scholarly journals Resistance genes in global crop breeding networks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. Garrett ◽  
K. F. Andersen ◽  
F. Asche ◽  
R. L. Bowden ◽  
G. A. Forbes ◽  
...  

AbstractResistance genes are a major tool for managing crop diseases. The crop breeder networks that exchange resistance genes and deploy them in varieties help to determine the global landscape of resistance and epidemics, an important system for maintaining food security. These networks function as a complex adaptive system, with associated strengths and vulnerabilities, and implications for policies to support resistance gene deployment strategies. Extensions of epidemic network analysis can be used to evaluate the multilayer agricultural networks that support and influence crop breeding networks. We evaluate the general structure of crop breeding networks for cassava, potato, rice, and wheat, which illustrate a range of public and private configurations. These systems must adapt to global change in climate and land use, the emergence of new diseases, and disruptive breeding technologies. Principles for maintaining system resilience can be applied to global resistance gene deployment. For example, both diversity and redundancy in the roles played by individual crop breeding groups (public versus private, global versus local) may support societal goals for crop production. Another principle is management of connectivity. Enhanced connectivity among crop breeders may benefit resistance gene deployment, but increase risks to the durability of resistance genes without effective policies regarding deployment.

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (10) ◽  
pp. 1268-1278 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. Garrett ◽  
K. F. Andersen ◽  
F. Asche ◽  
R. L. Bowden ◽  
G. A. Forbes ◽  
...  

Resistance genes are a major tool for managing crop diseases. The networks of crop breeders who exchange resistance genes and deploy them in varieties help to determine the global landscape of resistance and epidemics, an important system for maintaining food security. These networks function as a complex adaptive system, with associated strengths and vulnerabilities, and implications for policies to support resistance gene deployment strategies. Extensions of epidemic network analysis can be used to evaluate the multilayer agricultural networks that support and influence crop breeding networks. Here, we evaluate the general structure of crop breeding networks for cassava, potato, rice, and wheat. All four are clustered due to phytosanitary and intellectual property regulations, and linked through CGIAR hubs. Cassava networks primarily include public breeding groups, whereas others are more mixed. These systems must adapt to global change in climate and land use, the emergence of new diseases, and disruptive breeding technologies. Research priorities to support policy include how best to maintain both diversity and redundancy in the roles played by individual crop breeding groups (public versus private and global versus local), and how best to manage connectivity to optimize resistance gene deployment while avoiding risks to the useful life of resistance genes. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license .


Author(s):  
K. Geiselhart

The recent advent of Internet technologies has greatly intensified existing globalization processes. The development of full multimedia international communications has the potential to democratize information flows. Citizens can communicate with each other and with governments to create and document public and private accountabilities beyond jurisdictional borders. Ironically, it is also now possible to achieve intensive and intrusive surveillance of individuals and organisations, virtually untraceable criminal exchanges of data, and even forms of cyberwarfare. These possibilities are all part of the global information commons. Like physical common spaces, beneficial and nefarious elements coexist. A working definition of the global information commons is the set of all information systems critical to managing global resources and governance, and the set of protocols for their exchange. While both cumbersome and broad, this definition of the global information commons helps to ground it as a concept that can be modelled and managed. It responds to Dahl’s query about the possibility of a third transformation of democracy beyond the nation-state. This article considers key issues for the emerging global information commons. These relate to the role of new technologies in possible forms of global governance. Global governance is here considered to be the emerging mechanisms for managing trans-national issues and resources. These can be particular to a specific issue or resource, such as the fisheries, or may be more formal, such as the European Union. Governance can be seen as a management function, much as the “governors” on early steam trains. First, the author presents an overview of technology as socially determined, followed by a sketch of how global governance may be seen as a complex adaptive system. This includes an analysis of how models might embed democratic structures. Finally, examples of sub-systems of the global information commons demonstrate the range of actors and rules such a system would need to consider. This theoretical perspective builds on empirical work in the physical, biological, and social sciences and emphasizes the value of modelling governance at all scales. This approach is seen as fruitful for identifying and monitoring dynamic patterns. It provides useful insights for managing the global information commons. In human systems, the rules of interaction and information exchange are determined by the values of the actors (Theys, 1998). Modelling can help to articulate these values. In complex human systems, the direction of change can be as important as absolute measures.


2012 ◽  
pp. 82-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Foley

Mathematical methods are only one moment in a layered process of theory generation in political economy, which starts from Schumpeterian vision, progresses to the identification of relevant abstractions, the development of mathematical and quantitative models, and the confrontation of theories with empirical data through statistical methods. But today the relevant abstract problems of political economy are modified to fit available mathematical tools. The role of empirical research in disciplining theoretical speculation, on which the scientific traditions integrity rests, was undermined by specific limitations of nascent econometric methods, and usurped by ex cathedra methodological fiats of theorists. These developmentssystematically favored certain ideological predispositions of economicsas a discipline. There is abundant room for New Thinking in political economy starting from the vision of the capitalist economy as a complex, adaptive system far from equilibrium, including the development of the theory of statistical fluctuations for economic interactions, redirection of macroeconomics and financial economics from path prediction toward an understanding of the qualitative properties of the system, introduction of constructive and computable methods into economic modeling, and the critical reconstruction of econometric statistical methods.


Glottotheory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Csaba Földes

AbstractThis paper deals with constellations in which, as consequences of linguistic interculturality, elements of two or more languages encounter each other and result in something partially or completely new, an – occasionally temporary – “third quality”, namely hybridity. The paper contributes to the meta-discourse and theory formation by questioning the concept, term and content of “linguistic hybridity”. It also submits a proposal for a typology of linguistic-communicative hybridity that consists of the following prototypical main groups, each with several subtypes: (1) language-cultural, (2) semiotic, (3) medial, (4) communicative, (5) systematic, (6) paraverbal and (7) nonverbal hybridity. At last, the paper examines hybridity as an explanatory variable for language change. In conclusion, hybridity is generally a place of cultural production, with special regard to communication and language it is potentially considered as an incubator of linguistic innovation. Hybridity can be seen as the engine and as the result of language change, or language development. It represents an essential factor by which language functions and develops as a complex adaptive system. Hybridity operates as a continuous cycle. By generating innovation, it triggers language change, which in turn, leads to further and new hybridizations. The processuality of hybridity creates diversity, while at the same time it can cause the vanishing of diversity.


Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 230
Author(s):  
Shan Wan ◽  
Min Xia ◽  
Jie Tao ◽  
Yanjun Pang ◽  
Fugen Yu ◽  
...  

In this study, we used a metagenomic approach to analyze microbial communities, antibiotic resistance gene diversity, and human pathogenic bacterium composition in two typical landfills in China. Results showed that the phyla Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria were predominant in the two landfills, and archaea and fungi were also detected. The genera Methanoculleus, Lysobacter, and Pseudomonas were predominantly present in all samples. sul2, sul1, tetX, and adeF were the four most abundant antibiotic resistance genes. Sixty-nine bacterial pathogens were identified from the two landfills, with Klebsiella pneumoniae, Bordetella pertussis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Bacillus cereus as the major pathogenic microorganisms, indicating the existence of potential environmental risk in landfills. In addition, KEGG pathway analysis indicated the presence of antibiotic resistance genes typically associated with human antibiotic resistance bacterial strains. These results provide insights into the risk of pathogens in landfills, which is important for controlling the potential secondary transmission of pathogens and reducing workers’ health risk during landfill excavation.


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