Winter honey bees, compared to newly emerged summer bees, have a better ability to withstand the harmful effects of a widely-used insecticide in pest management, according to a recent study published in Apidologie.
Honey bees feed on imidacloprid during a cage experiment. (Photo by Mohamed Alburaki, ARS)
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers from the Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, found winter honey bees’ consumption of a nearly lethal, imidacloprid-laced syrup did not affect their survival during the study.
Imidacloprid is an insecticide made to mimic nicotine and is toxic to insects. This powerful insecticide is widely used in agriculture for pest management control. Honey bees are likely to encounter imidacloprid while foraging in the field or through contaminated hive products.
“Although imidacloprid toxicity to honey bees is an important concern for beekeepers, our results provide good news,” said Miguel Corona and Mohamed Alburaki, researchers at the ARS Bee Research Laboratory. “Our research shows that winter honey bees have unrecognized physiological mechanisms to counteract the effects of insecticides.”
The study assessed differences in diet behaviors for summer and winter honey bees in a controlled laboratory setting. Researchers provided sublethal doses of the imidacloprid-laced syrup to bees as necessary. Winter bees showed a preference to consuming imidacloprid-laced syrup over untreated sugar syrup while summer honey bees made the safe choice and avoided consuming the laced syrup each time.
According to Corona, it is important to study the differences of summer and winter honey bees’ diets. Honey bee colonies survive extreme seasonal differences in temperature and forage by producing two seasonal phenotypes of workers: summer and winter bees. These seasonal phenotypes differ significantly in their psychological characteristics as well as their susceptibility to disease and ability to handle poisonous substances.
“Winter bees and summer bees undergo physiological changes to cope with drastic seasonal changes in temperature and the availability of nutritional resources,” said Corona and Alburaki. “Our results suggest that long-lived winter bees are especially well-adapted to tolerate higher levels of chemical stressors.”
Corona said that although the study’s results show that winter bees could tolerate more intoxication by imidacloprid, they are still susceptible to higher concentrations of this insecticide in field settings. — By the USDA-ARS
Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are looking for the perfect diet. Not just any diet, but one that’s special; a diet that encourages bugs to thrive.
Most people have an aversion to bugs, so what Guadalupe Rojas and Juan A. Morales-Ramos are trying to do may seem a bit odd to some. But Rojas and Morales-Ramos, research entomologists at the ARS Biological Control of Pests Research Unit in Stoneville, MS, are actually attempting to pit insects against each other – to fight fire with fire, so to speak.
“The pink spotted lady beetle, Coleomegilla maculate, is a predator of important pests such as the two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, and several aphid species that attack crops and cause great economical loss,” she said.
(Most people are familiar with the term “ladybug,” but lady beetle is more accurate. Technically, ladybugs are beetles rather than true bugs, which fall under the scientific order Hemiptera.)
If left unchecked, Rojas said, the “bad bug” population can explode. That situation is rare in nature because of the presence of natural predators, but predators sometimes cannot keep up with their prey in large fields or greenhouses because of the abundance of food provided by crops. This situation can lead to major economic losses to farmers and less produce for consumers.
That’s why it’s necessary to rear and mass produce predatory lady beetles, Morales-Ramos said. Releasing beneficial insects like these beetles to combat bad bugs is common practice when using integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. The key to IPM, though, often comes down to timing.
Pink spotted lady beetle larvae of the third instar (about 7-8 days old) feeding on the new artificial diet created by ARS scientists at the Biological Control of Pests Research lab in Stoneville, MS. (Juan A. Morales-Ramos)
“IPM uses multiple tactics to control an agricultural pest in an integrated manner, including chemical, biological, microbial, and environmental modification,” Rojas said. “Not all the tactics are compatible to use simultaneously, but they can be timed to prevent interference. The use of lady beetles follows on biological control tactics.”
However, actual application is not so easy. While adult pink spotted lady beetles can live up to 8 months, it takes them a while to grow from larvae to maturity. Trying to feed the young lady beetles their natural diet would require greenhouses full of plants to raise spider mites and aphids, and that could lead to major expenses or other unwelcome complications. An artificial diet of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and mineral salts would eliminate those needs and risks.
Creating that diet, however, is easier said than done.
“It’s easy to create a formula that will keep beetles alive, but it may fail to get them to develop completely and later to reproduce,” Rojas said. “It’s a lengthy process of experimentation and evaluation to develop a diet that will be adequate for growth and reproduction.”
To further complicate matters, even if the scientists find initial success, a formula may not be effective in the long run.
“Feeding any animal with a single food formulation requires full knowledge of its nutritional needs,” Rojas said. “In most cases, the first version will lack a few nutrients and the colony will fail and we’ll need to revise the formulation. In other words, refining the diet is never completely done; it will be continuously improved to maintain the colony indefinitely.”
The next challenge for Rojas and her colleagues is to reduce the number of ingredients or substitute them with byproducts to reduce production costs, so anybody could make it since ingredients used are from ordinary food products.
“If lady beetles can be produced cheaply and in abundance, then they would be available for homeowners to purchase. And, biological control is more sustainable than using pesticides because using lady beetles reduces the reliance on chemical pesticides,” Morales-Ramos said.
“Lady beetles are cool,” Rojas said. “What can be cooler than growing your own lady beetles at home?” — By Scott Elliott, USDA-ARS Office of Communications.
Mold is something that most people try to avoid, but NASA may soon welcome a certain type of mold aboard its spacecraft.
On long-distance space voyages of the future, astronauts will have to grow some of their own food. That could be problematic, as there is notoriously little unused space aboard ship and crops take a long time to grow. But what if science could find a way around those issues?
“Some plants grow extremely fast, like many common weeds, while others grow very slowly,” said Chris Dardick, molecular biologist at the Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, WV. “What if we could make crop plants grow as fast as weeds? We have done just that.”
ARS scientists found that an airborne fungus, Cladosporium sphaerospermumstrain TC09, speeds up plant growth. TC09 produces gasses, known as volatiles, that dramatically accelerate plant growth. TC09 is commonly found indoors and is not known to cause disease in plants or any ailments to humans or animals.
In a Lab at the Kennedy Space center in Florida, ARS research technician Mark Sperry evaluates the performance of the fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum strain TC09 with lettuce and simulated soil. (Cory Spern)
“When the mold is grown alongside plants in a sealed container, the TC09-exposed plants grow 2 to 5 times faster,” Dardick said. “And if you feed the plants sugar at the same time, they can grow 10 to 25 times faster in the presence of TC09.”
Not only do the plants grow faster, they tend to have thicker stems, larger leaves, and a more robust root system than plants not exposed to TC09. They also produce far greater yield – pepper plants produced up to 213% more fruit. Lettuce, arugula, kale, basil, and other leafy greens showed similar results.
“How TC09 stimulates such rapid plant growth is currently unknown,” he said, “but it has become the interest of NASA to find out.”
According to Dardick, NASA has tested TC09 on some of their most prized crops including “outredgeous” (red romaine) lettuce and mizuna, finding that TC09 worked extremely well in the artificial media typically used in spaceflight. In addition, NASA is constructing two plant growth chambers similar to what is used on the International Space Station that will be housed at the ARS research lab in Disney’s Epcot Center.
Discovering how TC09 works could give NASA the solutions it’s looking for, regarding space and time limitations, Dardick said. Such technology could also revolutionize food production here on Earth as farmers face the challenge of feeding a population projected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050.
This initial investigation was sponsored by the ISS U.S. National Laboratory, which works in coordination with NASA to fully utilize the orbiting laboratory to bring value to our nation through space-based research and technology development. – By Scott Elliott, USDA-ARS Office of Communications. Autumn Canaday contributed to this story.
What do you think of when you hear “seaweed”? Chances are, its sushi, nuisance at the beach, or something in a package at an Asian market. If that’s the case, you’re in for a surprise.
Without knowing it, you might, literally, be up to your neck in seaweed; seaweed is a common ingredient in cosmetics, moisturizers, anti-aging and anti-inflammatory products, lotions, shampoos, and toothpaste.
Globally, the seaweed industry hauls in about $6 billion per year, with farmers producing more seaweed per ton than lemons and limes. Its products run the gamut in agriculture, from farm to fork; as biomass for biofuel; and in ways that help the environment to mitigate climate change.
“There are many types of seaweeds that are a part of marine ecosystems,” said Caird Rexroad III, national program leader for aquacultureat USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. “Seaweed is harvested from the wild, however we’re also seeing an increase in seaweed farming in the United States.”
International seaweed production has increased over 1000-fold since 1950, up from 34.7 thousand tons to more than 34.7 million tons. Although Europe and Asia have outpaced the United States, seaweed farming is the fastest-growing sector of American aquaculture. Dozens of aquatic farms have taken off in New England, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska, where production has grown from 18 tons in 2017 to about 440 tons in 2021.
Seaweeds are farmed by culturing them on long lines that are suspended below the surface of marine waters, Rexroad said. Once fully grown, farmers harvest it for processing. Seaweeds can also be grown on land in tanks supplied with seawater, but these systems are primarily used for research.
Rexroad chairs a Congressionally directed group from USDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); its mission includes studying how seaweed could help deacidify the oceans; study emerging ocean seaweed farming practices; and coordinate and conduct research to develop and enhance pilot-scale seaweed farming.
“I expect seaweed farming to expand in the United States so that we can consume and/or export more seaweed food products, and one day have them included in the making of biofuels,” Rexroad said. “The United States has tremendous marine resources that could support seaweed farming.”
Many chefs include various types of seaweed in their recipes or serve it as a featured item. In addition to flavor, seaweed has many nutritional benefits, depending on the type of seaweed. Those benefits include iodine, which supports thyroid function; vitamins, including B12; and many antioxidants, carotinoids, and flavonoids. Carotinoids have cancer-fighting properties, while flavonoids help prevent cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and such cognitive diseases as Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Rexroad’s team includes the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, in East Boothbay, ME; the National Science Foundation; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and several agencies of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior, and Health and Human Services. – By Scott Elliott, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) today awarded $3.75 million to fund 10 research projects that explore Integrated Pest Management (IPM) tools for urban, non-agricultural and agricultural pest management. The 2021-2022 DPR Grants Programs funded by the state budget represent a 617% increase from the previous year’s funding to accelerate the transition to safer, more sustainable pest management.
“The grant projects we are funding today are critical to developing and expanding innovative practices and biological, non-chemical and physical tools to manage pests in agriculture, urban and other non-agricultural communities,” said DPR Director Julie Henderson. “The research will support the state’s work to accelerate a systemwide transition to safer, more sustainable pest management and better protect human health and the environment.”
DPR’s Research Grants Program funds projects that advance IPM, an approach that uses the least-toxic, effective method to solve pest problems. In the last decade, DPR has awarded $9,702,819 in research grants.
Research projects funded for agricultural pest management:
Investigating a pesticide-free mating disruption approach using vibrational signals to control the spotted lanternfly, which presents particular risk to grapes, hops, apples and stone fruit, along with maple, poplar, walnut and willow trees. Spotted lanternfly is one of the most damaging invasive insects nationwide and has already caused significant harm to crops and landscapes across 11 states. This research will be led by Dr. Rodrigo Krugner at the United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS).
Evaluating an IPM approach that will disrupt insect behavior by targeting and interfering with a pest’s biological processes and minimizing possible unintended effects to other organisms. The project will evaluate the use of this tool for controlling diamondback moth and western flower thrips that impact California vegetable crops such as lettuce. This research will be led by Dr. Daniel Hasegawa at USDA ARS.
Assessing a biocontrol system for the management of tadpole shrimp in rice. Tadpole shrimp usefully eat some early season weeds but can cause damage to rice later in their lifecycle. To preserve their role in controlling weeds but diminish the shrimp’s later impact on the rice harvest, predator mosquito fish will be introduced mid-season to control the shrimp’s population when necessary. This research will be led by Dr. Ian Grettenberger at UC Davis.
Testing two emerging IPM technologies for agricultural use, the automatic release of biocontrol organisms using flying drones, and precision spray application technology, which uses much less pesticide than applying pesticide sprays using current techniques. This research will be led by Dr. Ian Grettenberger at UC Davis.
Developing an IPM software decision-making tool for pistachio growers that helps reduce pesticide use by guiding more precise pesticide applications when chemical use is necessary. This IPM tool leverages smart technology to help growers transition from routine preventative spraying to more limited threshold-based chemical use. This research will be led by Dr. Themis Michailides at UC Davis.
Research projects funded for urban and agriculture pest management:
Studying the use of a reduced-risk ”attract-and-kill” approach as an effective alternative to urban and agricultural pesticide spray programs for managing South American palm weevils, a pest that damages date palms in urban and agricultural environments. “Attract-and-kill” strategies use pheromones that attract the target pest to a small amount of pesticide that kills the insect, as opposed to spraying a large quantity of pesticide over an area to control pest populations. This research will be led by Dr. Mark Hoddle at UC Riverside.
Studying the impact and potential of using insect growth regulators that target Argentine ants for pest control in urban and agricultural environments. Insect growth regulators are new, safer pest management tools that pose a much lower risk of causing unintended damage to beneficial insects when compared to many traditional insecticides. This research will be led by Dr. Dong-Hwan Choe at UC Riverside.
Research projects funded for urban and nonagricultural pest management:
Testing non-chemical entrapment methods for trapping, monitoring and eliminating bedbugs, a significant public health pest that disproportionately affects low-income Californians. This research will be led by Dr.Catherine Loudon at UC Irvine.
Creating a new set of guidelines for effectively identifying and managing biting mites, a common, but poorly understood indoor pest that is often misidentified and incorrectly managed. This research will be led Dr. Andrew Sutherland at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR).
Assessing a baiting system for detecting western drywood termites to reduce the number of unnecessary fumigation treatments in California homes, especially in Southern California where termites represent a significant pest problem. This system would indicate when active termite infestations have returned and if preventative treatment is needed, greatly decreasing the amount of high-risk pesticide use in homes. This research will be led by Dr. Dong-Hwan Choe at UC Riverside.
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation protects human health and the environment by fostering safer and sustainable pest management practices and operating a robust regulatory system to evaluate and register pesticides and monitor and regulate their sale and use across the state.
DPR’s work includes conducting scientific evaluations of pesticides to assess and mitigate potential harm to human health or the environment prior to and following registration, registering all pesticides prior to sale or use in California, monitoring for pesticides in the air and water, and enforcing pesticide laws and regulations in coordination with 55 County Agricultural Commissioners and their combined 400 field inspectors across the state’s 58 counties. DPR invests in innovative research, outreach, and education to encourage the development and adoption of integrated pest management tools and practices and conducts outreach to ensure pesticide workers, farmworkers and local communities have access to pesticide safety information. More information about DPR.
California is the largest and the most diverse agricultural economy in the nation with revenue exceeding $50 billion — larger than the combined agricultural economies of the other 10 western states.
But the state and its residents, especially the disadvantaged, are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
A $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will enable a new project at UC Merced to create an integrated program to develop multi-faceted pathways to climate-smart agriculture solutions.
Cooperative Extension Specialist Tapan Pathak, with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is leading the effort. He plans to involve farmers and ranchers, technical service providers and students in a variety of training and educational activities.
Cooperative Extension Specialist Tapan Pathak
Pathak plans to conduct needs assessments with local stakeholders, workshops and climate-smart agriculture training, as well as service-learning opportunities for students through the extension program.
“Farmers and ranchers, including the socially disadvantaged, are under constant pressure to adjust to uncertain weather and climate events to minimize risks, but often have limited access to technical assistance and fewer resources to adapt to climate change,” Pathak explained. “The critical initial step for developing a climate-smart agriculture program for them is to understand and document their perceptions, experiences and knowledge of climate-change exposures, potential impacts and social vulnerabilities.”
The researchers also need to know what tools and resources would assist them in making strategic decisions, and what types of education and outreach activities would help them choose and implement climate-smart agriculture practices.
Pathak and his team will conduct needs assessments in three phases: a statewide survey to get information from a diverse group of farmers and ranchers, then focus groups and informal personal interviews.
Another group of people the program aims to reach are technical service providers — those front-line farm and ranch counselors who are often asked questions on climate change, weather variability and local implications, but often have limited training on climate change.
“There is overwhelming evidence of the importance of integrating climate change into research, education and outreach activities carried out by Cooperative Extension, local, state and federal resource staff-managed programs or operations to improve sustainability, to adapt and to mitigate climate change impacts,” Pathak said. “However, individuals in these groups are content area experts and by and large do not have specific training in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. For example, federal resource staff are required to consider climate change in project planning and aspects of operations but have no to very limited training on climate change, and even less on how to incorporate such information into federal workflow.”
Finally, the student experience will form a large component of this effort. As the next generation of a climate-ready workforce, students need education and training in both climate change and agriculture, as well as practical learning opportunities.
Pathak plans to provide opportunities for University of California undergraduates as well as California Community College students through a UC Merced Summer Institute on Climate and Agriculture certificate course; a UC Davis credit-based course called Science and Society: Climate Change and Agriculture; and a certificate course for community college students, professionals and non-degree seeking students. The Summer Institute on Climate and Agriculture will pay students from any major to learn about climate and agricultural science, including topics such as climate science fundamentals; interaction of weather and climate with agriculture; the food-energy-water nexus; hands-on weather and climate data analysis for detecting trends; climate change impacts on agriculture; automation and data analytics; climate and water: conflicts and implications; and climate change communication.
“In addition, we will organize field trips, such as visiting and learning from local farming operations, county Cooperative Extension offices and USDA-ARS research facilities, irrigation districts and reservoirs, and visiting a National Weather Service office,” he said. “Each of these visits will give students the opportunity to meet, network with and learn from experts, scientists and professionals, all of which could benefit their future careers.”
The project is part of an investment in Cooperative Extension and USDA Climate Hubs efforts to bolster climate research and share climate-smart solutions directly with the agricultural communities. The USDA recently invested $9 million in several such projects as part of NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the nation’s leading competitive grants program for agricultural sciences.
“These new NIFA-funded projects will work toward net-zero emissions in agriculture, working lands and communities adapted to climate change, training a diverse workforce that can communicate and incorporate climate considerations into management and climate justice that is appropriate for unique U.S. agronomic conditions,” said NIFA Director Carrie Castille.— By Lorena Anderson, UC Merced
USDA ARS — Adding cooked black beans to a high-fat diet improved sensitivity to insulin and other measures often related to diabetes and restored gut bacteria balance in obese mice, according to a USDA Agricultural Research Service study.
As little as the mouse-size equivalent of a single serving a day of black beans—about a half cup for a human—lowered insulin resistance 87 percent in obese mice compared to obese mice eating the same high-fat diet without the black beans. Insulin resistance is when a body’s response to the hormone insulin is impaired so glucose in the blood cannot be used for energy, resulting in high blood sugar, a factor often leading to diabetes.
Mice on the high-fat plus black beans diet also decreased low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol, 28 percent and triglyceride levels 37 percent compared to mice eating the high-fat diet without black beans. These are both risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
Other diabetes-related biomarkers such as the levels of leptin, glucagon, and a group of inflammatory biochemicals were all significantly better in the mice on the high-fat plus black beans diet.
The researchers also found that adding black beans to the high fat diet restored the balance of healthier bacteria in the gut, particularly decreasing the ratio of Firmicutes bacteria to Bacteroidetes bacteria in the gut by 64 percent compared to mice on the high fat diet without black beans and mice on a low fat diet. High ratios of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes are associated with obesity. Intestinal bacteria associated with inflammation such as Blautia and Clostridium all were significantly reduced in mice fed the high fat plus black beans diet compared to mice on the high fat diet without beans.
“We also tested if supplementing the high fat diet with individual components from black beans would have the same beneficial impacts on the obese mice and didn’t find the same effects at all. It was only adding whole black beans, and cooked whole beans at that, which had the benefits,” Yokoyama said.
Perhaps the most interesting scientific information coming from this study, according to Yokoyama, is data to begin determining just how black beans improve insulin resistance. It appears that black beans may inhibit the JNK/c-Jun pathway, a key metabolic pathway that has many but not necessarily well-defined functions including regulating inflammatory responses. Chronic inflammation is believed to be the basis for insulin resistance and other metabolic diseases.
Black beans, or more precisely black turtle beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), are generally low in fat and high in fiber and protein. They are popular in Latin American, Mexican and Caribbean cuisines as well as in Cajun and Creole cooking. Like all common beans, black beans are native to the Americas. Today, they have been introduced around the world to become known as frijoles negros or poroto negro in Spanish, feijão preto in Portuguese, and karuppu kaaramani and kala ghevada in various regional cuisines of India.
The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in agricultural research results in $17 of economic impact.
Looking over fields prior to planting, a Shakespeare-in-overalls might also wonder: “Whether ’tis nobler to till and suffer the slings and arrows of soil erosion, decreased irrigation efficiency, and greater operational expense or take arms against such troubles by not tilling and run the risk of increasing pest cycles.”
Farmers every year must decide whether to till their fields in the conventional manner or join the growing number of farmers who are going back to the roots of agriculture by preparing the soil using no-till methods. There are benefits — and drawbacks — to both systems. As the great poet once coined, “all that glitters is not gold.”
According to Steven Mirsky, research ecologist with Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory in Beltsville, MD, there are economic and environmental considerations for farmers to keep in mind when making their decision.
Both methods “work” the soil, which gives the seeds a place to go and easier pathways for root systems, but each method effects the farmer differently. “Tillage turns the soil, while no-till uses disks to slice into the ground and slip seeds in the narrow slice,” Mirsky said. “There is no soil disturbance of substance in no-till.”
In terms of labor, tillage-based systems require several field operations to prepare a seedbed. The soil must be worked and then packed to facilitate the best conditions for putting crop seed in the ground. No-till production requires heavy-duty planters that can cut the soil and put seed at a precise depth in the soil profile as well as close the slit the seed was deposited into.
While tillage loosens up the soil, incorporates all surface residues, and leaves the surface clean, which helps improve the planting of cash crops, it also leaves the soil vulnerable to erosion, Mirsky said. On the other hand, no-till systems are excellent at reducing erosion, but do not break up pest cycles like tillage does.
“No-till farming greatly reduces soil erosion,” Mirsky said. “Intact soils also maintain root channels that facilitate greater water infiltration and storage. No-till tends to increase soil organic matter in the top several inches of the soil. On the other hand, tillage can act to bury carbon and increase its storage. That said, overall, intensive tillage tends to burn up much of the soil organic matter, more so than no-till.”
According to Mirsky, these operational matters impact the farmer economically, too. No-till tends to require much less fuel and labor expense because it does not require all the energy needed to push farm equipment through the soil. No-till typically requires less field operations and equipment.
Over time, however, no-till systems can develop herbicide resistance if other integrated weed management strategies are not used, thereby increasing pest management requirements.
Mirsky said there is another variable that could benefit no-till systems — cover cropping during the offseason.
“Cover crops play an important role in helping to ensure the long-term viability of no-till farming,” he said. “Cover crops help dry out the soils in the spring to ensure earlier access for field operations and help conserve soil water in the summer during periods of drought, suppress weeds, and slow down the evolution of herbicide resistance.”
If a farmer wants to try a no-till approach with cover cropping, harvest season is the best time to begin the process. Then the farmer may realize that parting with the till approach is not such sweet sorrow. – By Scott Elliott, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
Americans are growing old and, sadly, the aging process for many means more than simply turning gray or thinning hair.
According to the United States Census, in about a dozen years the number of Americans over 65 will outnumber children. Further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project the number of Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to nearly triple by 2060.
Fortunately, USDA-funded research may have found a tasty way to slow disease onset.
A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that diets high in flavonoids may protect cognitive health. Flavonoids are plant nutrients known for their antioxidant, antiviral, and anticancer properties and are found in berries, tea, dark chocolate, and other foods.
According to Jacques, who co-authored the study, about one in nine adults over age 65 are living with AD. While memory loss is the hallmark of AD, Jacques said it has many other cognitive and behavioral changes, including difficulty carrying out simple multistep activities, such as dressing or cooking; loss of judgement and attention; and changes in behavior such as depression and agitation.
Jacques’s study, one of the first truly large, long-term studies to examine the effects of flavonoids on AD, showed that diets high in certain types of flavonoids present significant promise toward preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s.
“Our study examined the association between long-term flavonoid intakes and AD over an average follow-up of 19.6 years among 2,809 participants,” he said. Results show that those who consumed the most of three types of flavonoids were more than 50 percent less likely to develop AD risks compared with those who ate the least. Plant foods, such as vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts, and seeds are good sources of flavonoids, as is a cup of green tea each day.
Age 50 is not too late to make positive dietary changes. “While the risk of dementia increases over age 70, it is now believed that its preclinical stage may predate clinical diagnosis by decades” he said. “A healthy diet during this preclinical period may provide the best opportunity for slowing the development of AD. When you approach 50, you should start thinking about a healthier diet if you haven’t already.”
According to Jacques, flavonoid-rich diets help more than just Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia.
“The bottom line is that there are many reasons to consume a healthy diet, including lower risks of cardiovascular disease and some cancers. We can now add protection of cognitive health and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease to that list.” – By Scott Elliott, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
We love to eat the honey that honey bees produce, but what do honey bees eat?
The usual answer to this question is nectar and pollen. However, malnutrition in honey bees – a major reason why they’re growing more susceptible to pathogens, parasites, and pesticides – is a growing issue in the world of agriculture. This problem is exacerbated by habitat loss, climate change, decreases in flowering plant diversity, and the rise of crop monoculture, all of which have contributed to the loss of pollen sources that usually keep honey bees well-fed.
According to ARS researchers Vincent Ricigliano and Michael Simone-Finstrom, different species of microalgae possess nutritional profiles that parallel that of pollen, making the algae an ideal substitute. This is an especially important finding for commercial beekeepers, who rely heavily on pollen replacements to feed their bees on a large scale.
“Although there are currently several artificial pollen diets available, they don’t always contain adequate levels of essential macronutrients (such as lipids and proteins), micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), and antioxidants,” explained Ricigliano. “These artificial diets try to incorporate a variety of ingredients like soy, corn gluten, yeast, egg, or milk protein, but they often fail to provide the nutrition needed by honey bees to thrive. On the other hand, microalgae are extremely rich in helpful compounds like amino acids, which are crucial for protein synthesis, immune function, and overall colony growth.”
In their research, Ricigliano and Simone-Finstrom concluded that bees that consumed microalgae diets grew to larger sizes, had more healthy bacteria in their guts because of the algae’s prebiotic qualities, and were generally more vigorous than honey bees that consumed other pollen alternatives.
Ricigliano believes that there are many species of microalgae that have the potential to improve honey bee health in different climates and seasons.
These single-celled organisms are easy to grow on a large scale, requiring just sunlight, nutrients, and shallow bodies of water to produce highly nutritious food for bees. Furthermore, microalgae are even capable of thriving in places where other crops cannot be grown, said Ricigliano. Its ecological viability, affordability, nutritional benefits, and ability to act as a biofertilizer and biofuel has enabled microalgae to be a ‘wonder crop’ of the future. And its benefits as a healthy pollen alternative for honey bees has the whole world buzzing. – By Georgia Jiang, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
