wanted to work with people with eating disorders. And I had some opportunities to do that I was involved in running an eating disorder support group and had some experiences that are somewhat sort of seared into my brain, that made me realize that it was not work that I felt that I could do without really negatively impacting my own mental well being. And I really got involved with some coursework, as well as some research that had to do more with behavioral modification, and specific specifically around cigarette smoking cessation, and had an opportunity to really kind of get into some of the behavioral world around those lifestyle factors that we were talking about earlier. And so that, you know, that is really still a big part of what I do. And it's kind of cool, because I am, I described myself as the jack of all trades and the master of none. And that means that I can walk in both worlds in terms of behavioral research, but more that mechanistic and physiological research as well. And I think it's really important to be able to do that, while still having a strong team of expertise around you. But it allows me to get into some of this real transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary work. And, you know, I love that people have started to get away from silos and reductionist kind of thinking, and more into thinking about systems and thinking about how one thing might impact another because that's kind of the way my brain likes to think. And maybe it has something to do with my background. And Maureen, did that answer your question?

It did. Thank you. Yeah, it's in looking at it. It seems that it would be you call it foundational, and I could see how that would be the case with the kinds of things that you work on and that you're building on, it makes perfect sense. That would be quite a great add to some to it to a technical degree that you're that you ended up with, with your PhD to have something like that to help keep you focused on the for the personal side of things, or the, you know, the human side of making sure that understanding and kinesiology understanding of nutrition, those types of things make sense to people?

Yeah, I think too. I would just add to that, that it's kind of about that translation issue as well. And so the application part, you know, so one of the questions that was sort of drilled into me at an early age in my academic career was, will so what, why do we care about this, and how would we apply it? And that's always I think, a really important background question to have in mind.

Sara, as I look at some of the work that you've done recently, I'm really intrigued by the fact that your research seems to span and perhaps even speak to, maybe you can speak to this more the the interaction between personal behaviors on health and health outcomes, as well as sort of the social systems that we find ourselves in. I mean, I, you know, look at some of these work you've done recently on sugary drinks and the outcome that that has in terms of personal health, but then you've also got the articles about nutritional levels of middle school food, it's different districts around Kansas. And it's recently, a commentary about the amount of activity the schoolchildren have, and how that can have a direct impact on their academic Well being a little bit about both from a standpoint of an expert in health and health outcomes about interaction between those two personal and social systems. And then how do you approach that, as a researcher? Do you? Do you find yourself pulled in those two directions? Or do you feel like it's important for you to be able to say things about both of those?

Wow, as that's quite a question, is great question. And the reality is that you hit on something that's really often on my mind. And that is, you know, this juxtaposition really between, you know, individual or personal level functioning, and, and the systems in which we sit and, and that balance between mechanisms, outcomes, a lot of the work that I do, and, and then the so wet question that I just mentioned before, and I do think it's important to be able to talk about both of those things I so often see in, I'll just say people in general, but in particular, in my students, oftentimes, early on, when they come to their undergraduate career, for example, they might be very, very strongly in the camp, that personal responsibility is, is where everything is that if you are, for example, and well, or if you're overweight or obese, then you really just need to exercise more and eat less, for example. And then I think, throughout their time at K State in one of our degree programs, they're likely to get a little bit more information a little bit more opportunity to, to see the impact that systems or the environment around them can can really have on those things and, and get away from this idea that things are quite so simple. You know, if you've got somebody who's a working adult, maybe they're a single parent, and they've got two or three different jobs, and their priorities are really around, you know, making sure that their kids are clothed and fed and well educated, then they may not really have in terms of their their hierarchy of needs, or in terms of their priorities, their own personal exercise, physical activity or dietary intake, for example, and would you then condemn them for that? Or could it be something that would be potentially understandable, and of course, it's the latter and my students always, inevitably get there. But I think it's it's a really common error that we make not only about others, but also about ourselves, you know, in terms of blaming ourselves for these behaviors or sort of not understanding maybe that impact of the real ability to choose some of these things that we do, and the overall impact of the people around you, the household maybe that you live in the community that you live in your opportunities for access to healthy foods, or healthy physical activity behaviors. And in COVID, it's a really interesting time right now, we actually have got a new study going on right now, where we're working with K State research participants who are now largely working from home. And they are, you know, we've had given them the opportunity to work on their sedentary behavior. Many of us are now you know, in a system, whereby we've changed our work environments, and we become largely quite sedentary and that research data suggests that we have done that and that some people are resilient and they will schedule in all of these different opportunities to get outside and go for walks and walk their dogs and fix healthy meals, etc. But other people are not faring quite as well in the COVID environment. And so this study is really all about, about that, you know, that switch from the way that we normally work. So I do think it's incredibly important to understand not only the individual level factors that predict these really important health outcomes, but also the systems and the larger context in which people work and you know where their priorities might be. And I probably got really sidetracked and answered your question in a way that was not what you intended. But yeah, you've hit on something that's so incredibly important to me. I remember vividly my PhD defense. And I was sitting outside in the hallway waiting for them, the people on my committee to come back out and tell me yes or no, did I pass my doctoral prelims or not? And I remember sitting out in the hallway, and I could just hear laughing, coming from the room, and I was just like, what are they laughing at? What did I say that was so funny, and I was feeling oh, my God, I failed. And I went back in the room. And really what came out of all of that discussion was that I passed, unfortunately, but that they really felt that I needed to find my specialization that I needed to be known for something. And so I've resisted that. I thought about it. I nodded. I agree. And I think that is important, because that's how you get grant funding. That's how you get published. That's how you get recognized as being an expert. But at the same time, there was this poll, as you described in your question, originally, for me, because I definitely think both, or all sides of that are incredibly important. And what you'll see in my Vita is really interesting, back and forth. Sometimes between work, what you'll see is just a reflection of my varied interests, how it's really difficult for me sometimes to just pick one path and go down it. So I've tried very, very hard to pick some lines of research that are things that are interesting, compelling, important, help to develop strong collaborations, etc. And then dabbling in areas where I still have a lot of interest, like, for example, the school foods, menus, dietary quality question that you were talking about before, and oftentimes, honestly, it's my students who lead me down some of these kind of different pathways. And I'm happy for that to happen. Because I did that as a student, I led my major professor down a path that he probably would not have otherwise traveled. And so as long as it's something I'm interesting, interested in, and I think it's important, and it helps me to push one or more of these lines of research forward, then I'm happy to be led, I guess, off the beaten path a little bit, I want students to..

We all struggle with these questions of how should we specialize? How specialized should we be? Should we ignore this interesting path? Should we stay with this one. So I appreciate hearing you reflect on how to try and balance those. And I really appreciate your story about your students, and you know, where they start and where they end up. Because I deal with political discourse. I'm often frustrated by the fact that most people see this as an either or question, our health and our well being as a consequence of what we do period, or our health and well being as a consequence of where we find ourselves in the system period. And of course, both are true. And both can be true and are true at the same time. But that's not that's not an easy answer. Either way isn't, but it's closer to the truth. So I appreciate that it's not an easy way to engage researchers to think about those in tension with each other at the same time.

That was very, very well said. And I could not have said it better, for sure, very succinctly. But exactly where my mind was meandering, I tend to be an external processor. So sometimes I'm thinking as I'm talking, but I love the way that you just worded that.

You should do more podcasts, because I think that's what they're all about is external processing.

That is exactly the case. That is true. Well, and some of the discussion that was just had here, I think points back to the complexity of, you know, I'll say the complexity of the global food system, because that's what I'm representing. But the way all of these things interact with one another is incredibly complex. And you can't, you can't look at things in a silo or from a unit direction, unidirectional perspective, things interact, and there is no black and white to most any of the questions that we have.

Absolutely. Just another little quick anecdote. I most recently, the most recent semester where we got our teaching evaluations, I had a student to reflected that I said sort of too much when I was answering questions, and I sort of laughed while see I said it again, I laughed out loud when I read that evaluation, because I do I rarely give concrete answers to anything. It's always well, there's no black or white, there's no Yes or No, there's no either or. And as scientists, I think we do that because we understand the lack of certainty, and the complexity around the different answers to questions that we might give. But it's often dissatisfying to the audience or to our students as well. So another balance point to be had there.

I think, you know, you've really touched on one of the central dilemmas of five communication, which is, many audiences, for understandable reasons, expect concrete direct answers to guide behavior. And that's not certainly what science is about producing, right. So it's..

We often produce more questions than we do answers.

Exactly exact.

Truly what science is about, that is exactly what it's about, you know, parting comments that you met want to make sure the listener has in mind.

You know, I really don't think when particular food is gonna be the answer to all of our woes. And so I continually see people trying to find one specific thing, I think, kind of reductionist, and I would just encourage people to kind of use what we've just been talking about, and understand the bigger picture of the overall quality of their diet, the overall influences of their lifestyle behaviors, especially right now in this very difficult time that we have going on right now, with the COVID pandemic, and everything else that we've been facing in this year of 2020. And think about the bigger picture and how these critical pieces fit together. And I suppose give yourself some grace would be how I would put it just hang in there. Hopefully, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and things will get better.

And honestly, what you stated was Global Food Systems related. Yeah, it's what I really hope that the listeners pick up and that the faculty that we visit with pick up and learn from this as a Global Food Systems is not a group of singular activities that are happening here. And there. It's just this incredibly complex interaction of things that are touched by I think everything that we do on the K State campus one way or the other. Whether it's humanities, engineering, human nutrition, or agriculture, all of those areas have an impact. And so, you know, when, hopefully, as we work through this, and people pick up and listen to more of these, and one of the outcomes of this I'm hoping to, is to get more faculty members just to talk with one another, learn what each other is doing. And understanding how that computer engineer has a direct impact on nutrition. There are things where those two areas of study, come together and overlap with one another. And those are just two that I pulled off the top of my head, but I think you understand maybe what I'm getting at.

Absolutely 100% agree. And I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. And for all of the great thoughtful questions. Even though I was externally processing a bit, I really, really appreciate it and I agree with you Maureen regarding the potential for collaborations is probably beyond what many of us had imagined they would be. So hopefully, we'll continue to work in teams and across disciplines. And really, I think that's how problems are going to get solved is to get out of our silos and talk to one another, and collaborate with one another in meaningful ways.

I agree this whole conversation is made me think, Hmm, the next time I teach persuasion, how can I hit up Sara and get her expertise and help communication questions that invariably come up in persuasion class? So thanks, thank you for your time and your expertise there. And thanks for that. Shout out for just a little bit of grace. I think we that's a great way to go in this pandemic, when so many things are uncertain. So thank you for that.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we discuss one professor's pure joy in impacting the community by keeping food safe. Dr. Valentina Trinetta's research focuses on understanding the ecology of foodborne pathogens and identifying microbial entry routes into the food supply chain. Dr. Trinetta also works on the development and implementation of antimicrobial intervention strategies to reduce and control foodborne pathogens in different commodities.

Transcript:

The Power of Passion: The next generation of researchers with Dr. Valentina Trinetta, assistant professor in animal science and industry

We are in a phase where the food system has become so complex that we cannot not consider it all the part of this chain or this system.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Kansas State University's podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast we visit with Dr. Valentina Tonetta. Dr. Trinetta has passion for understanding ways to keep food safe is outpaced only by her passion for teaching. Her research focus is on understanding foodborne pathogens ecology and identifying microbial entry routes into the farm for food supply chain. Dr. Trinetta also works on the development and implementation of anti microbial intervention strategies to reduce and control foodborne pathogens in commodities. Dr. Trinetta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry at Kansas State. She carries a BS in Food Biotechnology from the University of Pisa Italy, a master's in Genetics, Biotechnology for food safety from the University of Naples, Italy, and a PhD in food science and technology from the University of Milan, Italy. Dr. Valentina Fernando, we want to welcome you to the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. Before we get started, in our discussion today, I would like to ask you to visit with us a bit about some of your background and how you got to become so interested in the area that you work in today.

Thank you for the invitation. As you probably understand from my accent, I am Italian. I was thinking when I was a child that I wanted to be a medical doctor. But I realize that I'm very afraid of blood and needles. And so I decided to become a doctor of food. So since my start in the university, all my degrees are in Food Science. My masters and my PhD are in Food Science. And slowly I got very interested in food safety. I spent part of my PhD at Penn State University and really fell in love with research and the opportunity that I could see at Penn State and in general, doing your research in the United States. Therefore I continue with a postdoc at Purdue. And before starting my position at Kansas State in 2016, I worked for a corporation a chemical company Ecolab in Minneapolis, and in all my experience I work with different commodity but always in food safety and trying to control them transfer foodborne pathogens in the food supply chain. Since 2016, I moved to Manhattan, Kansas, with my family. And I am an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry. And I'm also a faculty of the Food Science Institute. I have a heavy load of teaching Food Microbiology and then all the rest of my appointment is research.

Very interesting. I see you had mentioned that you are in the Department of Animal Science and Industry. But it looks to me from looking at your areas of expertise in the studies that you've obviously done before you came to K State. You got interested in capabilities for reaching beyond just the animal science area? Is that correct?

Yes, exactly. I'm working a lot on product safety. And even if I am part of the Animal Sciences and Industry department being part of the Food Sciences Institute is key, because I'm fortunate enough to be connected with the multicultural department of Kansas state and with some faculty in Olathe campus, and they're pretty strong in Urban Food System. And the last three years, we have been pretty successful on working on produce safety. In Kansas and Missouri, we do have several projects, looking at improving shelf life and quality of berries, trying to help the Kansas producer with transportation and ensuring quality of these small crops, we recently got a bigger grant on sponsored by USDA NIFA, to help always grower in Kansas semi story to make sure their water that they use for crop production is a safe. And so this has given me a little bit of versatility of not always working with the same type of commodity, but working with different people, different reality, different food matrices, and trying to apply the same type of mental approach, but in a different way. Because the situation and the production of produce is completely different than animal food.

So help me out a little bit I people as I talk to people or students and talk about the supply chain, and now they're starting to hear people are starting to hear about the supply chain is that applies to the COVID vaccine. How would you define the supply chain? What's the good definition for that that we could use? Or I could use as a starting point in talking to two people or students?

So I think I would and this is also based on what in my previous job that represented the supply chain for the corporation or for the company. So I always refer to that situation, at least in my mind and to talk with students, I think we can define production chain from farm to fork, but I would define supply chain all those operations that transport the product. So when I talk about supply chain, I always refer to the part that goes towards retailer when the finished product is produced and there needs to reach the consumer they. Regarding your question about COVID vaccine, I was fortunate enough that to be involved in a recent grant getting sponsored by USDA NIFA was a emergency call. And we put together a set of experts from Kansas State University. And since the strength of the Food Sciences Institute and animal science is the ability to work in the food wings at the BRI we partner with a virologist at the vet school and we are going to see all the parameter that can in the production part of animal food that can influence the spread of COVID-19. So we are excited we started officially this project in September. We are still at the BSL two level working with surrogate we are ready to start with the BSL three virus at the BRI in January. We are going to evaluate air flow different surfaces, foot contact, not foot contact and understand how the food industry can use the tool that we already have as disinfection and sanitation to try to overcome the spread of COVID.

Valentina, I want to learn more about this research regarding COVID-19. And that you're working on. But before we leave this concept of the production chain from farm to fork, I wanted to follow up on Jon's question a little bit. I think that that's a very interesting and informative way to distinguish the supply chain from the production chain. I, as I listened to you talk about, for example, the work that you're doing with K State Olathe, and water in the urban food system, I was reminded that, at least it seems to me that food safety really emphasizes that food systems are a system and a very complex system. I mean, I think about how contamination with water can end up contaminating crops and end up contaminating a salad that ends up in a restaurant somewhere. So what I'm getting at is, is it really a chain? Or is it something even more complex than a chain that you as a food safety scientists have to think about in terms of like larger, complex interactions?

I think it's more complex solving, as compared to the mere definition of a chain. And I'm gonna give you another example of another type of research that I'm doing that seems not connected, but I think it is. So I am working on a lot in feed safety. I'm working with this swine group in the animal science department. Because I came across this very problematic stereotype of salmonella that recently has been seen pretty often in United States at the retail level or production level. So in piece of pork meat, we had several outbreaks with these salmonella. And so I was reading several article and I came across a work that some professor from the vet school did on African swine fever, demonstrating that one of the way to turn off transmission of this virus is through feed, and I start researching about these salmonella serotype. And there are a lot of entities such in Canada and North Europe that did preliminary study. And they found a lot of the stereotype in our feed and feed meal. So I was fortunate enough to partner with this swine group at Kansas State and is almost four years there. We are researching the presence of the serotype from feed. Now we did the feed, we are investigating the farm. And they recently got a GFS a seed grant through the Global Food System Initiative, where we are gonna understand if we've lived pig, if they drink or they eat or they ingest somehow this pathogen if they keep it inside their body and then at slaughter, there is still the partition. And so like this pathogen can go at retail level. So what I'm trying to say is that, that I don't think it's a matter of water meat to anymore I think we are in a phase where the food system has become so complex that we cannot not consider it all the part of this chain or this system. So it's very fascinating for me also investigating what we call pre harvest beside harvest. And I think I came to this consideration because working at Ecolab that is a chemical company and see all the work that they do with the food industry and with their client on giving information and giving tools for cleaning and disinfection. I am pretty comfortable with saying that the industry as all the metal the potential to produce safe food. I think we under look some points that are coming before the production.

Right? Right. That's a wonderful example and exactly what I was getting at. And it's a great example not just because of your point of looking at a different point in the food system, but also because it required some interdisciplinary outreach and connection on your part that I would assume is absolutely vital. Now in tackling those complex interaction,

I we had, we had working with a historian, because that was the migration of these foodborne pathogen from Europe to United States until 15 years ago, this particular serotype of salmonella was never seen in the United States on log in. And so we are trying to understand if there was a change in the in how this one industry worked, that allow the transition the migration of these microorganisms from Europe to United States. And so we have a KPI in the history department that is helping with this research. So has been very interesting also for that.

Absolutely no, that is that is even more interdisciplinary than I realized. That's great. Thank you.

And even more complicated, because if it's coming from Europe, and then goes into another complete, I guess web if you want, or set of connections. So it's not not just finding the particular serotype here and tracing it down. How'd it go make it to the US to begin with. And then since it's gotten in the US, that's another set of problems. So it appears that it keeps the idea of mitigating the problem as one of the potential focuses of the research. Beyond just figuring out now it's here we have this problem. How do we get rid of it? How do we control it?

I love the fact that you're working with somebody in the history department. I know that you've heard my spiel before Valentina, but just the critical importance of bringing in various focused ideas on how to tackle big problems is so important. And sometimes we forget about the impact of what the humanities brings to some of these questions. I think that's wonderful.

Sometimes is difficult to make this connection. So the Global Food System Initiative, really gave me the possibility to stretch my mind a little bit and say, Okay, this is the occasion where I can try to truly do a multi or interdisciplinary project. So I contacted the professor from these departments.

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. You know, I'm curious, going back to the discussion that you provided a bit on the research you're doing in livestock processing facilities, where do you see the information you develop is going to be critically important. But I'm seeing that we are hopefully going to watch this COVID issue go away over the next year? Where do you see some of that information and work that you're developing now sit after this as this part of our lives is closed up? You know, once we get our hands around COVID? Are there going to be outcomes of that that will be impacting the industry long term and how they do the work in those facilities? Or is it something that will be shelved until the next time we have something like that happen?

So my hope is that what we produce is gonna be relevant for COVID-19, but also for how to better mitigate if we have another problem of this type. I think our approach is that since we are not we did not propose the development of new cleaning or disinfectant tool, we are going to work with what the industry is already using. And we did it on purpose because we know that sometimes the adoption of a new system becomes too difficult for the food industry. So we part we start with the advantage of proposing to the industry what they already know this step forward. The ease that we are gonna try to combine factor and parameter that sometimes been looking a separate way that can be pH or concentrate or temperature, and we are going to try to combine them and see and see a way to enhance the capability of these chemical compounds against COVID. Now, I think all our study will be applicable to other type of pathogen and viruses. Also, because unfortunately, we are seeing an increase of antimicrobial resistance. So, the fact that we are going to offer also results on the physiology of the virus and what is happening when the virus is treated with this compound can be useful if we see in a rise of salmonella, multi resistance pathogen in the poultry industry, understand and take the results that we are going to produce from this grant. So I do not see it only for COVID-19. I see it as the way to explore with the tool that we have now, but enhance and improve if something unexpected is gonna happen again, to make our food safe.

Is it possible that contamination by other microorganisms, salmonella, for example, work could actually create a micro environment that would facilitate the length of life of COVID 19?

So it's something that we cannot disclose, because I saw a lot of study where there is a symbiotic relationship between viruses and bacteria. And an example of that is not a virus, for example. But I think COVID is so new, that we do not have that knowledge yet, but definitely think that there is an interaction. Thank you.

Don't question makes me think of another that's much more simplistic, and it will but will show my lack of rudimentary knowledge and biology. But I was I'm struck by the fact that Valentina, you usually work with bacteria like listeria, E coli, salmonella, and now but I mean, as you as you referenced in some earlier discussion, as well as this project, regarding COVID, you're being brought in to think about viruses in the way that they're transmitting. And under what conditions is that? Is that a relatively easy jump for someone like yourself, who's usually working with different kinds of bacterial pathogens instead of viruses? Or do you just provide different kinds of expertise to the project? How does? How does that translation work?

Yeah, so I'm not a virologist, and bacteria and virus are completely different. So we made sure we had the virologist in the team. I think we got this grant, because we brought in a different perspective of how the food industry work, what they are using for clean sanitation, how food products are produced, what they need to do the in the operator and the employer in order to producing keep the environment and the products safe. So we brought in all this knowledge, that is definitely definitely applicable to virus. Now we needed the virology is because the mode of action and how to cultivate and how to enumerate and recover the virus is completely different as compared to bacteria. So I think is a good example of synergistic activity. And all of us bring a different perspective. Right?

No, I agree. And as I hear you talk about that synergy it, it just makes me think about how how interesting it is that the safety of the workers in these facilities is directly related to or connected to the safety of the food and the way that it's pretty I don't know, maybe it's, it's not that revolutionary of an idea and for food safety, like yourself, I'm sure it's not. But I don't think I would have automatically put those two kinds of risks together as as interacting and influencing one another.

Actually, the majority of foodborne illnesses that we have is because of hygiene, or poor hygiene of worker or wrong way to handle food. So they are very much related.

They very are connected. Right,

Does the neurologist that you're working with, Can you I guess the term would be carry a culture of, of COVID? Is there a way to keep it alive for an extended period of time outside a system that that has the cells that it would normally populate?

Yes, because we will, we are working on these trying to keep the virus alive for longer because our study is going to be over time at a different temperature. And we are going to understand the survivability of the virus for example, on Stainless steal at refrigerated temperature for one week. But we have been reading also that there is a group that was able to recover a COVID on a piece of meat to when this piece of meat was frozen for at least two weeks. So we do have some evidence that the virus can survive.

Yeah, it's ironic that you should be investigating it living longer, rather than shorter, even a good experimental reason.

Volunteer, I really look forward to hearing the results of that research, as I'm sure many people will be very interested, you know, in Kansas and around the world. But I haven't I have a completely different line of questioning for you. In the materials to prepare for today. We were given some information about some of your social media posts. And I have to say I had a lot of fun looking at your labs Twitter account. And I wonder what's going on with that spinach that you posted? Can you explain a little bit about the experimentation that's being done on the color of this spinach?

Yeah, so I need to say that all my graduate students and undergraduate students are helping me a lot to be active on social media. And after I'm going to explain you about the spinach, I want to tell you what I had my undergraduate student do for food, food micro but so this project of the spinach is funded by KDA. So is really to help increase the production of safe products in Kansas, a lot of time, especially in the last two years, I think all of you heard about outbreak related to lead to and leafy green. So we also know that consumer one grass organic, natural way to preserve their food, they don't like the idea of adding a lot of chemicals. This step of washing leafing leafy green spinach salad is key to prevent illnesses. The problem with washing products that are so delicate is that they lose color. They become mushy, they short term very much the shelf life. We have in the industry, a lot of chemical sanitizer that are very effective against E coli or salmonella, but they are so effective, that they kind of bleach or discolor the product and therefore cannot be used. So, what we are trying to do in this research is to test some natural compounds that are essential oil and encapsulate them in water solution in a motion and then in using them in water solution and understand if there is an effect against E coli and if the parameter of quality Keep such as color, we want to try to imitate the small producer of Kansas. This is why my student is working, relatively small batch. But since we need a lot of replication, then you saw all the picture of spinach laying down on the in the hood, right? Right. Yes. Yeah. So this plant is that of this peanut are inoculated with the pathogen. And then we tried the different antimicrobial intervention for different time and different concentration. And when we see that one particular treatment is effective than the other part of experiment is to double check, none of the quality parameters are compromised.

Yeah.

And do you determine the color instrumentalist? Or do you go to a some kind of visual human assessment.

So we do both, we like to record our parameter with the cement with a calorimeter, I think is more objective. But we also take picture of your time of the product. And like when we see maybe mold, or some defects, that's also a visual quality parameter that we can use to assess the shelf life of the product. In collaboration, we will later we are able to measure respiration, antioxidant, a lot of a lot of parameters that contribute to the quality of produce.

So you didn't have to go out and establish what the quality characteristics for good versus poor spinach. Were you had those accessible to you?

Yes, yes. So there are established now we didn't need to go out and understand they're established. We did a similar work with berries. And in particular, we work with strawberries, and was very much the same. Apparently, there is a certain level of red, and that indicated the ripeness. And that's what is prepare by consumer. So is this done?

Add that color is labile to, to the whatever it's encountering and processing. So it will bleach?

Is yeah, the green, the green, the chlorophyll is very sensitive. So for example, all the last loose all this peanuts, or the colleagues of this tuber can be very much affected.

Okay. Valentina, I find that really fascinating and really hopeful on the low levels. I mean, you know, it's an experiment, I'm sure it will take time before you know exactly what works and what doesn't. But the idea that a natural oil might have the same kind of effectiveness but not caused the damage to the food. That seems really brilliant. I hope it works. But I'm also really impressed that KDA is funding this research that obviously could help local growers in Kansas but could also be applied, I would assume nationwide as well, correct?

Yes. And I think this is another example of my research, that is multidisciplinary, because my expertise is in food microbiology and safety. So I know how to control count characterize pathogen, but I am working with a chemist that knows how to encapsulate essential oil and make a motion and deliver these, these oil. I should say that these are ready the second proposal that KDA found us the first one was on a novelty packaging material. And I think Katie in the state of Kansas as shown a lot of interests and being open minded in trying to help these the the products grower and understand that we the products grown in Kansas should also start reaching outside Kansas so not produced just to say satisfy the Kansan, but also start to expand their businesses.

Wonderful.

I had an interesting discussion with a with another researcher just yesterday, actually, that some of this, some of this discussion worked into it and in developing more potential for work in the, in the rural parts of Kansas. And a lot of it did focus back on smaller farmers being able to produce produce specialty crops. As with the the commodity crops, that really does kind of push people out, as the farms get larger, and the commodities take over more space, they're less people that are living in these areas, and in the idea of trying to populate and grow those regions. The idea of the smaller farmers and these specialty crops has been, I think, coming more to the forefront with KDA.

I agree, this is why we were trying to offer them a solution for transportation or extension of shelf life. Because as you, as you say, Kansas is big. And there are some areas that are rural, we need a lot of time to reach those areas. So I think the point where we can now help and improve is transportation and storage.

Yeah, I've got a couple of questions that aren't associated with one another at all. But one of them, I'll go back to your social media discussion that we had. And I thought it was interesting that you brought that up, Colene, because that was one of the questions that I had here. But what I'd like to know is, you clearly have a good handle on how to get information out. And man, it's fun. And it's interesting. Have you seen feedback on how impactful that is? Do you have a good feel for how well that's being utilized or looked at?

I don't think so. I mean, every year, or every semester, I'm growing my followers, and I'm getting more interest among K State students. So I know that I mean, actually, I know that, for example, we have been engaging in a lot of students from biology that do microbiology as a major, so I can kind of measure my impact at university level. But I wouldn't be able to measure in a more broad way. But what we have been doing is that we have been presenting all the activity that I put in social media, and I use with within the classroom, at the International annual meeting over food safety and microbiology. So that one was a broader way to impact colleague and students.

So at this point, would it be safe to say that the directionality of your interaction with the people out there that might be the ultimate end users of this knowledge? It is pretty much one directional at this point, they're not coming back to you. And asking questions or the like.

No, we are not there yet. I will keep going and see if I can get there.

Well, Valentina as the comms scholar in the room, I have to come to your defense and say that, you know, different, different communicators have different audiences. And it's, it seems pretty clear to me that by looking at your Twitter feed, your audience is clearly students and potential science students at Kansas State and beyond. I mean, that I get from your Twitter feed is that food safety research is fun. And I don't know if you could have a more important message for bringing new and diverse students into science and food safety research. I mean, I just think it's outstanding. And, you know, sure, we want the great information that you're learning to get out to Public that will use it. But I think that there's another way to think about the effectiveness of your communication, and that's in bringing a new generation of people into food safety research.

That's very true.

Yeah, thank you for this perspective.

It's pretty clear that your students have fun. I wonder, you know, what are you doing that makes it so fun for your students? Do you attribute that to sort of like your own enjoyment in the research or did you have a colleague or a past faculty or a past mentor who sort of encouraged you to think about approaching your lab and your interactions with students in a particular way.

I think is both, I think that definitely I am passionate. And because during my training, I felt this passion from my advisor. And that's what led me to become a professor, I definitely want to give the same to my students. So when I communicate or when I'm explaining concept, I'm always trying to making engaging or trying to relate them to real life for daily routine. I'm I also know because I work in the lab a lot that if you do not have fun, you, you are not productive. Not too much fun, but just a little bit of fun. So I think a relax and nice environment is, is key to good productivity. I'm also and this is what I did during while I'm teaching, I also know that sitting and listening for 15 minutes to the instructor, sometimes is difficult. So I add some friend in the area of food safety and microbiology that are also professor in other university that are very creative. And this person play the ukulele and telling the study of bacteria with this ukulele. So now I play piano, but I cannot bring my piano in the class or I don't want I don't feel like I can engage with singing. So I have been reading about some publication and they were saying that, okay, you are not a musician, you are not a singer, but to try to engage them with one of your other skills. And so when I was in high school, and even in elementary school, I was acting. And so that's kind of what I make them do. Sometimes we try to be the bacteria that are injured, or stressed. Or some other time, I make them write a poem. And then they needed to tell them allow and one of them even did the rap on Twitter, there are a lot of playable games, because I think for kind of, everybody's interesting to be a detective. So I'm making them detect the bacteria that made a certain person sick, or the food that is potluck made time people ill. So I'm trying to, to make it a little bit different. Because I know that if I do present them all the time, the 15 minutes lecture, I might lose them on the way I do have a lot of 15 minutes lecture, but then I'm trying to give them a break with these activities.

Back in the gym, dark past when I was in graduate school, a fellow graduate students in the same lab, wrote an anthem to our particular discipline to green science called Green scientists. And it got so popular that it was actually sung in a national meeting.

I remember that clearly.

Yes, yes. But you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You can't hide behind the podium.

But Valentina to that, I mean, in in in an encapsulated way, that's that's the true dimension of interdisciplinary and you're, when you're talking about writing poems, I'm thinking about last year, to try and pull the humanities and the understanding of some of that thing into global food systems. On World Food Day, we had a poetry contest. And I'm thinking, you know, most of the people that were that that got involved in that were of the English department of the humanities areas. Wouldn't it be just great to pull in some of the folks that you have in it and then maybe team them up with somebody out of the English department and have them work together on coming up with something that's interesting and fun.

That would be fun.

Valentina, I have to say that you give me a lot to think about as I prepare for the next semester. I mean, John's got a great point, you know, you can't be afraid to put yourself out there. But I do think a lot of faculty members, they hesitate to try to innovate in the classroom, because they don't see it as their strength. But their mentor gave you a great lesson. Think about other things other than being a scientist or being a professor that you do, and use those to encourage different ways of learning and thinking, I think that's really inspirational. Thanks for that. Yeah.

No, I don't think so I just wanted to make sure that the message that comes out is that I am passionate on my work, because I had great advisor and teacher, that gave me the desire to give the same passion to the student, and that all the work that I do, even if it's in my contribution is in food, microbiology, I'm having a broader impact, because I'm working with different people. And my research is multidisciplinary, because I'm convinced that the food system is complex, and every lead player is important to overseeing look at the problem.

Very good. You're singing my song out there, Valentina.

I've been learning stuff left and right here. This is great sad, clicky.

But you make me want to be a food scientist. Thank you. So find future scientists to send to you keep doing great work.

Thank you so much. All right.

Well, thank you all for your time today. And Valentina, thank you so much for coming on. I think this was just a fun discussion and all of us learned so many things, and not all things that we expected to be hearing today. So this was this was great. Thank you. Very true.

Thank you again for the invitation.

Everybody have a wonderful, wonderful holiday and hopefully get a little rest over the break.

Happy holidays. Goodbye, everyone. Holidays. Bye bye. Bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Vaishali Sharda, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University. Her research focuses on the complex dynamics of food-energy-water systems. Vaishali's modeling is based on farm management scenarios and integrates agro-hydrologic models and climate data. This research couples human activity and natural systems with applications in sustainable agriculture, water resources management and applied hydrology with particular interest in the Ogallala Aquifer and farming in the Great Plains.

Transcript:

Tackling the dynamics of food-energy-water systems with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering

So, you know, when I tell people that I'm a modeler, they're like, you know, she sits in front of a computer and punches numbers and you know, but then there's that part of it where you translate that information into tools that the stakeholders can use. And that to me, is, is a really important component.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast, we will visit with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, a small but mighty advocate for tackling the question of climate, water availability and crop management in today's challenging environment. Dr. Sharda's main area of study deals with modeling based on farm management scenarios, integrating agro-hydrologic models and climate data. This research couples human activity and natural systems with applications in sustainable agriculture, water resources management, and applied hydrology with particular interest in the Ogallala Aquifer and farming in the Great Plains. Dr. Vaishali Sharda is an Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Kansas State University. Sharda carries a BS and MS in Agricultural Engineering and Farm Power and Machinery respectively from Punjab Agricultural University, and a PhD from Auburn University in Biosystems Engineering. I would like to welcome you, Dr. Vaishali Sharda to the podcast today, we would like to learn a little bit more about your background, about who you are, what got you interested in what you're doing, maybe how you got to K State, and then we'll open this up for a good discussion with Dr. Lind and Dr. Faubion. So would you like to start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Uh, first of all, I like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity. I definitely appreciate it. Talking about my background. So I'm originally from India. I did my undergraduate and my master's in Agricultural Engineering from Punjab Agricultural University in Punjab, which is not India, and I applied for my master's in Agricultural Engineering or Water Resources in 2001. And then September 11 happened and I did not get a visa to come to the United States. So then, you know, life happens, I got married, had a daughter and then my husband applied for a PhD and he got admission at Auburn University. So we all came together to Auburn. I had already given my GRE and my Teufel with the plan that I would also start my PhD once we are in the United States. So and that is what happened. I started my PhD at Auburn as well. I changed my field a little bit. I used to work more in farm machinery, but then I moved on to the Water Resources and Agricultural Water became more of my research area. After finishing my PhD at Auburn in 2012. I moved to Washington State University on a postdoc opportunity which was at a research station in Prosser which is in Yakima Valley, and I used to work with a unit called Ag Weather net. So they are basically a network of agriculture of weather stations. And but the director there was very involved with crop modeling. So that's how I started using crop models extensively for water resources management. I worked there for about a year and a half and that's when my husband got his faculty position at K State. And we moved from Washington State to Manhattan and I was still working remotely for Ag Weather Net for quite some time after we moved to Manhattan And as it is with mostly with, you know, dual career professionals at one place, it is not easy to get employed at the same Institute. So we kind of worked around that for a little bit, I worked at University of Nebraska Lincoln for about two years at their water center. And I was part of the Ogallala Water Cap, which is a USDA NIFA funded project. And we looked extensively at integrating agricultural models, hydrologic models, economic models, and using climate information to inform these disintegration. So I worked both in Nebraska and Kansas as part of this project. And while I was still working at UNL, I got a, I got this assistant professor position here at K State, which tied up really well since I was already working both in Kansas, and Nebraska. So it was an easy transition for me. And so I started working part time at K State. And then in fall 2019, I started my tenure track position at BAE and I have continued my work on integrating crop models and hydrologic models, I have gained more knowledge about economic models and a big appreciation of the socio economic impact of everything that we do as engineers, as water resource managers. So I'm incorporating more of that into my research. And that is how this idea about this proposal, the Global Foods Seed Grant that we got came up to kind of integrate the information, and, you know, have that bridge between the two disciplines. So that's how it happened. That's a brief introduction.

No, that's very good. Thank you so much. It gives us a good understanding of how you got to where you are today. And clearly, there's a good solid background in the in the research area in the Great Plains, in areas where water is critical to to the agricultural business side of things, I was looking at some of the information that was provided on your background and work and one of the questions that I had is, you talked about just a minute ago about the social socio economic interface there. How do you get the information that you're working on to the user? Or how do you make that impact? Either the grower or the, you know, those folks that are being directly impacted by the the information that you're developing?

Yes, thank you for that question. Maureen, I think we rely heavily on the extension component of the land grant system. So while working at Washington State and even you are now and that case, day two, we have always had the opportunity to work with Extension agents, whether those are county agents, because they actually connect really well with the producers. Now, I have been to a lot of meetings with that, where I have directly interacted with producers, and somehow they place their trust in in the extension component of all their all the land grad schools. So I think it is a great connection. And working in the climate change climate variability area. Initially, I think we you know, as a graduate student, I realized that producers have their mindset. And they have their beliefs, which has come from many, many years of experience. And they don't like when a scientist who's probably half their age comes and challenges it, and tries to tell them that you should not be doing a certain thing this way, rather doing it my way. So that is, I think, where the extension people come in really helpful because they know the connection, they know the ways and they have that capability to translate your very technical information into turns where producers understand it and appreciate it and are perceptive of it. So I think I would say that extension plays a big role. And at K State at the Southwest Research and Extension Center in Garden City, Dr. Jonathan Aguilar is he's a great asset to all the work that we do and he helps to connect our work to the farmers there. We can we conduct field days of a lot of producers in the region come and listen to what is being done what is new and especially specifically in irrigation research, and and they pay attention. And they are very open to adopting new technologies or ways to conserve water to sustain the life of the Ogallala Aquifer specifically.

If I can follow up on that Maureen, I really appreciate the question. I've had it on my list too. And I, you know, I take your point about some voices, just having more resonance with the farm audiences than others. And everything in the social scientific literature about diffusion of innovations would indicate that, you know, you're absolutely right, you, you talk to the people who are closest and already have entrusted the producers. But I have to tell you that as I read your piece on ideal irrigation rates in Texas, High Plains with soybeans, I grew up on Nebraska farm on a corn and soybean farm. I know what a you know, what a visceral decision it is, whether to irrigator on or not. And as I read that piece, I thought, wow, this is so immediate, to the decision making of every farmer with a center pivot in now, obviously, that was in a particular context. And part of the argument of the article is, it's going to vary by every context. But what I'm getting at is, I don't quite want to let you off the hook. Surely, there's a way that you can go about your research, which provides information that's really useful and immediate to farmers. And it seems to me that that's what you're doing in your research. Did you ever or do you think about the end user when you're designing your questions and designing your research?

Right, right. And we totally do. And that's where decision support tools come into picture as well, you know, you get there. I mean, farmers are one of the smartest people that are out there, you know, you tell them that this is the reason behind doing something that they're we're asking them to do or we're recommending, they'll listen to you. And that's where decision support tools come into picture where you give them an app, for example, with I have a farmer in Nebraska, who we worked with extensively and Ogallala water cap, and he told me about a time that he has 42 apps on his phone that he uses to kind of to manage. And I mean, given that his farm is huge, he has a huge operation, and you know, all kinds of different enterprises. But this is where I think you know, if you want to, I know the context of your question. So decision support tools, and designing them in a way that they're appealing. And that they're user friendly, the interface is not overwhelming. So that you know, you just punch in simple numbers, and we can give you a suggestion of when to irrigate, you know what your soil moisture is like you from right from, say feeling the soil, to relying on the soil moisture sensor data, and then inputting those parameters and then coming up with an irrigation strategy. So that is partially what we talked about in that paper that you're referring to the soybean study in Texas High Plains, there is another paper that I'm currently working on for Kansas, it's for GMD three, and I work with Nathan Hendrick. So we're an Ag Econ. And so, you know, we are trying to look at how can we save water while not compromising on yield? Essentially, that is the main question that is out there. And that is what the farmer wants. They do want.

Yeah, that is the holy grail.

Right, right, you know, they do want to save water and sustain the life of aquifer. I have met with farmers from western Kansas and eastern Colorado, who said on your face that they know that they're if their grant kids choose to farm, they might not have the water that they have now on the farm. So they want to make mends to their current practices, but it's a financial decision at the end of the day, you know, they do not want to give up on their bread and butter. So we have to come up with smart and intelligent ways to reach the farmer so that they listen to us and they adopt the strategies that can help them.

Is this a strategy that has better outcomes or more outcomes or more efficient if the people that adopt these, these changes or these methods are contiguous, or doesn't matter that they might be isolated with other you know, other producers in between?

That was something you know, that's a great idea and we haven't looked at it from that point of view. But I would say that, you know, if it's, if the strategies or if they irrigation, different irrigation management scenarios are adopted, as you know, not not as a separate entity, but more more on speed given spatial scale, that they might be more effective. Yeah.

My wife grew up on a farm in South Central Kansas. And there were clearly thought and opinion leaders out in the field, that a lot of different producers that would look to them, and in some cases may make them. So I just wondered if that apply, in this case, to my will? Or on the other hand, there were people that no matter what they did, everybody else was going to do the opposite.

And, you know, I mean, there's that, obviously, I've heard it so many times, that people are farmers turn on their center pivots, when they see their neighbor is irrigating. And I mean, I agree that used to happen. But I think especially in areas where water is scarce, like invest in cancers, people are getting smarter about it, you know, nobody turns on their central pivot because their neighbor is, or at least that's my experience to the farmers that I have talked to, don't do that anymore. So

So if all of this research, and it's it's translation, then out into the productions, producers field is wildly successful beyond your wildest imaginings, what would we what would we see what would the outcomes be that you could look at, or point to say.

Well, the long term outcome would be that we would be able to extend the life of our aquifers, or, you know, make it sustainable long term, especially given the future impact of the changing climate and keeping that in mind. So I think the long term significant effect of this research would be definitely to increase the life of our water resources.

Great. And perhaps more than more next generation is a visual staying on the farm of meaning successful.

And, you know, there's another one of my graduate students spent this summer in Garden City. And what we are trying to do now is, as part of the Ogallala watershed, let me backtrack a little bit, what we did was based on the information that we have, from the environmental data, which is your weather data, and then you know, in field observations of plan data, you know, growth in season growth, metrics, like Leaf Area Index, biomass during the season of the crop that you're growing. So based on that, we calibrated our models, and then we studied the irrigation impact. What we are trying to do now is having more infield data, for example, data from soil sensors, data from drones that tells you about crop stress, and disease, and then combination of satellite data. And we have aerial data from a manned aircraft. And they are collecting data and sending those images to us. So you know, combination of all this data, so it's more like a machine learning, artificial intelligence, kind of, so you have your environmental data, you have your infield, in season data, and then you combine everything together to make your decision, I think more informed.

Right as robust as possible.

As robust as possible. So that is the next step that we are taking to hopefully make our models even better. So the results that we have from the calibrated models from what work I have done in the past are great. And the farmers that have adapted those irrigation strategy. So a combination of how much water is available in the ground. So we call it plant available water, and how frequently do you irrigate? That's called irrigation frequency. So the combination of the two is what we were using so far. But with this data set, I think we can add a layer of information to the models.

Great.

And I think that would be really interesting to look at. So he's my grad student that's right now working on it, and I look forward to seeing his results. That how are they better? Hopefully better And then what we already have?

Well, you know, I, I hear you say that it's the extension folks that get out and get face to face with producers and sort of make the sale, if you will. Do you feel like you're an advocate? Do you enjoy that process as well? Or is it just a set is that an end of business that you're just not comfortable with, because you sound like a spectacular advocate.

I completely enjoy it. You know, and I think I have come a long way from being a grad student at Auburn to I just love talking to people. So you know, and it's so it's enlightening to you know, hear other people talk about their experiences. And I have no doubt that the farmer who has worked all his life in a field knows more about, you know, the entire management package of growing a crop than I do. But we are all learning from each other. So I really, really appreciate that part of the job, though, I did not get to do much of it this year. But you know, that's something I completely enjoy. And I love when people challenge your science, you know, I love to tell this story that when I was a grad student at Auburn, I went to present my research to farmers and extension agents in a extension meeting. And here is this, you know, five feet tall girl from India, who is new in the country and talking to a group of farmers and extension agents and telling them that climate change is happening. And it's anthropogenic, and we are causing it we humans are causing it, and how it impacts the weather, the day to day weather, as well as what impact does it have on our border availability. And after the present, after my presentation was over, I would say good 65-70 year old, tall, well built farmer approaches me and tells me whatever you presented is all wrong. And you know, climate change is it's been happening forever. We are not causing it. It's a natural phenomena. It's written in the Bible. And you know, and I just gave that my PhD advisor was standing behind me and I kind of gave him a look. And he was like, he gave me the look that you have to handle it. This is part of the training. So I told him, I was like, I respectfully disagree. In my mind, my faith and my science, they run parallel, they cannot merge. So you know, but I, you know, that's part of the job that teaches you so many things and you learn how to how to handle and how to defend your science. So yeah,

As someone who teaches communication, I of course, love that story. I assume that that kind of experience was unique to your extension, training and background. I just wonder how many other scientists would be benefited by having that kind of experience of interacting with the public to present their findings?

Yeah, I completely agree. It's enlightening, you know, you, this is something that you cannot learn by doing research in your lab setting, you know, until and unless. So, you know, when I tell people that I'm a modeler, they're like, you know, she sits in front of a computer and punches numbers, and you know, but then there's that part of it, where you translate that information into tools that the stakeholders can use, and that to me, is, is a really important component. And I think, you know, growing my father has spent all his life in extension, he retired as the additional Director General of extension in Indian Council of agricultural research, which is parallel to USDA here. I should say that I grew up in the middle of it and you know, I grew up hearing about farmers and you know, how they're how research translates into field practices in the end, and that's where it should end. I mean, I love this part of the job, though I do not have an extension appointment.

Sort of the opinion that science regardless of what their research areas would benefit by taking actual formal instruction and how to speak to people that are different than they are. It's not an inborn ability, and it's something that can be at least developed. And it makes a real difference, I think, very can.

I agree, I mean, I was just thinking about, I wonder if there are any ways that you can integrate those kinds of training experiences into any students that you're working with. And if you don't have the extension appointment, it may not be obvious, just a little bit of foreshadowing, we're talking in our department about ways that we can provide opportunities for graduate students across the campus to be able to have just just those kinds of experience, we will be in touch in the future. That's really, really outstanding, the perspective that you think your work?

Yeah, so I Maureen knows about it, that we support my graduate students who were going to come join our research team, but not able to come because of the pandemic, their travel plans changed. And the grad student that I have right now is he's on the BSMS. In our department, we have a BSMS integrated program. So it's essentially a fast track Master's, he really enjoyed. As far as I hear from him, being out in the field and doing the field work, though his idea is to work more in data and in models, but he really appreciated being out in the field, in Garden City. So and that's why I really appreciate the partnership that we have with Dr. Aguilar over at the Southwest Research Station, because I think that's essential to, to what we do.

And the research that you're doing. Is there any of what you're doing this steps into the area of water contamination? Or are you just looking at water availability in in these areas?

I'm not looking into contamination. But that is one thing I want to do. And I, you know, that is one thing that there was there, there was a call for a proposal, I think few, I think a month ago or so. And I scratched my head. And I wanted to look out for a person who is more focused on contamination and water quality parts so that, you know, we can partner together. But that is definitely something there about, there's a lot of work being done in Nebraska, on groundwater contamination and the team that I was part of at the Water Center, a lot of our colleagues that do that work, but I definitely want to bring that work to K State as well. And you know, start looking into it.

Do you mind if we go back to climate change for a little bit in the narrative from back at Auburn? I am really interested to hear you talk about the way that you're integrating lots of different datasets and data into your models, the more information the better, hopefully more robust, more accurate predictions based on models with more information. I know enough about our understanding of climate change and how it will impact rainfall patterns, humidity levels, when it's hot variability, I'm wondering now, how much can we rely on the information that we have about climate in our models in the future? In other words, we've got some predictions about the way things might be changing. But is there enough variability now that we can be less competent our predictions, and therefore that might hinder your models just because of the variability thanks to climate change?

Yes, and my answer to that is to run an ensemble of models, you know, we cannot rely on just one model, just one forcing, and make decisions or make forecasts based on that. So as far as climate variability signals are concerned, for example, I've worked quite a bit on El Nino Southern Oscillation. And so which, you know, the prediction that they're putting out there for next three to six months, is based on I think, 16 or 18 different models, so they run an ensemble of models, and then based on that, they forecast what the answer conditions are likely going to be in next three to six months. So that is, I think the way to go even for crop models. You know, I one of my papers just came out where we use two different models that have just using one so you know, that gives us more confidence. And especially when you're forecasting yield, or when you're, you know, using some historic information to make forecasts. I think ensembles are a really powerful tool that we can use.

Can we can we step over to the grant that you were given the seed grant through the Global Food Systems Initiative and talk a bit about Maybe you can give us a bit of background on what that area of study is, I know that you've had some challenges because of the COVID situation and that type of thing. But I do look forward to seeing, you know, possibly some good information coming. But can you give us a little background on what that was? And there is and where you're going with that study?

Right. And so in that, in the, in the grand that we got working with Dr. Kate Nelson, from Department of Geography, and so she works in spatial, social, you know, setup and sustainability of our more from the demographics side of things. I think, the idea started, we were meeting for another, another, I think it was a USDA call. And you know, when at around the time the GFS call came out, and we were like, you know, we can propose this idea for a smaller time, smaller time period, where we can get our initial data in and set up this vulnerability index. So what was the index? So the background basically, is that we are, we were trying to look at a watershed and the eastern Kansas River Basin, which is a combination of both rural and urban areas. So stepping away from focusing only on agricultural, rural agricultural areas, and take bringing into account urban areas as well. And that's where Dr. Nelson's expertise comes into play as well. So the idea is to look at the watershed, and given and so the phase of research that we are in right now. So we have climate change data for the watershed for the regions. So one of our students has downloaded data from I think we are using two scenarios of climate change. So he has downloaded I think 19 models, and for that area, and we have converted all that data into a format where our models can use it, we have the soils data, so soils information from the area, I think we have, we have identified around 120 major soil groups, so there of course, you know, tons of smaller soil groups, but 120 major soil groups that we are going to use. And then we are focusing on corn and soybean, so two crops for that area. And so the idea is to combine the concept of exposure, exposure here being the climate impacts. So that includes like Colene mentioned, you know, precipitation changes, temporary changes, temperature changes. Another thing that we are going to focus on is the increased frequency of extreme events. Now, those extreme events could be a flood, or it could be a drought. So having a lot of precipitation in a very short timeframe, which can cause floods, and then not having precipitation for an extended period of time, combined with very high temperatures that can lead to drought. So we are also looking at those two extreme events. And then we are looking at adaptive capacity, along with sensitivity. So how sensitive are your rural as well as urban systems to these shocks? And then how can they adapt? So Dr. Nelson's expertise and her students will do the adaptive capacity part, I'm doing the crop suitability part based on the climate shocks. And then we will combine these three components to form an index or that is the idea that can hopefully translate into if we have this climate change information in the future. How can we be prepared depending on this information, so that our rural and urban systems don't feel that at all, they're ready to deal with that shock. So this index will tell us that how vulnerable is a system to these shocks. That is the broad idea behind this proposal.

I'm curious, as I heard you talk about this, I was reminded that you focused on the Kaw River Valley or the Kansas River Valley as your area for this pilot study. I'm wondering if that was more choice of convenience, or if there's something unique about this watershed? Or is it the watershed because of the flooding issues and in the worldwide watershed and why this watershed to delimit? The area of your study? Right so definitely flooding in the area was one of the drivers we also wanted to look at. So most of the areas invested can't are very rural. So there are not where where agricultural happens, there are not big urban centers. And this watershed, we are looking at Topeka, we are looking at Lawrence, we are looking at the western parts of Kansas City. So we do cover quite a few urban areas and the watershed as well as good bit of ag. So that that was another. So another thing that that, you know, I mentioned that this whole idea started as part of another proposal that we were thinking about. So, in that proposal, there was also a component of groundwater wells. So, this net, this area also has a great network of groundwater wells, that kgs managers, so that was another company or another driver behind choosing this watershed.

No, that makes sense, it reminds me, I talked to enough policymakers to know that there's a common misconception that climate change is an urban problem, and that it will affect urban areas more. So having this kind of vulnerability index, to show relative vulnerabilities between River and urban areas, I think will be really informative, potentially for policy makers. Right. And, you know,

I mean, in look back 10 years, we have seen a lot of extreme events already in this area. So you know, you don't have to ask people to scratch their memory, you know, kind of think about it, Oh, when did we have the last flood or when was the last drought? So you know, it's very recent. So I think that that is definitely front and center, hopefully, in the minds of policymakers as well, that this problem needs to be addressed.

It also occurs to me that you have a new audience to get information out to once you produce this vulnerability index, if it works, right. So farmers are unique lot with their own challenges. But now you have a different public to try and reach. I think that will be an interesting challenge to find ways to get these messages out to municipalities, emerging emergency preparedness directors, senators, just more variability in your audience to more more challenging potentially.

Yes, and interesting.

I really, really, I mean, I'm very interested in and until you started talking about 100 different majors, 120 different major soil groups, I'm like, Oh, yes, sure. The kind of soil that you have will make a big difference in whether or not a massive amount of rainfall will impact that soil group. So fascinating. I'm really curious to know what kind of factors will be included into the social dimension, or the social side of this index. That proposal alludes to things like inequality, I assume a relative age will make a difference to I assume kinds of occupations. But those are all just assumptions. So I'll probably will have to just wait and see. But I am really curious to find out what factors get thrown into the social side of the model.

Right. Right. And you know that I don't, I cannot. It would be unfair to speak on Dr. Nelson's behalf. But she definitely has more information on that

We'll bring her in next.

Yes, yes. She just came off her maternity leave. So I'm sure she's ready to rock and roll.

There we go. There we go. It's interesting that you brought 120 soil groups in and made me think of the podcast we did last with Dr. Ryan Hansen, who was in chemical engineering. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to meet with him in the past, but he was talking about the number of microorganisms in a gram of soil. I believe it was in the vicinity of a billion 120 different groupings of soils. And you take all of those groupings and multiply that by the number of different microorganism groupings that are going to be developing in different areas in different parts. It's amazingly complex.

Yes. And these are just major soil groups. You know, I mean, within, you know, within that soil group, there are like, so many different soils. So, sure, yes.

We've got a lot to learn, I think.

Yes, we do.

That's, that's fascinating, big, hard question. That was probably in the end, but I'll go ahead and lay this on, you know, we can maybe struggle with other I, it's, it really is appropriate because we've talked so much about science communication and getting you know, applicable findings out to different kinds of public's both private decision makers as well as potentially policy decision makers. I, I really, I found your work about aquifer stabilization to be particularly delicate because because I spent about four months traveling around Kansas in 2014, at a series of public meetings about water, and heard lots of different people talk about, you know, in rather conflictual ways about what do we do about the decline in the Ogallala Aquifer. And amongst the many different things that I heard from community members and farmers and extension experts, a common refrain I've heard, especially from the general public, the the interested but general public was, we shouldn't be growing corn in western Kansas until as farmers figure out that we can't grow corn in western Kansas, we're never going to solve this problem. And as I read some of your work, I was really struck by the property and how problematic that might be. I mean, I can I can appreciate the sentiment. But given the your work to try and maximize yields for farmers without depleting water resources, how would you respond to a concerned citizen who said something like that to do? We've got to stop growing sports planes, or we've got to stop growing?

Yeah, that is a hard question. I mean, again, it as I, as I said, when we were first talking about compromising yield, by cutting down irrigation, you know, it's hard to convince anybody to give up their income, you know, and cutting down areas. I actually met a farmer, I think, earlier this year in one of the meetings at Garden City, and he said that they went from irrigated corn to dryland corn, and they're actually making more money, because they're not spending as much money on inputs. So, you know, there, there is a way around that, I hope and, but it's hard to we actually, we did a paper earlier this year on transitioning from irrigated to dry land, as well as to pasture. So you know, just completely changing to a pasture. I was part of that group. And Dr. Bill golden, who's an economist here at K State, he had some very interesting, you know, observations in that paper, so that I can forward you that paper if you want to read it. But I agree that there is. I don't think we have to completely give up growing corn. But we have to come up with strategies, where it's not as hard as it is now on the natural resources.

Very fair. Yeah. Well, and I, your point that, you know that back to something you said earlier about, farmers have a great deal of experience, you know, on the ground in their particular area, they're going to be in a much better positioned to make those kinds of decisions, at least on their own farms. And I know from a farmer's perspective, that's the fear is that someone will make that decision for them. Right. So we could talk for another hour about where that responsibility lies, and who should be making that decision. But I appreciate that you're doing research, not just on how to maximize profits by minimizing inputs, but on potentially completely different ways of farming or different crops?

Great, yes.

That's an interesting feed into something that's been floating in my head. And I'm not sure I know how to ask this question. But when you talk about different crops being grown, do you feel that there's potential for crops that aren't normally grown in these areas? And I'm thinking in terms of, you know, we've got a lot of work in the Olathe campus done on small and urban farming on smaller farming enterprises in some of the rural areas where, you know, there's there's less demand on water, they may be more water consuming crops in vegetables or fruits or whatever it might be in smaller quantities. But the very large scale demand, isn't there. Do you see any, any potential in that kind of thing growing, becoming a larger enterprise in western Kansas? Or is it just a niche that's going to be a niche forever in the state?

Yeah, I think so. I, you know, diversification is it's great. But you know, for a farmer or for a farming enterprise that has been growing corn for generations. And you know, sometimes the farmer will come to you and say that this is what I know how to do. You know, so there's that fear of diversification and what will happen, so I think it will will require a combined effort not just on the bait on the on the part of farmers and scientists, but also policies that support that, you know, I don't know if that that could be some kind of subsidies, some kind of tax credits, you know that I mean, that's not my area, and I shouldn't speak to that. But there has to be some sort of incentive where that risk is covered, I guess, you know, of trying something new and what will happen thereafter? There is a farmer in the Lawrence area, and he exclusively grows organic wheat. And, and he also has a vegetable farm and he is very successful. But did he tried, like, did he transition his land from corn? No, that's where he started. He is young, he's probably 10 years younger than me. And he's doing great. He's so innovative. But you know, because he did not have that traditional. He did not grow up on a farm that was growing corn or wheat. He started this new thing that appealed to him. And it's working great. He sells to Whole Foods in Kansas City, you know, so he has that niche more like you said, you know, it's that niche market that appeals to certain people, but not everybody.

I want to thank you very much for your time. And this was really, really an enjoyable conversation. I very much enjoyed it.

I really enjoy it definitely been my experience. I love that conversation. Thank you for it. Thank you this, I did not expect it, we'd be able to talk so much about the very people that we're all here to serve right, Kansas, Kansas farmers, the next generation of Kansas who's going to have to live with or without an aquifer. So I think that's really been fascinating and really interesting, as well as the way that you're improving your research by including new information in your models all the time. I think that's really fascinating. So thanks. Thanks for taking time to share it with us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Vaishali.

Thank you, Maureen.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email. Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins's album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.