agriculture

Israel joins the fruit-fly fight

Biofeed’s Nimrod Israely, top centre, with mango growers in Karnataka, India. (photo from Biofeed via Israel21c)

Shortly before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel in early July, Indian diplomats in Israel heard about a revolutionary no-spray, environmentally friendly solution against the Oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis) made by Biofeed, a 10-employee ag-tech company. They invited Biofeed to be one of six innovative Israeli companies meeting with Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The company’s founder and chief executive officer, Nimrod Israely, who has a PhD in fruit-fly ecology, told the two leaders that Biofeed’s product can protect Indian farmers against fruit flies like the Iron Dome system protects the people of Israel against missiles. The Oriental fruit fly has been decimating 300 fruit species in India and in 65 other countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas and is considered to be the most destructive, invasive and widespread of all fruit flies.

Biofeed’s lures, hung on trees, contain an organic customized mix of food, feeding stimulants and control or therapeutic agents delivered by a patented gravity-controlled fluid release platform. Attracted by the odour, the fly takes a sip and soon dies – without any chemicals reaching the fruit, air or soil.

The launch of Biofeed’s first-in-class attractant for female Oriental fruit flies results from 15 years of development of the core platform and more than a year of development and testing in Israel and Karnataka, India. Mango farmers on four Indian orchards saw an overall decrease of fruit-fly infestation from 95% to less than five percent.

“We were hoping to bring a solution that will replace spraying and increase productivity by 50%,” Israely told Israel21c. “I am excited by the results, demonstrating the future potential for some farmers to bring about 900 times more marketable produce to market.”

photo - A fruit fly feeding in a Biofeed lure — A fruit fly feeding in a Biofeed lure. *(photo from Biofeed via Israel21c)*

One farmer in the Biofeed pilot explained that previously he had used a trap that attracted only male fruit flies, with limited success. “If you cut 25 fruits, we were getting only one good fruit; 24 were infected,” he said.

K. Srinivas Gowda, president of the 70,000-farmer Karnataka Mango Growers Association, wrote in a letter presented to Modi and Netanyahu that he “would like to have this [Biofeed] technology implemented to all the mango farmers through the government of India. This technology can be used to develop pest-free zones in the mango-growing belts in India.”

The pilot project started after Biofeed won a Grand Challenges Israel grant last year from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Foreign Ministry’s international development agency, Mashav.

“We don’t have the Oriental fruit fly in Israel. However, until now there was no solution for this problem. So, we took the challenge and chose to focus on India,” Israely said. The company worked with Kempmann Bioorganics in Bangalore to carry out the trial.

Biofeed’s products are used in many Israeli fruit orchards against the Mediterranean fruit fly and other common pests, including the olive fruit fly and the peach fruit fly (Bactrocera zonata).

“Bactrocera zonata is the number two pest in India. There are three main pests in India, so now we’ve given, within two years, a solution for the two most devastating fruit flies in India and in other parts of the world,” said Israely.

“We are the only company in the world with a solution for those two pests and both solutions are harmless to the environment,” he added. “We estimate the annual market potential of these two pest segments to be well over $1 billion.”

The Biofeed platform is effective with as few as 10 units per hectare and for a period of nearly a year before the dispenser needs replacing.

Biofeed, founded in 2005, also has a formula targeting mosquitoes that bear viruses such as Zika.

“Evolution has given insects an elaborate sense of smell, which they utilize to find mates, food, egg-laying sites and more,” Israely told Israel21c last year. “The company has developed a liquid formula that ‘knows’ how to tie different kinds of smells to other materials, as the need arises. The result is a special ‘decoy’ that draws the target insect through smell. The decoy is slow-released from a device over the course of a year. The insect is drawn to the decoy, feeds off it and dies shortly after.”

Headquartered in Kfar Truman, Biofeed sees the future of agriculture in developing countries such as India and China.

“We want to bring something that is extremely easy to use: you don’t need tractors, you don’t need to remember to spray once a week, you don’t need to put yourself in danger with sprays, there’s no safety equipment. This is something that can make a dramatic change in agriculture and human health,” said Israely.

For more information, visit biofeed.co.il/enhome.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Betalains boost resistance?

Unripe (top) and ripe (bottom) tomatoes. Regular tomatoes (far left) start out green (far left top) and turn red when ripe (far left bottom). In contrast, genetically engineered tomatoes assume different shades of red-violet, depending on whether they produce betalains (the column second from left), pigments called anthocyanins (second from right) or betalains together with anthocyanins (far right). (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)

Colour in the plant kingdom is not merely a joy to the eye. Coloured pigments attract pollinating insects, they protect plants against disease, and they confer health benefits and are used in the food and drug industries. A new study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, has opened the way to numerous potential uses of betalains, the highly nutritious red-violet and yellow pigments known for their antioxidant properties and commonly used as food dyes.

Betalains are made by cactus fruit, flowers such as bougainvillea and certain edible plants – most notably, beets. They are relatively rare in nature, compared to the two other major groups of plant pigments and, until recently, their synthesis in plants was poorly understood. Prof. Asaph Aharoni of Weizmann’s plant and environmental sciences department and Dr. Guy Polturak, then a research student, along with other team members, used two betalain-producing plants – red beet (Beta vulgaris) and four o’clock flowers (Mirabilis jalapa) – in their analysis. Using next-generation RNA sequencing and other advanced technologies, the researchers identified a previously unknown gene involved in betalain synthesis and revealed which biochemical reactions plants use to convert the amino acid tyrosine into betalains.

To test their findings they genetically engineered yeast to produce betalains. They then tackled the ultimate challenge: reproducing betalain synthesis in edible plants that do not normally make these pigments.

photo - Tomatoes that have been genetically engineered to produce betalains only in the fruit, but not elsewhere in the plant — Tomatoes that have been genetically engineered to produce betalains only in the fruit, but not elsewhere in the plant. *(photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)*

The success announced itself in living colour. The researchers produced potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants with red-violet flesh and skin. They also managed to control the exact location of betalain production by, for example, causing the pigment to be made only in the fruit of the tomato plant but not in the leaves or stem.

Using the same approach, the scientists caused white petunias to produce pale violet flowers, and tobacco plants to flower in hues varying from yellow to orange pink. They were able to achieve a desired hue by causing the relevant genes to be expressed in different combinations during the course of betalain synthesis. These findings may be used to create ornamental plants with colours that can be altered on demand.

But a change in colour was not the only outcome. Healthy antioxidant activity was 60% higher in betalain-producing tomatoes than in average ones. “Our findings may in the future be used to fortify a wide variety of crops with betalains in order to increase their nutritional value,” said Aharoni.

An additional benefit is that the researchers discovered that betalains protect plants against grey mold, Botrytis cinerea, which annually causes losses of agricultural crops worth billions of dollars. The study showed that resistance to grey mold rose by a whopping 90% in plants engineered to make betalains.

The scientists produced versions of betalain that do not exist in nature. “Some of these new pigments may potentially prove more stable than the naturally occurring betalains,” said Polturak. “This can be of major significance in the food industry, which makes extensive use of betalains as natural food dyes, for example, in strawberry yogurts.”

Furthermore, the findings of the study may be used by the drug industry. When plants start manufacturing betalains, the first step is conversion of tyrosine into an intermediate product, the chemical called L-dopa. Not only is this chemical itself used as a drug, it also serves as a starting material in the manufacture of additional drugs, particularly opiates such as morphine. Plants and microbes engineered to convert tyrosine into L-dopa may, therefore, serve as a source of this valuable material.

The research team included Noam Grossman, Dr. Yonghui Dong, Margarita Pliner and Dr. Ilana Rogachev of Weizmann’s plant and environmental sciences department, and Dr. Maggie Levy, Dr. David Vela-Corcia and Adi Nudel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Aharoni’s research is supported by the John and Vera Schwartz Centre for Metabolomics, which he heads; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; the Adelis Foundation; the Lerner Family Plant Science Research Fund; the Monroe and Marjorie Burk Fund for Alternative Energy Studies; the Sheri and David E. Stone Fund for Microbiota Research; Dana and Yossie Hollander, Israel; the AMN Fund for the Promotion of Science, Culture and Arts in Israel; and the Tom and Sondra Rykoff Family Foundation. Aharoni is the recipient of the André Deloro Prize, and the incumbent of the Peter J. Cohn Professorial Chair.

For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.

Plight of bees is our plight

A European honey bee extracts nectar from an aster flower. (photo by John Severns via Wikimedia Commons)

Around the world, bee populations have been decreasing in number, year by year, at an alarming rate. Such a tragedy isn’t just stinging the beekeepers, whose livelihoods depend on the honey-making insects, it’s affecting global agriculture.

And there’s more at stake than just honey production. Bees’ handiwork assists in the growth of myriad foodstuffs. In fact, millions of honey bees are depended upon to pollinate plants and crops, which produce a quarter of the food we consume.

According to Science Daily from May 2015, beekeepers across the United States lost more than 40% of their honey bee colonies from April 2014 to April 2015, compared to the previous year’s decrease of 34%.

This is determined from an annual cross-country survey that is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and conducted by Bee Informed Partnership with the Apiary Inspectors of America.

The survey asked commercial and small-scale beekeepers to track the health and survival rates of their honey bee colonies, in an effort to understand how to manage the decreasing population. This is the ninth straight year of losses. It’s referred to as colony collapse disorder.

More than 6,000 beekeepers, who manage 400,000 colonies from all 50 U.S. states responded. All told, these beekeepers are responsible for nearly 15% of the nation’s estimated 2.74 million managed honey bee colonies. The total economic value of honey bee pollination is said to be more than $15 billion each year in the United States alone.

Among small beekeepers – those who manage fewer than 50 colonies – a problem area appears to be the varroa mite, a lethal parasite, able to spread between colonies.

Beekeepers, environmental groups and some scientists also suspect blame lies with an insecticide known as neonicotinoids, or neonics. It is used on crops, such as corn, and on plants found in lawns and gardens. Its toll has been taken seriously enough that the Environmental Protection Agency is examining a series of studies on the insecticide and its effects on bees. The investigation is expected to be completed by year’s end.

The issue has even caught the attention of administrators at the White House, who have formed a task force to study the problem.

In Canada, the problem is even worse.

In Ontario, bee losses have been severe over the last few winters, measuring a decline of 58% in 2013-2014, due to a combination of extreme cold, mites, disease and the types of pesticides used on crops.

While it has experts scrambling for a solution, some people and companies are taking matters into their own hands.

One hotel is doing its part to increase the bee population. On the roof of the downtown Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, about 300,000 bees perch in six hives that produce anywhere between 500 and 900 pounds of honey per year. The hotel offers it to guests, and uses it in recipes.

CBC also recently installed hives on its rooftops in Toronto and Montreal, while Vancouver Police will build two hives at its headquarters.

Meanwhile, across the pond in England, the BBC reported that, in January 2014, in more than half of European countries, there were not enough honey bees to pollinate crops. And more than 14% of England’s honey bee colonies died over the winter, according to the latest research from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA).

In the United Kingdom alone, nearly 90% of the apple crop and 45% of the strawberry crop relies on wild bees and managed honey bees to grow. It is a billion dollar economy there.

The BBKA’s annual survey of beekeepers across Great Britain showed the losses were up from nine percent last year, but lower than the year before; normal losses are about 10%. It blames “poor and variable weather, pesticides, bee diseases and parasites such as the varroa mite and starvation.”

To make matters worse, demand for the little honey-making insects has grown, while their numbers shrink.

Europe is experiencing a boom in biofuels, which is the result of the “EU renewable fuel directive,” where 10% of transport fuel must come from renewable sources by 2020. What that means for farming is planting a third more “oil” crops, like soybeans, oil palm, oilseed rape, sunflowers – all of which require ramping up bee numbers, which simply aren’t there.

According to the journal Plos One, Great Britain has only a quarter of the bees they need – their deficit equaling seven billion honey bees.

In light of this, as we approach Rosh Hashanah, you may think more about that little jar of honey on the festive meal table – millions, or perhaps billions, of honey bees came together to create that sweet liquid.

We know that the symbolism of honey on Rosh Hashanah is to have a sweet New Year. But there’s more: bees and the Jewish people are alike in many ways.

There’s little we can accomplish if we are alone; much that we can accomplish if we combine our efforts towards our goals as a people. We are more productive when in a community; our “hives” are our communities and synagogues, where we are needed – in fact, required – to be drawn to the whole. The honey bee teaches us that we must come together and work towards a higher purpose.

May everything go well next year not only for ourselves, friends, family and others, but for our little busy bee friends, buzz’mun hazeh!

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than a hundred publications around the world.

The business of agriculture

Arava International Centre for Agriculture Training executive director Hanni Arnon spoke to audiences across Canada as part of a Jewish National Fund nationwide tour. (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

As part of a nationwide tour, with stops in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia, Hanni Arnon, executive director of Arava International Centre for Agriculture Training (AICAT) of the Arava Development Co., introduced the training program to Canadian audiences.

In 1994, Arnon founded AICAT. The goal of the centre is to educate students from countries around the world on how to form successful agricultural businesses. Her cross-Canada talks – Feeding the World through Education – were organized by Jewish National Fund of Canada, its local branches and support from various other local Jewish organizations.

In her presentation in Winnipeg, Arnon shared her personal story about having been born and raised in Jerusalem. About 30 years ago, she chose to follow her dream and move with her husband, Moti, to the Arava region.

“We were looking for a life with challenges and fulfilment,” she said. “We wanted our children to grow up connected to nature and to be a part of a community that understands and appreciates the meaning of hard work, Zionism, solidarity and friendship.”

Some 900 families live in the central Arava, which is a desert. Given the harsh climate, general lack and poor quality of water, residents had little choice but to find creative solutions and overcome the daily difficulties they encountered. They have gathered more than 50 years of experience and research, with science as the foundation.

“With hard work, we made the desert bloom,” said Arnon. “We are the world leader in desert beautification and a prime example for effective water use. We have the ability to think outside the box and make the impossible possible.”

The global population is reaching more than seven billion, including 800 million people in poverty. Arnon is looking for a way to feed them by focusing on collaboration and the transfer of knowledge, which she feels will lead to empowerment and the opening of opportunities. She acknowledged that knowledge itself is not enough, that it needs to be coupled with training.

“For over 20 years,” she said, “AICAT has had the great privilege to bring every year, with the permission of the Israeli government, hundreds of students from 12 developing countries, such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia and Indonesia – a multitude of cultures, religions and nationalities that have participated in the unique program across borders.”

AICAT provides students with practical knowledge in everything from vegetable production to business management, marketing, research, technology and strategic thinking. The goal is for students to return home to “establish their own agriculture business and improve their farms,” said Arnon.

According to Arnon, AICAT – which has 40,000 graduates to date – teaches the most important lesson – that if you want something earnestly enough, you can make it happen. Every year, she said, she sees how, after 11 months, the students have a light in their eyes and are keen to apply the new ideas to helping their home countries.

“We give them hope and self-confidence to follow their dreams and improve their lives,” said Arnon. “They become entrepreneurs and future leaders of their countries.”

Arnon noted that not only do the students gain the knowledge and inspiration, but they go on to become goodwill ambassadors for the state of Israel. “They go home and talk about how much Israel means to them,” she said. “This is positive action on the Israeli side, which shows Israel in a different light.”

When Arnon was asked a question about cooperation with the Jordanians, she spoke about the different ways AICAT works with neighboring farmers. “Just to make sure you understand how close we are, the place where our fields end, this is the border,” she said. “It’s an open border with no fence. We have a peace agreement, so it’s a quiet border. We send our expertise to support farmers in Jordan. We are open for any collaboration with the Jordanians and would especially like cooperation with our neighbors.

“We also have a project [called] Clean Arava and we must do that together with the Jordanians, because we are so close to them. This is one of the projects we are doing together.”

Arnon explained that the Arava region is the biggest vegetable exporting area in Israel, producing more than 60% of the fresh vegetables Israel exports. The main crops are sweet peppers, tomatoes and melons, but they also grow flowers, grapes, mangos and dates. (The Arnon family owns a large date farm.)

As for the students involved in the project, Arnon noted that they pay for a one-way ticket to Israel, a medical exam and a passport. They can work while in Israel to earn their fare back home and tuition fees, while also taking home with them $2,000-$3,000 to help put into practice what they have learned.

“We see the impact on students,” said Arnon. “They are going back home as leaders, entrepreneurs, with knowledge, skills and money to start an agricultural business. Many of them, about 30%, continue on to higher education.”

The original inspiration for AICAT was the need to teach Thai workers in the 1990s about agricultural systems. Arnon, having been trained as a teacher for that work, immediately felt that a school should be created to teach the subject on an ongoing basis to as many students as possible.

AICAT presently teaches about 1,200 students per year, but Arnon is hoping to double that number with a new campus that will break ground in March.

As for funding, no government funding or support is provided, apart from providing the students with visas. It is JNF that provides support for facilities, dormitories and programs.

Ariel Karabelnicoff, director of JNF Manitoba and Saskatchewan, closed the Winnipeg event by sharing that the school has 80 students from Indonesia, an Islamic country with no diplomatic ties with Israel.

While in Winnipeg, Arnon also took time to speak to University of Manitoba students and visited the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. In Vancouver, hosted by JNF Pacific Region, she spoke at Temple Sholom, Beth Israel and Schara Tzedeck.

The talks were timed with the celebration of Tu b’Shevat and JNF’s fundraising campaign for a 6.5-kilometre park in Eilat. For more information on the campaign, email [email protected] or call 604-257-5155.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.