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CapitalPress.com
August 18, 2017
Caving in to unfounded opinions
threatens tech advances, expert says
Heatwave stresses spring
wheat, increases protein
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
SUN VALLEY, Idaho —
Losing safe, viable and valu-
able technology to improve
agriculture due to frightened,
uniformed public sentiment is
a very real threat, a university
researcher says.
Alison Van Eenennaam, an
animal geneticist at the Uni-
versity of California-Davis,
told the Idaho Milk Proces-
sors Association annual con-
ference there has to be a con-
certed effort by agriculture
to stand up against the myths
behind the opposition to such
advances as genetically engi-
neered crops or “we’ll have
no technology left.”
Following a showing of
“Food Evolution,” a new
documentary film separating
the hype from the science
in the debate over GMOs,
Van Eenennaam said the ar-
guments used against GMO
technology are not just a
subtle interpretation of sci-
entific data, they are “flat
out lies.”
“It’s not a legitimate dis-
agreement; it’s an agenda,”
she said.
The anti-GMO campaign
is rooted in fear-mongering
and is risking technology that
can improve agriculture and
lessen its environmental im-
pact, she said.
There’s no angst when it
comes to using genetic tech-
nology in human medicine,
such as insulin, or in pet vac-
cines, she said.
“Use in food tends to be
where the fireworks come in,”
she said.
Those fireworks resulted in
marketers turning away from
the hormone rBST, a safe
technology to increase milk
production in cows, to gain
a market advantage in claim-
ing their products were rBST-
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California-Davis, talks with Dale
Gifford, a director of the Idaho Milk Processors Association, following her talk on GMOs during the
association’s annual conference in Sun Valley.
free. “When marketers cave to
these demands, we take safe
technology off the table. How
many of these technologies
are we willing to throw out
for these short-term market
advantages?” she asked.
The big controversy now
is GMO crops, grown by 18
million farmers globally. With
16.5 million of those in devel-
oping countries, 90 percent
of GMO crops are grown by
small-scale farmers in devel-
oping countries, where there’s
been a tremendous reduction
in pesticide use, she said.
By far, the largest consum-
er of those crops is livestock,
which has consumed that
feed for more than 20 years.
There’s been about 300 care-
fully controlled studies on the
performance of those animal
populations, showing no sig-
nificant differences or delete-
rious trends in productivity,
she said.
“Apparently no one wants
to read them,” she said.
Anti-GMO sympathizers
would prefer to latch onto
sensational, unreliable, po-
liticized studies to confirm a
predetermined bias, she said.
Numerous studies have
also found no detectable ge-
netically engineered DNA or
GE proteins or glyphosate
residues in milk, meat or
eggs from animals consuming
GMO crops, she said.
Meanwhile, there are gen-
uine risks to food safety and
public health, such as food-
borne illnesses, heavy metals,
dioxin and mycotoxins. Fo-
cusing instead on non-health
risks associated with GMO
feed is going down a path
that’s not improving food
safety and jeopardizing tech-
nology that can, she said.
In addition, abandoning
the technology has huge en-
vironmental consequences.
The adoption of GE crops has
reduced global pesticide use
20 percent and decreased the
use of more toxic pesticides.
Through reduced fuel use
and tillage changes, they’ve
also significantly reduced
greenhouse gas emissions
from those cropping areas —
equivalent to removing 12
million cars from the road in
2015, she said.
She reminded the audience
the public wasn’t keen on ar-
tificial insemination in animal
agriculture when it first came
about in the 1940s, but the
result has been a significant
increase in milk production
from far fewer cows. That ef-
ficiency is attributable to ge-
netic improvement enabled by
AI. And genetic editing holds
even more potential.
Referring back to the loss
of rBST, she asked, “What if
the public doesn’t like genetic
selection? Are you going to
give that up, too?”
Agriculture needs to work
together to defend the tech-
nology and alter the discus-
sion, focusing on the prob-
lems the technology is trying
to fix, she said.
“It’s pretty simple math.
Anytime you decrease the
efficiency of agricultural
production, you increase the
environmental impact,” she
said.
Summer heat is causing
stress in Washington’s spring
wheat crop, researchers say.
In its weekly regional
crop progress and condition
report, the USDA National
Agricultural Statistics Ser-
vice reported that “winter
wheat continued to look
good, while spring wheat did
not.”
Stress caused by heat and
late planting in a shorter
growing season is to blame,
said Mike Pumphrey, spring
wheat breeder for Washing-
ton State University.
“Planting was delayed ev-
erywhere,” he said.
Pumphrey said maturity
wasn’t as important this year
as it is in some years, because
soil moisture was good.
“Some of our later matur-
ing lines that I would say do
poorer in a typical hot, dry
summer didn’t because there
was soil moisture,” he said.
Irrigated wheat is likely
to be down from usual years,
but “quite healthy” overall,
he said. Dryland acres where
planting was delayed will
likely be average to below
average.
Later plantings are likely
to suffer more, while earlier
spring wheat plantings had
the chance to tiller before
higher temperatures occurred,
said Ryan Higginbotham, di-
rector of WSU’s cereal vari-
ety testing program.
“Heat is the enemy of
spring wheat,” Higginbotham
said.
Higginbotham
expects
statewide spring wheat yields
will be down, but higher win-
ter wheat yields will offset
them.
The effect varies across
the state. In trials in the
Horse Heaven Hills area,
spring wheat yields doubled
over last year, while in Lind,
EO Media Group File
A heatwave is causing stress
in this year’s spring-planted
wheat crop, causing high-
er-than-normal protein levels.
Wash., trials, yields were half
of last year’s, he said.
Assuming test weights and
grain soundness are other-
wise OK, Pumphrey said the
heat stress may boost protein,
which is a desirable trait in
dark northern spring wheat.
The wheat class has seen
price upswings due to supply
problems elsewhere in the
U.S., from $7.57 to $7.67 per
bushel on the Portland market
for 13 percent protein, and
$7.83 to $8.77 per bushel for
higher protein levels.
“Although the yields may
be lower, we should have
high-enough protein or good
protein,” he said. “That’s go-
ing to help (growers), instead
of getting them a discount.
Now, that has to be balanced
with how many bushels are
harvested, of course.”
Lower protein percentag-
es are wanted in soft white
wheat, which will also see
higher levels due to the heat
stress. WSU’s trials have
shown above-average protein
levels, averaging 12.5 to 13
percent, “which is not ideal,”
Pumphrey said.
Soft white wheat is priced
at $5.16 to $5.60 per bushel.
Higginbotham’s not aware
of any price discounts for
high protein soft white wheat,
but said it’s possible as har-
vest progresses.
Researchers hunt for cause of onion disease
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Capital Press
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to consumers when they are cut
open.
That type of fusarium fungi
has caused a few cases of on-
ion bulb rot over the years but
it became a major issue in 2014
and 2015.
Both those years had unusu-
ally hot summers. Researchers
believe the condition could be
related to high temperatures.
“One of the ideas is that the
hot summers we’ve had are
causing that,” said Erik Feib-
ert, a senior research assistant
at Oregon State University’s
Malheur County agricultural
experiment station near On-
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That theory supposes that
high temperatures facilitate a
condition known as dry scale,
which is when the top of the
onion doesn’t completely close.
“That seems to provide the
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A field trial at Oregon State University’s agricultural research
station near Ontario that is being used to try to determine the
cause of an onion disease known as onion bulb rot is shown in this
July 12 photo. Researchers at the University of Idaho’s agricultural
research station in Parma are also working on the issue.
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pathogen an opportunity to in-
fect the top of the bulb,” said
Stuart Reitz, an OSU cropping
systems extension agent.
But, he added, researchers
don’t know for sure that heat is
causing the problem and field
trials are being conducted at
OSU’s Ontario station as well
as the University of Idaho‘s ex-
periment station in Parma to try
to determine the exact cause.
“We really don’t know what
combination of factors is caus-
ing it,” said Clint Shock, direc-
tor of OSU’s Malheur County
experiment station. “We don’t
know when it’s happening and
we don’t know why it’s hap-
pening.”
OSU researchers are us-
ing heat strips to add artificial
heat to one plot of onions and
straw mulch and kaolinite
clay to reduce the heat load on
another plot “to see if we ob-
serve any differences there,”
Shock said.
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ONTARIO, Ore. — Ag-
ricultural researchers in the
Treasure Valley of Oregon and
Idaho still haven’t discovered
what’s causing an onion dis-
ease that damages the inside of
bulbs, reducing their market-
ability.
However, they haven’t seen
the onion disease so far this
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the so-called “onion bulb rot”
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caused by a rare occurrence of
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The disease, which is not a
human health issue, is caused
by a plant pathogen known as
fusarium proliferatum and can
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bulbs, making them look fine
on the outside but not desirable