Author: Editorial Board

Although only 8mm in length the Queensland fruit fly, or Q-fly, is a highly mobile insect capable of infecting a wide range of major fruit and vegetable crops, including stone and tropical fruits. The spread of Q-fly in Australia’s eastern states is threatening the nation’s A$6.9 billion horticultural industry, which relies on both domestic and international trade.

Until recently, farmers located in areas where Q-fly is present have used agri-chemicals – such as dimethoate and fenthion – to prevent and manage incursions. However, after a long period of review, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has recently restricted the use of these insecticides.

According to CSIRO researcher Dr Paul De Barro, increased Q-fly numbers can also threaten status of pest free areas.

“We believe that our sterile insect technology (SIT), through development of a male-only line of Q-fly, will offer a new environmentally friendly, sustainable and cost effective approach to assist in managing this damaging pest.” Dr De Barro said.

“SIT is a scientifically proven method for suppressing or eradicating fruit fly populations and managing their potential impacts in horticulture production areas.”

This biological control method has already been used with great success around the world and in South Australia to combat the Mediterranean fruit fly. However, the development of male-only sterile Q-fly is a first.

“Despite all our knowledge of fruit flies, we do not actually know where they go to breed,” Dr De Barro said.

“When you’re looking to deploy sterile male flies to disrupt the mating cycle this information is a critical piece of the puzzle.”

By using micro sensing technology on Q-flies, as we have done with honey bees in Tasmania, CSIRO will be able to answer that question and, most importantly, understand where to deploy sterile Q-flies and also how to make better use of other management options such as new trapping systems and pheromone baits.

“It will tell us how many sterile flies we will need to release and most importantly, when to release them,” Dr De Barro said.

“Combining SIT with other sensor technologies represents a game-changing opportunity as it not only provides us with information about how the Q-fly interacts with its natural environment, but offers real opportunities to reduce the cost of current monitoring networks for fruit fly.”

According to Horticulture Australia Limited’s David Moore, General Manager R&D Services, this initiative is the first effort in a long time at investing in medium to long term research that will provide a sustainable solution to Australia’s fruit fly problem and its impact on production and market access.

“There is still a lot of work to be done but compared to examples of overseas best practice along with the shared vision and dedicated support of key investors and industry, we’re confident that this project will deliver real impact for Australian farming communities,” Mr Moore said.

CSIRO, Horticulture Australia Limited, Plant and Food Research, the Department of Primary Industries and Regions South Australia and New South Wales Department of Primary Industries are working together to develop a male only line of sterile Q-fly.

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What do a dancer, a chess player, a visual artist, a trumpeter, an architect, and a cab driver have in common?

In the case of the dancer, the chess player, the visual artist, the trumpeter, the architect, and the cab driver profiled in trained molecular biologist and neuroscientist and The Rough Guide to the Brain author Barry J. Gibb’s abNormal above, they share… well, abnormality, in some sense or another. This half-hour documentary, which Gibb made in consultation with psychologist and neuroimaging researcher Chris Frith, “points a microscope at human behaviour, asking viewers to question their perceptions of others and even of themselves.

Providing the most detailed and accurate representation of soil organic carbon stocks, to a depth of 30 cm, at a national scale, the 2010 soil organic carbon map for Australia, draws on soil sampling data and innovative prediction methods. The map includes an estimate of soil carbon stock and an estimate of the uncertainty for approximately two billion football-field-sized blocks (90m by 90m) across Australia.

“This map is the first effective nationwide baseline of organic carbon levels in the top 30 cm of soil, which comes with estimates of uncertainty,” according to lead researcher, Dr Raphael Viscarra Rossel.

Until now, estimates of soil organic carbon across the breadth of Australia have not been available or were largely uncertain because of large gaps in data and the limits of past measurement and spatial modelling.

“The map provides a reliable benchmark for Australia to monitor the influence that changes in land cover, climate, land management and greenhouse gas offset activities have on soil carbon stocks and associated carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere,” Dr Viscarra Rossel said.

In assembling the new map, CSIRO drew on three major datasets, including CSIRO’s National Soil and Spectral databases and the national Soil Carbon Research Program – a nationally coordinated research program led by CSIRO, universities and state government agencies and funded by the Australian Government and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

The map and its prediction methods provide new insight into the environmental drivers that determine the distribution of soil carbon across the nation, its diverse bioregions and its states and territories.

“Australia’s largest soil organic carbon stores per hectare occur in the cool, temperate zones, which have higher-than-average rainfall and extensive rainforests and eucalyptus forests,” Dr Viscarra Rossel said.

“These larger stocks of organic soil carbon tend to coincide with southern states and regions fringing the coastlines, where wetter and cooler conditions produce more vegetation growth with slower decomposition and loss of carbon dioxide. South Australia, due to its large amount of desert, is an exception; its soils contain the least amount of organic carbon per hectare, followed by northern and western jurisdictions and regions exposed to Mediterranean, subtropical and tropical climates.”

The average amount of organic carbon in the top 30 cm of Australian soil was estimated to be 29.7 tonnes per hectare and the total stock for the continent at 25.0 gigatonnes (Gt= 1000 million tonnes) with a 95 per cent confidence of being within the range of 19.0 to 31.8 Gt. The total stock in agricultural regions of Australia is 12.7 Gt with 95 per cent confidence of being within the range of 9.9 to 15.9 Gt.

The new map and associated estimates and uncertainties have important applications, according to Dr Viscarra Rossel.

“The maps of the estimates and their uncertainty are for 2010 and could be used to:

(1) set a baseline from which Australia’s national soil carbon stocks could be monitored

(2) guide the design of national soil monitoring networks

(3) help guide future soil sampling designed to improve estimates of Australia’s soil carbon stocks

(4) help to assess the potential of Australian soil to sequester carbon

(5) improve Australia’s terrestrial carbon budgeting

(6) assist with strategies to mitigate and adapt to the effects of a changing climate.”

This work was published this week in the journal, Global Change Biology through CSIRO’s Sustainable Agriculture Flagship.

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The world is a dynamic mess of jiggling things, if you look at it right.

When you see an ordinary rubber band stretched around and holding together a stack of stuff over a long period of time, you’re actually witnessing a miraculous force of physics at work — a perpetual pounding of the atoms as they struggle to hold these chains together against the outward push of the stack, vibrating with extraordinary vigor just to accomplish this seemingly mundane task. That peeling away of the mundane to reveal the magnificent is the greatest gift and most lasting legacy of Richard Feynman — champion of scientific culture, graphic novel hero, crusader for integrity, secret artist. Indeed, it was this very talent that earned Feynman the moniker “the Great Explainer

An international team of researchers has found evidence that the steam and heat from volcanoes and heated rocks allowed many species of plants and animals to survive past ice ages, helping scientists understand how species respond to climate change.

The research could solve a long-running mystery about how some species survived and continued to evolve through past ice ages in parts of the planet covered by glaciers.

The team, led by Dr Ceridwen Fraser from the Australian National University and Dr Aleks Terauds from the Australian Antarctic Division, studied tens of thousands of records of Antarctic species, collected over decades by hundreds of researchers, and found there are more species close to volcanoes, and fewer further away.

“Volcanic steam can melt large ice caves under the glaciers, and it can be tens of degrees warmer in there than outside. Caves and warm steam fields would have been great places for species to hang out during ice ages,

“When the profit motive gets unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen.