Indigenous Mexican Variety of Corn Captures the Nitrogen it Needs from the Air

Please note special seminar times below.

Date

4 September 2018, Tuesday

Time and Venues

Venues	Local Time	Time Zone
Adelaide Waite Campus – B1-FG-R01-Seminar	11:30 am	ACST
Armidale – B55-FG-R00-Small	12:00 noon	AEST
Bribie Island – Seminar Room	12:00 noon	AEST
Brisbane St Lucia QBP – 5.140	12:00 noon	AEST
Canberra Black Mountain – Discovery Theatre	12:00 noon	AEST
Canberra Crace – Bld44 Meeting Room 3	12:00 noon	AEST
Narrabri Myall Vale – Discussion Room	12:00 noon	AEST
Perth Floreat – Rossiter Room	10:00 am	AWST
Hobart Sandy Bay – B2-F1-R24-RiverView	12:00 noon	AEST
Toowoomba – BD FG Media Lab	12:00 noon	AEST
Werribee (Melbourne) – Peacock Room	12:00 noon	AEST

Speaker

Synopsis

Plants are associated with a complex microbiota that contributes to nutrient acquisition, plant growth, and plant defense. Nitrogen-fixing microbial associations are well characterized in legumes but are largely absent from cereals, including maize.  We studied an indigenous landrace of maize grown in nitrogen depleted soils in the Sierra Mixe region of Oaxaca, Mexico. This landrace is characterized by extensive development of aerial roots that secrete a carbohydrate-rich mucilage. Analysis of the mucilage microbiota indicated that it was enriched in taxa for which many known species are diazotrophic; was enriched for homologs of genes encoding nitrogenase subunits; and harbored active nitrogenase activity as assessed by acetylene reduction and 15N2 incorporation assays.  Field experiments in Sierra Mixe using 15N natural abundance or 15N-enrichment assessments over five years indicated that atmospheric nitrogen fixation contributed 28-82% of the nitrogen nutrition of Sierra Mixe maize.

About the speaker

Howard has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant breeding, molecular biology and genetics for over 40 years. He has worked with indigenous communities, NGO’s, governmental agencies and the private sector around the world. His academic career spanned 15 years, Shapiro is a Senior Fellow at UC Davis, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, involving graduate student and post-doctoral students exclusively. He was a member of the National Research Council Committee on Citrus and Greening, a founding member of the Keystone Roundtable on Sustainable Agriculture and was Chairperson of the External Advisory Board of the Agriculture Sustainability Institute at UC Davis. For 10 years. He led the global effort sequencing, assembling and annotating the Theobroma cacao genome, and initiated the Arachis genome. Shapiro founded the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) and the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) in 2011. The effort will sequence, assemble and annotate 101 key food cultivars, which are the backbone of African nutrition. Additionally, the AfPBA will train 150 African scientists in modern breeding technology for discovery and translation of new nutritionally improved varieties. Currently there are 81 crop breeding programs in process with 67 genomes complete. In October of 2017 he launched the Foldit Aflatoxin Puzzle with 460,000 gamers to redesign and improve enzymes to degrade the aflatoxin. Over 1 million puzzles have been submitted. His work on nitrogen fixation and maize was published in August 2018 in PLOS Biology. “Nitrogen fixation in a landrace of maize is supported by a mucilage-associated diazothrphic microbiota.”

A short list of Conferences or Congress’s he has presented at:

• Economist Symposium on the Future of Food
• TedXAmsterdam
• TEDMED2012
• Clinton Global Initiative
• World Bank/IFC Conference
• WWF-Care Symposium: The End of Food Security
• Plant and Animal Genome Conferences 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018
• 1st, 2nd and 3rd World Congress of Agroforestry
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Harvard University, Center for International Development, Enhancing Food Security in an Era of Global Climate Change
• Aspen Ideas Festival
• Bellagio Policy Dialogue Towards a Shared Action Framework for Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change in Africa
• Princeton Conference on Agriculture: Feeding a Hot and Hungry Planet-The Challenge of Making More Food and Fewer Greenhouse Gases
• The World Bank: Enhancing Innovation in Sustainable Agriculture
• Google Science Camp Keynote Presenter 2016
• International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research
• International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems and Nutrition
• The 11th International Conference on Genomics
• China National GeneBank
• The Alexandria Summit
• Smithsonian Earth Optimism Summit
• Lindau-Nobel Laureates Meeting on Economic Sciences
• The World Food Prize Symposia

He collects and restores classic American, modern Japanese and Italian motorcycles, recently becoming a member of the 200 Mile Per Hour Club on an unrestricted 1999 Suzuki Hayabusa. averaging 201.386 MPH at the Bonneville Salt Flats.