Food

  2010 MAR 18 - (VerticalNews.com) -- According to recent research from Bentley, Australia, "Some analysts point to continuing advances in agricultural technology and declining global population growth rates to Predict a substantial surplus of agricultural land by 2050. Such surplus land could be diverted into growing biomass for renewable energy to help overcome the global challenge of climate change."

  "Others Suggest that diversion of agricultural land into bioenergy will exacerbate risk of chronic food shortage by 2050. On balance it appears that declining population growth rate, continuing technology advance, and intensifying use of existing global agricultural land could Support sufficient food production as well as some bioenergy production. Competitive bioenergy requires development of second-generation (lignocellulosic) feedstocks rather than first-generation (starch, sugar, and oilseed) feedstocks. Second-generation feedstocks from woody crops have the potential to complement intensive agriculture and ameliorate its environmental impacts. Woody biomass crops may therefore have a lower effective cost than generally perceived. The potential for woody crops is indicated with an economic analysis of mallee, a woody crop being developed for low-cost biomass production in Western Australia. Mallees are short, multistemmed eucalypts grown in dispersed narrow belts, harvested on a regular short cycle, and regenerated by coppice," wrote J.R. Bartle and colleagues ...read more

  2010 MAR 18 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "The residue levels of selected fluoroquinolones, sulfonamides and tetracyclines in 143 animal dung samples collected in 2007 from large-scale livestock and poultry feedlots in 8 provinces were determined by using ultrasonic extraction and liquid chromatography. Recoveries from spiked pig dung samples (spike level = 1 mg/kg) ranged from 73.9 to 102.0% for fluoroquinolones, from 81.6 to 923% for sulfonamides. and from 57.2 to 72.6% for tetracyclines," scientists in Nanjing, People's Republic of China report ...read more

  2010 MAR 18 - (VerticalNews.com) -- According to recent research from Sao Leopoldo, Brazil, "Temporal variation in seed crop size of the long-lived pioneer conifer Araucaria angustifolia was studied in subtropical South America. We evaluated the expectations that: 1) A. angustifolia presents highly variable seed production (mast seeding behavior); 2) A. angustifolia has endogenous cycles of reproduction of two or three years; 3) There is a tendency for a high seed production year to be followed by an unusually low production year; 4) Populations show synchrony in seed production at a geographical scale; 5) seed crop size is influenced by distinct climatic factors occurring during ''key'' reproductive stages and 6) as an expression of plant productivity, seed crop size should depend on integrated resource availability during the reproductive cycle. ...read more