Foto: Colleen Fischer
 

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La cuisine végétarienne a un côté artistique que les autres n’ont pas, elle est pleine de couleurs, de saveurs, de parfums, elle est subtile, elle est sensible. C’est une cuisine de rendez-vous.

Alain Passard  

https://bit.ly/3l4ZmPu 

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Noam Chomsky - Mathematics, Language and Abstract Objects
 

Agricultural diversification promotes multiple ecosystem services without compromising yield      

Tamburini et al., 2020

Enhancing biodiversity in cropping systems is suggested to promote ecosystem services, thereby reducing dependency on agronomic inputs while maintaining high crop yields. We assess the impact of several diversification practices in cropping systems on above- and belowground biodiversity and ecosystem services by reviewing 98 meta-analyses and performing a second-order meta-analysis based on 5160 original studies comprising 41,946 comparisons between diversified and simplified practices. Overall, diversification enhances biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation without compromising crop yields. Practices targeting aboveground biodiversity boosted pest control and water regulation, while those targeting belowground biodiversity enhanced nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation. Most often, diversification practices resulted in win-win support of services and crop yields. Variability in responses and occurrence of trade-offs highlight the context dependency of outcomes. Widespread adoption of diversification practices shows promise to contribute to biodiversity conservation and food security from local to global scales.

 

Vote count reveals that agricultural diversification practices generally have a positive impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Number of reported effect sizes with a significant positive (green), negative (red), or neutral (gray) response to agricultural diversification, overall (A) and to each category of diversification practice separately (B to G).

 

Fig. 2 Second-order meta-analysis shows how agriculture diversification promotes biodiversity and ecosystem services without compromising crop yield when compared with cropping systems without these practices.(A) All diversification practices included (324 effect sizes and 69 meta-analyses, based on 5160 original studies with 41,946 comparisons). (B) Diversification practices targeting the aboveground environment (crop and noncrop diversity; 91 effect sizes and 24 meta analyses). (C) Diversification practices targeting the belowground environment (organic amendment, reduced tillage, and inoculation; 211 effect sizes and 55 meta-analyses). Note the difference in scale of the x axes when comparing (A) with (B) and (C). Organic farming is included only in the global model (A) since it often includes practices targeting both above- and belowground environments. The number of effect sizes and meta-analyses included in each category are displayed in parentheses.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/45/eaba1715

 

 

 

This Compost 

Walt Whitman

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will
   none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

http://www.kendyllhillegas.com
 

An Apple a Day: Which Bacteria Do We Eat With Organic and Conventional Apples? 
Wassermann et al., 2020

Apples are among the most consumed fruits world-wide. They represent a source of direct human exposure to bacterial communities, which is less studied. We analyzed the apple microbiome to detect differences between tissues and the impact of organic and conventional management by a combined approach of 16S rRNA gene amplicon analysis and qPCR, and visualization using fluorescence in situ hybridization and confocal laser scanning microscopy (FISH-CLSM). Each apple fruit harbors different tissues (stem, peel, fruit pulp, seeds, and calyx), which were colonized by distinct bacterial communities. Interestingly, fruit pulp and seeds were bacterial hot spots, while the peel was less colonized. In all, approximately 10⁸ 16S rRNA bacterial gene copy numbers were determined in each g apple. Abundances were not influenced by the management practice but we found a strong reduction in bacterial diversity and evenness in conventionally managed apples. In addition, despite the similar structure in general dominated by Proteobacteria (80%), Bacteroidetes (9%), Actinobacteria (5%), and Firmicutes (3%), significant shifts of almost 40% of bacterial genera and orders were monitored. Among them, especially bacterial signatures known for health-affecting potential were found to be enhanced in conventionally managed apples. Our results suggest that we consume about 100 million bacterial cells with one apple. Although this amount was the same, the bacterial composition was significantly different in conventionally and organically produced apples.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.01629/full

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The end of endings 

with Timothy Morton’s philosophy

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 Luna Ikuta

 

  

 

Evidence for the plant recruitment of beneficial microbes to suppress soil‐borne pathogen 

Liu et al., 2020

• Emerging experimental framework suggests that plants under biotic stress may actively seek help from soil microbes, but empirical evidence underlying such a ‘cry for help’ strategy is limited.
• We used integrated microbial community profiling, pathogen and plant transcriptive gene quantification and culture‐based methods to systematically investigate a three‐way interaction between the wheat plant, wheat‐associated microbiomes and Fusarium pseudograminearum (Fp).
• A clear enrichment of a dominant bacterium, Stenotrophomonas rhizophila (SR80), was observed in both the rhizosphere and root endosphere of Fp‐infected wheat. SR80 reached 3.7×10⁷ cells g^‐1 in the rhizosphere and accounted for up to 11.4% of the microbes in the root endosphere. Its abundance had a positive linear correlation with the pathogen load at base stems and expression of multiple defense genes in top leaves. Upon re‐introduction in soils, SR80 enhanced plant growth, both the below‐ and above‐ground, and induced strong disease resistance by boosting plant defense in the aboveground plant parts, but only when the pathogen was present.
• Together, the bacterium SR80 seems to have acted as an early warning system for plant defense. This work provides novel evidence for the potential protection of plants against pathogens by an enriched beneficial microbe via modulation of the plant immune system.

 

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.17057 

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