It could also help farmers who have struggled with trusting the toxin tests of buyers.

Fusarium head blight (FHB), a fungal disease affecting kernel development, causes millions of dollars in annual losses in Canadian cereal crops such as barley, wheat and oats.

With warming weather patterns and more intensive farming practices, fusarium has been spreading across the Prairie provinces. The infected grain is often both lower in quality and kernel weight, and may be unsuitable for human and animal consumption.

Corn production is also a challenge in Ontario, in the Great Lakes basin when some weather patterns create the conditions for gibberella and fusarium.

Fusarium and gibberella infection produces mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON), which in severe cases can reduce the market value of a crop to zero. Animals consuming feed containing high levels of DON may have reduced growth, as well as reduced fertility and reduced immune response. In worst cases, the toxins can lead to death of the animal. There can also be long-term impacts on human health from consuming mycotoxins in food.

As mycotoxins such as DON are not destroyed during processing such as milling, baking or malting, testing infected feed grain for the concentration of DON is becoming critically important. To limit mycotoxins in food and feed, regulations specify maximum allowable concentrations, and if these limits are exceeded, products cannot be sold.

Breeding for low DON concentration in grain crops is an important control measure for the disease, said CDC research officer Lipu Wang.

“The problem has been that crop breeders and researchers have lacked a way to measure DON that is both quick and accurate,” said Wang.

Wang and University of Saskatchewan researcher Randy Kutcher of the CDC’s cereal and flax pathology program have come up with a new way to test for DON that involves a one-step extraction of the mycotoxins using the chemical solvent acetonitrile, followed by direct injection of the toxins into a mass spectrometer to identify and quantify them. This method eliminates the lengthy process of separating the compounds and lowers the cost, while providing high sensitivity and accuracy compared to other methods.

“Analysis that previously took 20 minutes per sample can now be done in less than two minutes, which is very important when testing thousands of samples,” Wang said. “This new method offers breeders a much more efficient way to select wheat or barley lines that accumulate less DON.”

Eventual use of the new method by grain companies has the potential to enhance quality assurance for the grain industry in domestic and export markets, said Kutcher.

“Our customers want no contaminants — no toxins — in our grain,” said Kutcher. “It may also help in deciding whether grain should be processed as food or animal feed.”

The research team is now using the new mycotoxin test in their plant pathology program at the CDC, using the mass spectrometer in the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition. They are seeking to expand the diagnostic testing with research collaborators, interested breeders, and clients.

The team has also developed a way to identify and quantify other toxins, providing a powerful tool to detect new types of mycotoxins in newly developed cereal grain varieties.

The project is supported by the Saskatchewan Agriculture Development Fund and the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission.

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Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, scientists from across the United States investigated the plant root mechanisms that control long-term storage of carbon in deep soil. Their findings will have ramifications for global industries such as agriculture, which have touted the benefits of carbon sequestration as their contribution to fighting climate change.

“The significance of our work is we not only show that plants are conduits of carbon into the soil, but the roots also regulate how much carbon the deep soil can store or lose,” said Dr. Marco Keiluweit, a biogeochemist at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture in the University of Massachusetts.

Although root-derived organic compounds such as decaying roots, plant stems and trunks are recognized as an important source of soil carbon, the role of roots as a weathering agent that breaks down rocks and primary minerals has been overlooked, according to Keiluweit.

Not only does root-driven weathering help to sequester carbon on soil minerals for centuries or longer, but it can also release stored carbon from minerals, which is then lost to the atmosphere as climate-active carbon dioxide.

Climate change influences how plants interact with soil, Keiluweit noted, with the increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide leading to faster plant growth and producing more root growth and root biomass.

“What we are showing here is that roots influence the formation of helpful mineral-organic associations by providing some of the minerals that can engage with organic matter, but then at the same time can destroy or disrupt some of these protective associations in later years,” said Keiluweit.

“The role of the CLS in the project was critically important because it helped us resolve micron-scale mineral-organic associations,” Keiluweit said. “The CLS enabled us to identify both the nature of organic matter and the nature of minerals, and their physical arrangement together in mineral-organic associations.”

As for the impacts of the finding, Keiluweit points to the agricultural sector as an example. When you consider root activity in deeper soil, the question becomes one of the net effect — are you forming protective mineral-organic associations or destroying them? he said.

“Periodic droughts impact agriculture systems and, currently, a lot of effort goes into developing and planting crops that are deeper rooting to access water,” he said. “Deeper roots are better for yields, but it may release carbon that has been protected at depth.”

“On the flip side, our findings can also identify soils with potential for increased carbon storage at depth. Then you can have crops that not only extract water but also help deep storage of carbon,” Keiluweit added.

He hopes their study will help the agriculture sector to consider what crops and soil will be best for combatting climate change.

Keiluweit’s research was published by ScienceDirect.

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“Studies on the risks of neonicotinoids have often focused on bees that have been experiencing population declines. However, it is not just bees that are being affected by these insecticides,” said Christy Morrissey, U of S biology professor.

Research led by Margaret Eng, a post doctoral fellow in Morrissey’s lab, is the first study to show that imidacloprid (neonicotinoid) and chlorpyrifos (organophosphate) —two of the most widely used insecticides worldwide—are directly toxic to seed-eating songbirds. The paper, published in Scientific Reports, shows these chemicals can directly affect songbird migration.

“These chemicals are having a strong impact on songbirds. We are seeing significant weight loss and the birds’ migratory orientation being significantly altered,” said Eng, who also worked with colleagues from York University. “Effects were seen from eating the equivalent of just three to four imidacloprid treated canola seeds or eight chlorpyrifos granules a day for three days.”

Neonicotinoids have become the most popular class of insecticides among farmers because they are very successful at killing pests and are easy to apply.

“In the past farmers might have placed an insecticide into a crop duster and would spray their fields with the insecticide. However, now farmers have access to seeds that in many cases are already coated with neonicotinoids,” said Morrissey. “Birds that stop on migration are potentially eating these seeds, but can also mistakenly ingest the chlorpyrifos pellets for grit, something they normally eat to aid in the digestion of seeds.”

During a spring migration, Eng and Morrissey captured sparrows, which were then fed daily for three days with either a low or high dose of imidacloprid or chlorpyrifos. Lab experiments showed that the neonicotinoids changed not only the birds’ migratory orientation, but the birds also lost up to 25 per cent of their fat stores and body mass, both of which are detrimental to how a bird successfully migrates.

“What surprised us was how sensitive and rapid the effects were, particularly to imidacloprid,” said Morrissey. “The birds showed a significant loss of body mass and signs of acute poisoning (lethargy and loss of appetite). The migration trials also showed that birds completely failed to orient or changed their northward orientation.”

Research took place at the U of S Facility for Applied Avian Research (FAAR), a facility devoted to ecotoxicology and avian health. The $2.3 million facility opened in May 2016 and FAAR is the only resource of its type in Western Canada.

“We were encouraged that most birds survived, and could recover following the cessation of dosing,” said Eng. “But the effects we saw were severe enough that the birds would likely experience migratory delays or changes in their flight routes that could reduce their chance of survival, or cause a missed breeding opportunity.”

Morrissey said that this research “could have major implications for regulation decisions of these pesticides. Imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos are highly controversial for their safety to the environment or to humans and a decision on a proposed imidacloprid ban in Canada is being considered, with the federal government expected to make a decision on imidacloprid and its use in Canada sometime in December.”

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