Subject: [SANET-MG] BBC NEWS | UK | England | Tyne/Wear | Researchers hail organic potatoes

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 13:54:39 -0400

John D'hondt might be interested in this.
-
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/4149907.stm>
Last Updated: Thursday, 6 January, 2005, 06:27 GMT
Researchers hail organic potatoes
Professor Carlo Leifert with the Hungarian 'purple' potato. Picture: North News
No chemicals are used on the potatoes. Picture: North News
The organic food industry has been given a boost after potatoes which can be grown without chemicals but resist deadly 
diseases have been identified.

A European study, led by researchers at Newcastle University, found up to 10 varieties which are resilient to the deadly 
fungal disease blight.

They also created 'designer composts' to increase organic potato crop yields.

The findings are being presented at a meeting on Thursday hosted by the Soil Association and Newcastle University.

Several varieties of organic potato are on supermarket shelves across the continent for the first time, thanks to the study.

Prof Carlo Leifert, behind the project, said: "Until now it's been hard to find varieties of potato that can be grown 
organically but can resist blight, and it's taken a lot of investigation to get this far.

"From a European perspective, you can't really find a 'one size fits all' solution to the organic problem - a potato 
that's popular with the Swiss may not suit what the British consumer wants for baked potato, mash and chips."

Among the newly-available organic potato selection are two Scottish varieties, Eve Balfour and Lady Balfour, and a 
"purple" potato from Hungary.

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---

From: Douglas Hinds <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:17:40 +0200

Hi Sal, Lawrence, Kathryn, John and all others interested in this thread:

I had a somewhat stressful week and promised to finish a couple of
proposals today, but I'll try to answer your questions:

> Douglas Hinds wrote:

>>>> Toward biocontrol of Phytophthora using the beneficial fungus
>>>> Pisolithus Tinctorius, which produces substances with
>>>> antibiotic activity contra Phytophthora, according to sources I
>>>> found in Medline (if I recall - I was using Uncover, I
>>>> believe), a biomedical database, in 1998. (I don't have the
>>>> details on this computer).

>> Sal then asked:

>>>where do you buy your beneficial fungus and any other life forms
>>>your raising when you make the tea

>> Pisolithus Tintorius can be obtained from: Plant Health Care, Inc.,
>> Pittsburgh, PA <www.planthealthcare.com/> (They sell: MycorTree PT
>> Spore Spray)

>> There may be other sources available.

>>> what do you feed while brewing.

>>> what all goes into the tea?

>> I haven't got that far yet.

> When used with potatoes how is Pisolithus Tinctorius applied? to
> the seed potatoes before planting? segmented or whole? after
> planting? Is Pisolithus Tinctorius best applied

> 1)alone, i.e. according to manufacturer's directions? or

> 2)in compost tea?

> If 2) how/when is it added to the tea?

> What compost tea ingredients would be beneficial

> a)to Pisolithus Tinctorius and/or

> b)in combination with Pisolithus Tinctorius, to plants the tea is
> applied to. What compost tea ingredients would be harmful to, or
> not beneficial to, Pisolithus Tinctorius?

I began farming organically in 1968 and along with a number
of others, constituted CeDeCoR, the Centro para el Desarrollo
Comunitario y Rural (Center for Community and rural Development)
in 1995.

At present, my work focuses on the need to address the kinds of
questions you're asking.

CeDeCoR organizes sustainable agriculture projects, proposes changes
in public policy, elaborates legislative initiatives, and presents
sustainable and equitable models for development.

One of the fundamental elements of our proposals is the need for
developing the crop, region and season specific, biologically
intensive technological packages required to create sustainable
agricultural productions systems that depend on natural biological
processes rather than ... (you already know what and their days are
numbered, whether they know it or not).

The need for organizing collaborative, farm based research projects
forms part of what CeDeCoR proposes (as does SERANet - the Socially
and Ecologically Responsible Agriculture Network, which is part of
our international outreach effort).

So - if any of you are interested in working together to resolve
some of these issues, I'd be glad to form part of that group.

Getting back to your questions, google returned 63,800 hits for
"Pisolithus Tinctorius", one of which is:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:gVnoJdPqyPwJ:plant-materials.nrcs.usda.gov/pubs/nmpmcsy1191.pdf+%22Pisolithus+Tinctorius%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=30&client=mozilla

  The Influence Of Pisolithus Tinctorius Inoculation On Greenhouse
  Growth And First-YearTransplant Survival Of ConiferSeedlings
  By: J.T. Harrington, A.M. Wagner, and D.R. Dreesen

The focus of the article was not seedling growth, not Phytophthora
protection, but does mention the inoculation method used and the
fact that the roots of inoculated seedlings did show signs of
Mycorrhizal colonization :

As I mentioned, I learned long ago that Pisolithus Tinctorius
produces both plant growth factors and substances that are active
against Phytophthora and known to produce significant results with
some plants.

  Three inoculation treatments were used. The first treatment involved
  inoculating 196 seedlings of each species with a commercial source
  of Pisolithus tinctorius six weeks after germination. Inoculation
  was accomplished by drenching the root plug with a spore suspension
  of P. tinctorius in water (MycorTree PT Spore Spray, Plant Health
  Care, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA 1995)...

  Mycorrhizal colonization was determined by removing five to ten
  seedlings of each inoculation by species treatment combination
  from their containers and visually inspecting the root plug for
  presence of mycorrhizal inoculation using a procedure modified
  from Cordell et al. (1990). Lateral roots growing on the periphery
  of the root plug were examined for the presence of root
  bifurcations and fungal hyphae as indicators of the presence of
  mycorrhizal colonization.

I intend to inoculate pineapple offshoots with Pisolithus and
received plans for a machine to producing inoculant from NIFTAL,
a group in Hawaii that supports the use of nitrogen fixing
microorganisms.

If you want to continue this here or on seranet, let me know.

Douglas

---

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:50:08 -0400

Douglas Hinds wrote:

>>>Pisolithus Tinctorius, which produces substances with antibiotic
>>>activity contra Phytophthora, according to sources I found in
>>>Medline (if I recall - I was using Uncover, I believe), a
>>>biomedical database, in 1998. (I don't have the details on this
>>>computer).

> http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/jun2003.html
>   Pisolithus tinctorius is a mycorrhizal fungus, which means that it
>   gets its nutrition in a mutualistic association with the roots of
>   trees, mostly with conifers, but sometimes oaks. Remember that in a
>   mycorrhizal association such as this, both partners benefit. This
>   fungus is very useful in reclamation and reforestation of disturbed
>   and poor soils, such as strip mines. It can survive low pH (high
>   acidity), high concentrations of heavy metals, and high soil
>   temperatures in the summer, along with the accompanying drought. It
>   is also useful in the restrictive environment of nurseries. It seems
>   to be a "super-mycorrhiza," and inoculum of "P.t." in the form of
>   spores can be commercially purchased. So even in the "world's
>   ugliest fungus" there is still some good.

> I haven't got that far yet.

When used with potatoes how is Pisolithus Tinctorius applied? to the seed potatoes before planting? segmented or whole? 
after planting? Is Pisolithus Tinctorius best applied 1)alone, i.e. according to manufacturer's directions? or 2)in 
compost tea? If 2) how/when is it added to the tea? What compost tea ingredients would be beneficial a)to Pisolithus 
Tinctorius and/or b)in combination with Pisolithus Tinctorius, to plants the tea is applied to. What compost tea 
ingredients would be harmful to, or not beneficial to, Pisolithus Tinctorius?

LL
-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
Venaura Farm
[email-masked]
http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/market-farming

---

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:50:08 -0400

LL

---

From: sals <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:38:58 -0700

form of
  spores can be commercially purchased  .  to me spores mean they raise and 
dry it and u just add water and the spores come back to life.  is it like 
they are sleeping till they get the water like they do in nature?  now your 
saying that now not only will the fungus help in the ground doing what it 
does but u want to spray it on the plants .  I always thought it was best to 
put it in the hole before I plant because it come in contact with the root 
of the plant am planting and am hoping it infects that plant.  I thought 
that kind of beneficial fungus had to meet the roots and getting it down to 
roots was the idea.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Douglas Hinds" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: BBC NEWS | UK | England | Tyne/Wear | Researchers hail organic 
potatoes

> After being asked where I was going, I said:
>
> 2- Send a message to <[email-masked]> from the address subscribed to 
> the list. Type "unsubscribe sanet-mg" in the body of the message.
>
> Visit the SANET-MG archives at: 
> http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html.
> For more information on grants and other resources available through the 
> SARE program, please visit http://www.sare.org.
>

---

From: Douglas Hinds <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:25:31 +0200

-- 

Douglas

---

From: Kathryn Marsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:44:24 +0100

>> In the area of phytophthera there isn't a lot I can contribute except
>> my experience in my own garden - for legal reasons I am a government
>> registered potato grower in the garden at Sonairte and therefore
>> cannot save my own potato seeds for more than one year
>
> What prompted Ireland's legislature to legislate that?
>

Ireland derives a lot of income from potato breeding and  
international sales of virus free seed potatoes. It has therefore  
legislated that all commercial potato production must be registered  
and does occasional spot checks for disease on all holdings. In order  
to prevent a build up of virus in farm saved domestic stocks the two  
year rule has been introduced - was four many years ago and has  
gradually been reduced. The registration scheme costs €20 a year per  
holding regardless of the quantity of potatoes produced. I used to  
see a lot of noticeably virus affected fields and these seem to have  
disappeared of late so perhaps it is working. But it certainly isn't  
doing anything towards adapting strains to growing on a particular  
holding

kathryn

---

From: sals <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:26:55 -0700

> Medline (if I recall - I was using Uncover, I believe), a biomedical
> database, in 1998. (I don't have the details on this computer).
>
where do you buy your beneficial fungus and any other life forms your 
raising when you make the tea what do you feed while brewing.  what all goes 
into the tea?

---

From: Douglas Hinds <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 23:39:40 +0200

Jean Ristaino wrote:

> I am reading your comments and am wondering where you are going
> with this.

> Who is Katherine Marsh?

Both Katherine Marsh and I have subscribed to the Sustainable
Agriculture Network Discussion Group (SANET) for many years.
SANET is funded by SARE and has about 1000 subscribers, including
many academics. Dr. Joel Gruver (who was at NCSU if I recall), also
subscribes, for instance.

Visit the SANET-MG archives at: http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html.
Questions? Visit http://www.sare.org/about/sanetFAQ.htm.
For more information on grants and other resources available through the SARE program, please visit
http://www.sare.org.

I don't remember exactly what Katherine does, but both she and John
D hondt (also in Ireland) mentioned that potato blight has been
particularly destructive there this year, particularly to those
fields cultivated relying on chemical inputs rather than biological
processes.

> Who are you and what are your interests in the disease?

I am Coordinador Nacional de Producción Organica
Confederacion Nacional de Propietarios Rurales

I also Chair the Organic Pineapple Working Group of the
International Society for Horticultural Science
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/opwg

and am Director General of the
Centro para el Desarrollo Comunitario y Rural, A.C.
located in Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico

My interest in Phytophthora stems from the fact that it attacks the
roots of the pineapple plant.

Although the INIFAP (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones
Forestales y Agropecuarios - the research arm of Mexico's Agriculture
Secretariat), recommends dipping the roots of pineapple transplants
in fungicide, inoculating their roots with Pisolithus Tintorius
would be a more selective and therefore more appropriate solution,
as well as one that is less likely to create resistance.

> I wrote a proposal a few years back to look at alternatives to
> pesticides for late blight control and was not funded. I have
> interests in this area - but no funding yet.

Your proposal sounds good to me - I hope the sources you solicited
funds from realize soon that your proposal was sound and merits
their support.

Be sure and check out the SARE site for additional sources of
funding.

Thank you for your response.

Douglas Hinds

---------

---

From: Kathryn Marsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 23:09:53 +0100

Sarpo Axona has just started to go down with blight here in north  
Dublin, Sarpo Mira is still clear, as is Symfonia. Lady Eve Balfour  
survived to this week but showed the first signs of blight three days  
ago. I've taken the individual damaged leaves off and I think it will  
keep growing and make a worthwhile crop. Across the road sixty acres  
of Rooster which have been sprayed with Dithane at many times the  
legal limit are being ploughed in today.

kathryn

On 7 Jul 2007, at 22:11, John D'hondt wrote:

> I am Lawrence but so far my own spuds, mixture of many varieties,  
> are healthy enough where it seems that many professional growers in  
> Ireland are plowing their blighted crops under at this moment in  
> one of the most blight prone years seen for a long time. Seems that  
> gallons of Dithane did not save them.
> john
>
>> -
>> The organic food industry has been given a boost after potatoes  
>> which can be grown without chemicals but resist deadly diseases  
>> have been identified.
>
> 2- Send a message to <[email-masked]> from the address  
> subscribed to the list. Type "unsubscribe sanet-mg" in the body of  
> the message.
>
> For more information on grants and other resources available  
> through the SARE program, please visit http://www.sare.org.
>

---

From: Douglas Hinds <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 19:38:31 +0200

Katherine Marsh wrote from Ireland:

> Dublin, Sarpo Mira is still clear, as is Symfonia. Lady Eve
> Balfour survived to this week but showed the first signs of blight
> three days ago. I've taken the individual damaged leaves off and I
> think it will keep growing and make a worthwhile crop. Across the
> road sixty acres of Rooster which have been sprayed with Dithane
> at many times the legal limit are being ploughed in today.

Does history have to repeat itself? Phytophthora attacks the roots
of the pineapple plant and substances produced by the beneficial
fungus Pisolithus Tinctorius are specifically active against it.

This is good re Phytophthora infestans:
<http://www.tigr.org/tdb/e2k1/pima1/index.shtml>
(My comments are interspaced 2 spaces to the left)

  Late blight caused by Phytophthora infestans is a devastating
  disease of potato and tomato in the U.S. and worldwide. Epidemics
  due to P. infestans in 1845 led to the Irish potato famine and the
  mass migration and death of millions of people in Ireland. Late
  blight is now considered a re-emerging disease and has reached
  epidemic proportions in North America and Europe due to the
  development of resistance to the fungicide metalaxyl in
  populations of the pathogen and the widespread occurrence of new
  genotypes.

Fungicides can't change their actions but beneficial organisms can
continue to adapt to any changes the pathogen develops.

  The pathogen causes a destructive foliar blight and
  also infects potato tubers and tomato fruit under cool, moist
  conditions.

That's where a compost tea containing P. Tintorius would fit in.
  
  ... P. infestans was ranked number two by the American
  Phytopathological Society on the list of plant pathogen species
  targeted for DNA sequencing and whole genome sequencing is now
  underway at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. There is a large
  database of genetic information available on P. infestans
  including a genetic linkage map and expressed sequence tag (EST)
  libraries and genetic systems are tractable.

They are attempting to study this pathogen in a vacuum. Studying
it's interactions with other organisms would be much more useful.

  In addition, the Phytophthora research community holds regular
  meetings and exchanges information freely and has formed the
  Phytophthora Molecular Genetic Network whose goal is to facilitate
  the exchange of information and resources related to Phytophthora
  molecular genetics.

Are they looking for the factors that make it a pathogen?
  
  ... One tool that would be of use to scientists and growers would
  be the ability to rapidly genotype isolates of the pathogen.
  Haplotypes could be correlated with virulence

They are.

  and resistance to pesticides

But why limit remediation to chemical solutions that ignore the
causative factors and fail to deal with them? Instead of modifying
the environment in positive ways, this approach worsens
environmental quality and weakens it's equilibrium, diminishing the
presence, activity and diversity of the soil microorganisms
responsible for soil organisms are also responsible for capturing
and facilitating the assimilation of nutrients by plants, as well as
growth-stimulating phyto-hormones and substances with anti-biotic
activity against pathogens.

  and used in epidemiological studies
  
  In addition, whole mitochondrial genome sequence analysis will be
  useful in studies to examine molecular evolution in the pathogen.

It would be more useful if it's interactions with other species were
taken into account, also.

...

  Project Members

  # Jean Beagle Ristaino, Professor, Plant Pathology, N. C. State Univ., [email-masked]
  # C. Robin Buell, Associate Investigator, The Institute for Genomic Research, [email-masked]
  # Luis Alpizar Gomez, Graduate assistant, NCSU, [email-masked]
  # Shu Ouyang, Bioinformatics Analyst, TIGR, [email-masked]

I am sending a copy of this to each of them.

-- 

Douglas Hinds
Coordinador Nacional de Producción Organica
Confederacion Nacional de Propietarios Rurales

Chair, Organic Pineapple Working Group
International Society for Horticultural Science
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/opwg

Dir. Gral.

---

From: Douglas Hinds <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 18:02:48 +0200

John D'hondt wrote:

> so far my own spuds, mixture of many varieties, are healthy enough
> where it seems that many professional growers in Ireland are
> plowing their blighted crops under at this moment in one of the
> most blight prone years seen for a long time. Seems that gallons
> of Dithane did not save them.

This is what the dowagro.com website says about it's specialty
fungicide dithane:

  Attention: This product contains mancozeb and ETU, chemicals known
  to the state of California to cause cancer. ETU is also known to
  the state of California to cause birth defects or other
  reproductive harm.

Non-selective, cancer causing fungicides are not the answer.
The future of agriculture requires a different mentality.

Where fungal blight is a problem, try inoculating seed potatoes with
Pitholithus Tintorius, a beneficial fungus known to promote plant
growth and produce substances with antibiotic activity against
pathological fungi.

-- 

Douglas

---

From: John D'hondt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 22:11:01 +0100

> John D'hondt might be interested in this.

I am Lawrence but so far my own spuds, mixture of many varieties, are 
healthy enough where it seems that many professional growers in Ireland are 
plowing their blighted crops under at this moment in one of the most blight 
prone years seen for a long time. Seems that gallons of Dithane did not save 
them.
john

> The organic food industry has been given a boost after potatoes which can 
> be grown without chemicals but resist deadly diseases have been 
> identified.