Málaga (Spain), 9-14 July 2012

Online registration will be possible from 1^st April until 1^st June 2012.

Leibniz-Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), 3-7 September 2012

Application Deadline: 1 May 2012

Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (2012) 88(3): 311-315, DOI: 10.1007/s00128-011-0490-x

Straighthead is a physiological disorder of rice (Oryza sativa L.) that results in sterile florets with distorted lemma and palea, and the panicles or heads may not form at all in extreme cases. Heads remain upright at maturity, hence the name ‘straighthead’. The diseased panicles may not emerge from the flag leaf sheath when the disease is severe. Straighthead disease in rice results in poorly developed panicles and significant yield loss. Although other soil physicochemical factors involved, arsenic contamination in soil has also been reported to be closely associated with straighthead of rice. Monosodium methanearsonate has been a popular herbicide in cotton production in the USA, which has shown to cause injuries in rice that are similar to straighthead. Since toxicity of inorganic arsenic (iAs) is higher than other forms of arsenic, it may produce a more severe straighthead disorder in rice. The use of iAs-rich groundwater for irrigation, and the increase of iAs concentrations in agricultural soil in arsenic epidemic South and South-East Asia may cause a high incidence of straighthead in rice, resulting in a threat to sustainable rice production in this region.

By Peter Fimrite (SFgate)

24-26 September 2012 in Dresden, Germany

Abstract deadline: 27 April 2012

PLoS ONE 7(1): e29409. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029409

The brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) is the most serious pest of rice across the world, especially in tropical climates. N. lugens nymphs and adults were exposed to high temperatures to determine their critical thermal maximum (CTmax), heat coma temperature (HCT) and upper lethal temperature (ULT). Thermal tolerance values differed between developmental stages: nymphs were consistently less heat tolerant than adults. The mean (± SE) CTmax of nymphs and adult females and males were 34.9±0.3, 37.0±0.2 and 37.4±0.2°C respectively, and for the HCT were 37.7±0.3, 43.5±0.4 and 42.0±0.4°C. The ULT50 values (± SE) for nymphs and adults were 41.8±0.1 and 42.5±0.1°C respectively. The results indicate that nymphs of N. lugens are currently living at temperatures close to their upper thermal limits. Climate warming in tropical regions and occasional extreme high temperature events are likely to become important limiting factors affecting the survival and distribution of N. lugens.

Journal of Virological Methods (2012) doi:10.1016/j.jviromet.2012.01.018

Rice tungro disease, caused by simultaneous infection of Rice tungro bacilliform virus (RTBV) and Rice tungro spherical virus (RTSV), is an important cause of reduced rice harvests in South and Southeast Asia. Although various biological, serological and molecular techniques have been reported previously for the detection of RTBV and RTSV, a method that determines accurately the exact viral load in a tungro affected plant is still not available. The present study describes a method for the absolute quantitation of RTBV and RTSV using SYBR Green I based real-time PCR. The number of copies of RTBV DNA and RTSV RNA present in a tungro affected rice plant at two different time points after inoculation was determined. The sensitivity of real-time PCR based detection was found 103- and 105-folds higher than dot-blot hybridization and standard PCR assays respectively. In addition, the method was used for the simultaneous detection of RTBV and RTSV in a single reaction on the basis of melt curve analysis.

PLoS ONE 7(2): e31599. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031599

Pollination of insect pollinated crops has been found to be correlated to pollinator abundance and diversity. Since organic farming has the potential to mitigate negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity, it may also benefit crop pollination, but direct evidence of this is scant. We evaluated the effect of organic farming on pollination of strawberry plants focusing on (1) if pollination success was higher on organic farms compared to conventional farms, and (2) if there was a time lag from conversion to organic farming until an effect was manifested. We found that pollination success and the proportion of fully pollinated berries were higher on organic compared to conventional farms and this difference was already evident 2–4 years after conversion to organic farming. Our results suggest that conversion to organic farming may rapidly increase pollination success and hence benefit the ecosystem service of crop pollination regarding both yield quantity and quality.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06413.x

The recent intensification of the arable landscape by modern agriculture has had negative effects on biodiversity. Organic farming has been introduced to mitigate negative effects, but is organic farming beneficial to biodiversity? In this review, we summarize recent research on the effects of organic farming on arable biodiversity of plants, arthropods, soil biota, birds, and mammals. The ecosystem services of pollination, biological control, seed predation, and decomposition are also included in this review. So far, organic farming seems to enhance the species richness and abundance of many common taxa, but its effects are often species specific and trait or context dependant. The landscape surrounding the focal field or farm also seems to be important. Landscape either enhances or reduces the positive effects of organic farming or acts via interactions where the surrounding landscape affects biodiversity or ecosystem services differently on organic and conventional farms. Finally, we discuss some of the potential mechanisms behind these results and how organic farming may develop in the future to increase its potential for sustaining biodiversity and associated ecosystem services.

PNAS (2011) 108(50):19841-2.

In 2002, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization launched a program to recognize “globally important agricultural heritage systems”. However, so far, only eight systems have been included. In PNAS, the work by Xie et al. reports the results of a 5-yr study of one of the systems, a farming system in south China, where for over 1,200 y, farmers have grown an indigenous species of common carp in their rice paddies. The methods used in this study are impressively thorough, but the purpose of the research is only incidentally to document an exotic agricultural heritage. Instead, the main goal is to discover whether features of this traditional agricultural system could contribute to innovations in sustainable agriculture at the global scale by unpacking the ecological interactions between fish, rice, and the environment.

RICE 4(3/4): 170-177. DOI: 10.1007/s12284-011-9067-x

Cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) is derived from Asian wild rice (Oryza rufipogon Griff). Vietnamese local varieties and wild natural populations in Vietnam and Myanmar were examined to evaluate the levels of genetic variation in cultivated and wild rice. In total, 222 Vietnamese local varieties were analyzed with ten microsatellite markers. Using marker genotype and gene diversity data, the local varieties were differentiated based on geographical distribution, cropping season, and human preference. A total of 976 wild plants were collected at six natural sites of wild populations (three each in Myanmar and Vietnam), and the degrees of variation among populations were analyzed with five microsatellite markers. Phylogenetic analyses revealed wide genetic differentiation among wild populations. The diversity values detected in a single wild population in Vietnam were higher than those in whole Vietnamese local varieties. These results indicate that wild rice has much greater genetic variation than cultivated rice.

Closing date for application: 15^th February 2012.

Science 13 January 2012: 335(6065): 174-175. DOI: 10.1126/science.1217245

How is the biodiversity within an ecosystem related to the ecosystem's function? Quantifying and understanding this relationship—the biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) (1)—is important because socio-economic development is almost always accompanied by the loss of natural habitat and species (2). Short-term economic gains may thus trump longer-term benefits for human society, creating vulnerabilities that could be avoided or corrected with enough knowledge about the role of biodiversity. Erosion of biodiversity at local and regional scales may also reduce resilience at larger spatial scales as a result of degradation of ecosystem function (3). On page 214 of this issue, Maestre et al. (4) report an important step toward extending our understanding of BEF to globally important ecosystems.