MAES News
September 1, 2004
- MAES Scientist Named Rachel Carson Chair
- MAES Researcher Leads Group Review of Berkeley’s Venture into New Way of Funding Science
- MAES Horticultural Scientists Honored at National Meeting
- MAES Scientist Honored by ASA
- MSU Wheat Variety Trials Show Scab-resistant Varieties
- More People Approve of Stem Cell Research
- CABI Compendium Available to Land-grant University Faculty/Staff
- Futures Featured on Japanese Library Web sites
MAES Scientist Named Rachel Carson Chair
MAES fisheries and wildlife scientist Jianguo (Jack) Liu was named to the Rachel Carson Chair in Ecological Sustainability in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in June.
The Rachel Carson chair is named for the founder of the contemporary environmental movement and author of the seminal book “Silent Spring.” The book’s title was the result of research and documentation by George Wallace MSU ornithologist and colleague of Rachel Carson, and one of his graduate students, John Mehner, who studied robin populations. Their work revealed that thousands of robins had died because of the use of pesticides.
Liu’s research focuses on biocomplexity, studying the interactions of various environmental policies and actions and their cumulative and reciprocal effects on the environment. He is also the director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS), which conducts research on emerging issues related to ecological sustainability and trains new generations of leading scientists and practitioners for interdisciplinary discovery and applications. He is internationally known for research integrating ecology with socioeconomics and demography to address societal issues, such as the effects of global household dynamics on biodiversity and resource consumption, and the dynamics of coupled human and natural systems, including the Wolong Nature Reserve in the Sichuan province of southwestern China, which is one of the largest homes to the endangered giant panda.
“There was a need for recognition of the expertise that we have as a university in investigating environmental problems and their solutions,” said Bill Taylor, chairperson of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. “It was clear that as Dr. Liu’s program developed, he exemplifies the ideal person to be the Rachel Carson chair -- outstanding intellect, compassionate world citizen, a willingness to investigate challenging ecological and socioeconomic issues, and to do so with great integrity and fearlessness. He is an excellent mentor, faculty member and human being who wishes to leave this world and its humanity better off than when he entered. Without question, he has the intellectual and personal skills to make the leaps in knowledge that are necessary for such a future. He epitomizes the traits of Rachel Carson. I'm sure she would be pleased.”
MAES Researcher Leads Group Review of Berkeley’s Venture into New Way of Funding Science
When a big corporation acquired the research enterprise of an entire California university science department, it hoped it was sowing a bounty of discovery and profit. Instead, a new report indicates, it probably reaped more grief than the partnership was worth.
That is the greatest legacy of the nation’s closely followed and much debated marriage between the University of California-Berkeley and the Swiss pharmaceutical and agrochemical company Novartis.
A group of social and natural scientists at Michigan State University, several of them MAES researchers, released a report commissioned by the faculty senate at Berkeley that examines the fallout of an unprecedented partnership.
It was a campus controversy that became a symbol of the tensions and angst over the very state of contemporary public higher education in California, in land-grant institutions and across the country.
“This incident was a kind of lightning rod for a whole set of issues about what universities are going to be in the 21st century,” said Lawrence Busch, MAES scientist, university distinguished professor of sociology and principal investigator. “A lot of people were very unhappy with the general direction of the university. We recommend avoiding these kinds of agreements in the future. While most of the concerns of critics did not materialize, this type of agreement is just asking for trouble and is going to get you more grief than benefits.”
The group of 10 MSU experts conducted essentially a postmortem on the unprecedented partnership that began in November 1998 on the Berkeley campus. Its Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (PMB) signed a five-year collaborative research agreement with Novartis in which the company agreed to pay the department up to $25 million in research support over the five years.
In this widely discussed -- and criticized -- private sponsorship of university research, the PMB also was given access to Novartis' gene sequencing technology and DNA database on plant genomics. For its part, Novartis was given first rights to negotiate licenses to patents on a proportion of the discoveries made in the department and received two seats on a five-member committee set up to select research projects.
The deal struck several nerves.
Concerns were raised about the influence of industry money on academic research, on the shaping of research priorities and especially on maintaining what many see as the most precious commodity in academe: credibility.
“I can understand why many want to see products from universities turned into profitable products, but it runs the risk of destroying the integrity of the university, and essentially what you are doing is killing the goose that lays the golden egg,” Busch said.
The Berkeley-Novartis partnership also played out in uncharted waters. Large-scale industry partnerships aren’t unheard of in the natural sciences, but they are more common in the medical field. Large grants aren’t unusual, but they typically go to individual researchers or research teams. The wholesale funding of a department was revolutionary – and, Busch said, done quickly without proper safeguards.
“It gives the impression that the whole department has been bought – that the university is a captive of the funding agency,” Busch said. “If you want to find out what’s going on in the biotech industry, would you go to a department that is the recipient of substantial largesse by one biotech company? This doesn’t go over well with lots of people.”
The group -- experts in sociology, plant science, intellectual property and higher education administration -- conducted the independent study as requested by Berkeley’s academic senate.
Among its recommendations:
- Avoid industry agreements that involve entire academic units or large groups of researchers.
- Reassess the broad implications of conflicts of interest that stretch beyond researchers and include administrators and those serving on national and international advisory panels.
- Encourage broad debate early in the process of developing new research agendas.
- Be attentive to creating new goals motivated by self-interest. “We found this created a rather strong bias for members of the department,” Busch said. “If somebody waves big dollars in front of someone -- especially administrators short of cash -- they will work hard to show that this is a good idea. You have to have some controls; you can’t just say that because it’s a lot of money, it’s a good idea."
- Do a better job of educating the public on the specific nature of intellectual property, technology transfer and the nature of institutional accountability.
- Begin the difficult task of determining the role a public land-grant university should play in the 21st century.
The review, “External Review of the Collaborative Research Agreement between Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute, Inc., and the Regents of the University of California,” was conducted by Busch; MAES plant biologist Richard Allison; MAES sociologists Craig Harris and Alan Rudy; sociologists Toby Ten Eyck and Dawn Coppin; intellectual property manager Bradley Shaw; educational administration expert James Fairweather; and sociology doctoral students Jason Konefal and Christopher Oliver.
The review was conducted with $225,000 from Berkeley.
“We are hoping this will create a universitywide discussion on these questions and put the issues on the table,” Busch said. “These are the critical questions that should be discussed everywhere. They are now being addressed by individual administrators looking to find an extra buck, and I’m confident that isn’t the way to do it.
“Ideally, this will start a national debate among faculty members about what we’d like the universities to look like, especially public and land-grant universities.”
MAES
Horticultural Scientists Honored at National Meeting
left: Sylvan Wittwer and his wife enjoy the ASHS annual meeting welcome reception.
right: Art Cameron (left), who gave the Tex Frazier
Lecture at the ASHS annual meeting, was introduced by Jules Janick,
of Purdue University (right).
Several MAES scientists were recognized for their research and publications at the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) annual meeting July 17-20 in Austin, Texas.
Sylvan Wittwer, former director of the MAES and professor emeritus of horticulture, was elected to the ASHS Horticulture Hall of Fame. Wittwer was recognized for contributions to the advancement of technological agriculture and agricultural research. A world-renowned horticultural researcher and administrator, he served as director of the MAES from 1964 to 1983.
Wittwer, whose original research and studies dealt with the atmospheric carbon dioxide enhancement of food crop production, has provided technical assistance to research and development projects in the Near East, Africa, Southeast Asia, South and Central America, China and the Far East. He focused on the findings of science and the experience of practice on enhancing the food security of people throughout the world.
From 1973 to 1977, he served as chairperson of the Board of Agriculture of the National Research Council. He also served as a consultant for all international agricultural research centers, all U.S. federal agencies relating to agriculture and environment, the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank.
The author of more than 750 peer-reviewed articles and scientific reports, Wittwer wrote the book “Feeding a BILLION,” a documentation of Chinese science and agriculture and the success of the Chinese in food self-sufficiency for thousands of years.
Art Cameron, MAES horticultural scientist, delivered the annual Tex Frazier Lecture in the opening plenary session of the meeting. To be invited to deliver this lecture is a huge honor and recognition of one’s research contributions. Cameron’s lecture was titled “Flowering of Herbaceous Perennials: Evolutionary Horticulture.”
MAES horticultural researchers Wayne Loescher and Steve van Nocker received the 2003 ASHS Fruit Publication Award for the most outstanding paper on fruit crops published by the society. The paper was co-authored with former graduate students Sang-Dong Yoo, Zhifang Gao and Claudio Cantini. The paper, “Fruit Ripening in Sour Cherry: Changes in Expression of Genes Encoding Expansions and Other Cell Wall-modifying Enzymes,” appeared in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science. The paper reported on research on the causes of fruit softening in tart cherries, a problem that has plagued the cherry industry in Michigan. This work was supported by Project GREEEN.
Dave Douches, MAES crop and soil sciences researcher; Ed Grafius, MAES entomology researcher; Joseph Coombs, research assistant; Wenbin Li, former post-doctoral student; and Walt Pett, assistant professor of entomology, received the 2003 ASHS Vegetable Publication Award for the most outstanding paper on vegetable crops published by the society. Their paper, “Field Evaluation of Natural, Engineered and Combined Resistance Mechanisms in Potato for Control of Colorado Potato Beetle,” was published in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science.
Cholani Weebadde, horticultural graduate student, and Jim Hancock, MAES horticulture researcher, authored a poster presentation, delivered by Weebadde, “Mapping QTL Mapping for Day-neutrality in Strawberry.” The poster presentation was ranked second in the competition, besting 96 other presentations. Weebadde received a monetary award for the poster.
Thomas Dietz, MAES-affiliated crop and soil sciences and sociology researcher and director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program, received the Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Environment and Technology Section at the ASA annual meeting in August.
Dietz was honored for a series of articles -- co-authored with Richard York, of the University of Oregon, and Eugene Rosa, of Washington State University -- published in 2002 and 2003 in American Sociological Review, Ecological Economics, Organization and Environment, and Social Science Quarterly. The articles discuss a method of analysis that examines the human drivers of environmental change in a way that draws on both the physical and biological sciences and the social sciences. The scientists used this method to compare various countries.
“Our practical goal is to find leverage points where we can reduce adverse impacts on the environment with the least social and economic costs,” Dietz explained. “These leverage points may lie in patterns of consumption, in the technology used, in government policies or elsewhere.”
Dietz, York and Rosa were cited for their research productivity, their consistent wedding of theory and empirical research, the professional visibility of their scholarship and the groundbreaking nature of their work.
The Outstanding Publication Award is a biannual recognition of outstanding scholarship in environmental sociology by a member of the ASA section. The selection committee reviews peer- and self-nominated books and journal articles over the immediate past two years. The winner must show knowledge of current environmental social theory, state-of-the-art research methodology, and new and exciting findings about the relationship between society and the environment.
MSU Wheat Variety Trials Show Scab-resistant Varieties
With wheat harvest completed, growers are dealing with the marketing challenges posed by an outbreak of fusarium head blight (also called wheat scab), a topic that will still be on their minds as they plan their fall planting.
The newly released 2004 Michigan State University (MSU) wheat variety trial report shows that several red and white varieties and breeding lines demonstrated resistance to scab. Preliminary unpublished results also indicate that those same materials had low levels of vomitoxin, a natural byproduct of scab.
“This year’s results enable me to state unequivocally that varieties with significant economic scab resistance are entering the market,” said Rick Ward, MAES crop and soil sciences researcher and MSU wheat breeder.
The report includes data on scab symptoms from an inoculated nursery and from a Lenawee County trial site. Many yield test varieties escape scab if their flowering dates miss rainy spells, but this was not the case for the 2004 trials at these two sites.
”Our Lenawee site experienced conditions conducive to scab throughout the flowering period of all varieties,” Ward said. “I’m highly confident in the data we collected on symptoms, and equally important, I’m also highly confident that the Lenawee yield and test weight data are valuable indicators of a variety’s ability to perform in the face of severe scab pressure.”
Scab resistance in varieties such as Missouri’s new red variety, ‘Truman’ are a major breakthrough in the efforts to eliminate scab as a threat to the wheat industry in at least 22 states. The U.S. Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative helps coordinate research on scab in these states (see www.scabusa.org), and ‘Truman’ is a direct result of its efforts.
The MSU report separates results for red and white varieties. It shows that Ward’s efforts to breed white varieties with scab resistance are paying off.
“MSU’s white wheat line E0009 showed scab resistance in specialized inoculated nurseries before this year,” he said. “This year’s results seem to prove that this resistance is real.”
The MSU wheat variety trial report is available online at www.msue.msu.edu/msuwheat/ PDFs/2004_YT_Report_Final.pdf.
To learn more about MSU’s wheat program, visit www.msue.msu.edu/msuwheat/.
More People Approve of Stem Cell Research
The number of Americans who approve of embryonic stem cell research has increased from three years ago, and the number who disapprove has fallen by almost half, according to a recent Harris poll detailed in the Aug. 18, 2004, issue of Wired.
Seventy-three percent of the people polled last month approved of the research, compared with 61 percent in 2001, the last time Harris researched the issue. The number of people who disapprove fell by almost half, from 21 percent to 11 percent.
And more people are aware of the debate: 68 percent of people polled in 2001 had heard or read about stem cell issues, but 83 percent were familiar with the subject in 2004.
The pollsters interviewed 2,242 adults online between July 12 and July 18, 2004.
“The results of the poll indicate that journalists and scientists are doing a good job at educating the American people on the potential benefits embryonic stem cells may have,” said Jose Cibelli, MAES stem cell and therapeutic cloning scientist. “We need the support to explore the potential of these cells.”
He added, however, that those who support stem cell research should be wary of hype.
“The last thing we want is to create false expectations in patients that need therapies today; we are walking on a tightrope here,” Cibelli said.
Embryonic stem cells have the ability to become any of the hundreds of cell types in the human body. The cells are controversial because they are taken from days-old embryos still in the blastocyst phase, before development arms, legs or other organs. Some groups believe the blastocyst is a human life to be respected like any other.
The poll also breaks down the results according to religion and gets surprising results. The poll asked: “Stem cells come from embryos left over from in vitro fertilization, which are not used and normally destroyed. Many medical researchers want to use them to develop treatment, or to prevent diseases, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. On balance, do you think this research should or should not be allowed?” Fifty-eight percent of respondents who identified themselves as born-again Christians favored the research; 21 percent thought it should not be allowed. Sixty-seven percent of Roman Catholic respondents approved; 15 percent disapproved. Protestants approved 77 percent while 10 percent disapproved.
CABI Compendium Available to Land-grant University Faculty/Staff
An agreement between the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES) and CABI publishing provides access to CABI publishing’s compendia series. Land-grant faculty and staff members can access the three compendia in the series through 2,000 access points. The three compendia cover animal health, crop protection and forestry. The compendia are interactive encyclopedic knowledge bases of peer-reviewed information that has been developed by an international consortium that includes five U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) agencies – the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), CSREES, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) and the Forest Service (FS). The regional integrated pest management centers are leading the distribution efforts in cooperation with the National Animal Health Laboratory Network and the National Plant Diagnostic Network.
For access: www.ipmcenters.org/cabi.
For more information, contact Bill Hoffman at whoffman@csrees.usda.gov.
Futures Featured on Japanese Library Web sites
The Library of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) in Japan has begun offering access to its collection of magazines and journals on its Web site, and Futures, the magazine of the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, is one of the publications featured.
The MAFF Library Web site is http://www.maff.go.jp/library/monthly/200408/magazine_review0408.html.
Futures also will be featured on the Japanese National Diet Library archived Web sites, allowing users to access any issue of the magazine at any time.
