Week 8 Flashcards
Why is food culturally important?
Food is divine
Food tells us about our culture
Food connect us
Great Famine (Ireland) (1845-1852), Total death: 1 million
Great Chinese Famine (1959 and 1961), Total death: 15-55 millions
Food can create war (hunger
What was on the prehistoric menu?
Analyses of Stone Age settlements reveal that the hunters would gladly eat anything they could get their hands on
fish, meat, animal fat, wild plants
The Stone Age menu was widely different depending on the region, climate and season.
What is the history on human food?
Control of fire 1.9 mya
Major evolutionary shift to chase down food - 180,000 ya
Development of agriculture - 9,000 ya
Development of modern flour 200 ya
What is agriculture?
Agriculture is defined with varying scopes, in its broadest sense using natural resources to “produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops, and their related services
What is the difference between domestication, cultivation and agriculture?
Domestication the morphological (and genetic) changes in plants
Cultivation the human practices (creating an ecology for plants)
Agriculture the cultivation on scales and economic change
How has agriculuture impacted human population?
Human population increased from 5-10 millions to 7 billions
How many centres of global crop domestication?
16 independant regions of domestication each region having unique crop eg middle east and wheat
What happened as a consequence of the domestication of wheat?
Changes to grain size, shape and range of phenotypic variation
What is an overview of climate and agriculture?
Temperature fluxuations before but stabalised after 9,000 BP
Wheat was domesticated due to change in middle east temperature from cool and dry to warm and dry
What is an overview of the work of Rachel Carson?
Book ‘Silent Spring’ about fertilisers and envriomental and health effects brought about from green revolution
What was the outcome of the work of activists like Rachel Carson?
The early activists of the new environmental movement had several successes attributed to Carson — from the Clean Air and Water Acts to the establishment of Earth Day to President Nixon’s founding of the Environmental Protection Agency, in 1970.
What is an overview of the slow food movement?
The Slow Food international movement officially began when delegates from 15 countries endorsed this manifesto, written by founding member Folco Portinari, on December 10, 1989.
To promote local more sustainable food
What is an overview of organic farming groups?
IFOAM - Organics International
National groups like USDA organic, Australian certified organic
What is the difference between conventional and organic farming?
Conventional : Organic
Low soil quality : Higher soil quality
Low biodiversity : Medium biodiversity
High costs medium profit : Medium costs high profit
High pesticide residues : Low pesticide residues
What are the quote by Norman Borlaug about organic farming?
There are 6.6 billion people on the planet today. With organic farming we could only feed four billion of them. Which two billion would volunteer to die?
What is the historical evolution of farming?
(a) Disciplinary basis of principles articulated within agroecology.
(b) Scales (adapted from Wezel et al. 2009).
(c) Aspects, showing the emergence of the three manifestations of agroecology (science, practice and social movement) with key topics and the nature and scope of research (adapted from Silici 2014, based on Wezel et al. 2009 and Wezel and Soldat 2009).
What is agroecology?
The application of ecological principles to agricultural systems and practices, or the branch of science concerned with this
As a scientific discipline, agroecology provides the ecological knowledge that underpins sustainable practices under the other approaches.
What are the subdivisions of agroecology?
Conservation agriculture
Regeneration agriculture
Organic agriculture
Climate-shape agricultureW
What are the pillars of agroecology?
Envrionmental stewardship
Prosperous social livelihood
Profitable farm income
What are the FAO 10 elements of agroecology?
Diversity
Sharing knowledge
Synergies
Efficiency
Recycling
Circular and solidarity economy
Cultural food traditions
Responsible governence
Resilience
Human and social values
What are examples of pratical use of agroecology?
Diverse diet
New, Neglected and underutilized crops/plants
Crop rotations and legumes
Integrated Pest Management
Low input farming
Breeding for low input farming
Breeding for pest and diseases
Breeding for Nitrogen Use Efficiency
What is an overview of negelected species?
Neglected and underutilized species are those to which little attention is paid or which are entirely ignored by agricultural researchers, plant breeders and policymakers.
They are wild or semi-domesticated varieties and non-timber forest species that are not typically traded as commodities
How does agriculture reduce crops used?
~250,000 species of plants
~7,000 crop species throughout history
3 (Rice, maize and wheat) make up >50% of food intake
12 crops that together woth 5 animal species provide 75% of the worlds food intake
What is an overview of Chenopodium quinoa?
Was a neglected species from latin america but now is regulary consumed
What is crop rotation?
The process of gradually switching the crops that are cultivated in a field to improve soil fertility, manage pests and diseases, and increase yields.
By rotating crops, soil health and production are preserved, nutrient depletion is reduced, pests and diseases are disrupted, and soil health is increased.
What is legume based cropping species?
Legumes symbiotic bacteria fix nitrogen
When legumes decompose releases nitrogen into soil boosting fertility
What is integrated pest management?
A dynamic process that makes use of an ecological systems approach and encourages the user or producer to consider and use the full range of best pest control options available given economic, environment and social considerations
What is an overview of integrated pest management?
IPM is based on ecology, the concept of ecosystems and the goal of sustaining ecosystem functions.
It promotes the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption to agro-ecosystems and encourages natural pest control mechanisms
What are the advantages of integrated pest management?
Biological control with natural enemies
Resistant varieties of crops
Greater resilience through intercropping
What is intercropping?
The push–pull system mainly consists of intercropping the crop of interest with a plant species that emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that repel the major pest. Planting an attractive (pull) plant around the field further enhances directional movements of the pest insect out of the field.
What is an example of intercropping?
Cabbage (maincrop) is planted with spring onion (repellent) non-host intercrop plant and with attractive B. vulgaris, Yellow rocket cress (trap plant) as a barrier plant, it reduces the infestation of cabbage by cabbage moth
How does intercropping benefit spring onion?
This occurred by repelling away the cabbage moth, that were trying to feed on the cabbage, from the push plant using stimuli that alter the host fragrance and at the same time pull away by the trap plant using highly attractive stimuli
What is the ultimate aim of sustainable farming?
Creating farming systems with less chemical inputs/no chemical inputs
How to increase crop yield in low input farming?
What are the pillars of climate smart agriculture?
Sustainably increase agriculture productivity and incomes
Adapt and build resilience of people and food system to climate change
Reduce and/or remove greenhouse gas emissions where possible
What is an overview of current plant immunity models?
Our current models of the plant immune system are single celled models.
What is an overview of plant immune responses?
Plant immune responses are triggered by extracellular recognition of microbe associated molecular patterns, and intracellular recognition of pathogen effectors.
Every plant cell is capable of perceiving a pathogen and mounting defence leading to the plant immune system is cell autonomous.
What is a future expansion of the single cell model?
Defence responses trigger dramatic changes to the cellular concentrations of many small signalling molecules and therefore we have to consider the how single cell responses impact on the connected cells.
What are strategies for enhancing defence with resistance genes?
Understanding the genes a plant needs to fight off a pathogen
Exploiting these genes by, Introducing them in to susceptible varieties or enhancing or blocking their activity
What are strategy for enhancing defence with other immune responses?
Understanding the immune responses a plant triggers to fight off a pathogen eg Systemic acquired resistance/defence priming
Manipulating these responses in other ways triggering gene expression in response to other cues enhancing or blocking the response
What are different genes of Maize with different susceptibility to the same nothern leaf blight?
Oh7B - very susceptible
Ki3 - slightly susceptible
M162W - immune