|
| |
Greetings from C-CIARN Agriculture We look forward to seeing many of you three weeks today at our Ottawa meeting on February 25, 2004. Rooms at the Holiday Inn are held under "C-CIARN" until Feb. 6th. Upcoming Events Climate Change Adaptation - a Producer Perspective. C-CIARN Agriculture Meeting, Ottawa, February 25, 2004. Holiday Inn Plaza la Chaudiere, Gatineau, Quebec. 8:30a.m. - 2:00p.m. Long-Range Climate and Impacts Forecasting Working Group Meeting. Ramada Inn and Conference Centre, Guelph, Ont., March 15-17, 2004. Managing Risks from a Changing Climate, Making Adaptation Happen. C-CIARN Ontario Workshop, Guelph, Ontario. Communities and the Impact of Climate Change Conference. CUSO meeting, March 18-22, Winnipeg, Manitoba. News Items Farmers brace for another dry year: Moisture conditions nearly as severe as 2002 drought. The Edmonton Journal, January 19, 2004, by Gina Teel. More drought-tolerant crops and fewer feed grains will be planted in Alberta this year as farmers look for a profitable middle ground between the mad cow crisis and continuing dry conditions. Corn's Cold Tolerance Improved AgNet, January 26, 2004. A tobacco gene can improve corn's notoriously poor frost-resistance, biologists report. ken Wang and colleagues inserted the tobacco gene NPK1 into corn plants and found that the transgenic plants survived temperatures 2 degrees Celsius colder than plants without the gene. Although small, the difference could help corn survive late-spring and early-fall frosts and could permit planting of the crop in more northerly regions or on high plateaus. Corn, an important food staple, is a tropical plant that originated in Southern Mexico has been continuously bred and planted in colder climates on all continents. The crop requires extended warm periods to ripen. NPK1 activates a cellular pathway that stimulates production of certain proteins, such as heat shock proteins, that stabilize and protect cells in times of stress from heat, cold, or water loss. The pathway that NPK1 activates is found in all eukaryotic cells, from yeast to humans. The genes involved have been remarkably well-conserved throughout millions of years, which makes cross-species transfers such as this one between tobacco and corn likely to succeed. The researchers suggest that linking NPK1 to a cold-responsive DNA control element in corn genome could result in a plant that is more frost-resistant. Recent Publications A Regional Analysis of Climate Change Impacts on Canadian Agriculture. Canadian Public Policy, June 2003, pages 163-179. By Marian Weber and Grant Hauer. Abstract: Climate change is expected to alter production opportunities facing agricultural producers. Global studies of climate change impacts on agriculture suggest positive benefits for Canada. Results from Canadian studies tend to be more pessimistic; however, most of these studies are regionally specific and focus on the impacts on specific crops, particularly grains and oilseeds. This paper examines the impact of climate change on Canadian agricultural land values. Changes in land values are used to impute expected changes to agricultural GDP. We find that all provinces benefit from climate change and that previous estimates may be overly pessimistic. All for now, Ellen Wall Co-ordinator, C-CIARN Agriculture (Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network for Agriculture) Blackwood Hall (Room 202) University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 Phone: 519 824 4120 ext 58480 Fax: 519 763 4686 www.c-ciarn.uoguelph.ca |
||||||||||
|
