Research to Reality May 2013 – Edition 15

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regional innovation

the future of food

carbon capture

devil vaccine clue protecting our native pollinators

There is a bit of a buzz around the University of Tasmania’s research in the areas of environment and sustainability at the moment – and I am not just referring to the native bees that make an illuminating appearance in this issue.

Part of the excitement is being generated by the new Centre for Food Innovation at Launceston, headed by Professor Roger Stanley, and the associated tripartite research agreement between UTAS, CSIRO and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

The latter will link Tasmania to national food research networks and initiate joint research projects. It’s a partnership that aims to help diversify Tasmania’s economic base by growing exports of high-quality, nutritious and value-added food products.

Elsewhere in this, the first of three themed issues to be published this year, you will find a breadth of articles investigating environmental and sustainability issues.

They range from the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture’s involvement in the National Biochar Initiative and the development of a new cultivar that could turn bare, low-lying dunes into productive grazing areas to School of Plant Science and School of Zoology PhD student Nicholas Fountain-Jones’ study of nearly 300 beetle species, which shows that they are a great indicator of how logging affects biodiversity in our forests.

A special feature of this issue is an essay by Professor Greg Woods that details the discovery of an important clue towards the development of a vaccine to save the Tasmanian devil from facial tumour disease.

Professor Paddy Nixon

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) CFI Director Prof Roger Stanley: Tasmania is the right place to produce, process and package quality food.

From freeze-dried pears and pressure-packed fruit juice to ration packs for soldiers and energy foods for athletes, the new Centre for Food Innovation based at the UTAS Newnham campus will be about finding innovative ways to value-add to what Tasmanian farmers already grow to the highest standards.

The signing of a collaborative agreement last month between UTAS, the Australian Government’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) ensures the best nutritionists and food technologists in the country can join forces to improve the future of food.

UTAS Vice-Chancellor Peter Rathjen, CSIRO Chief of Animal, Food and Health Sciences Professor Martin Cole and DSTO’s Chief Defence Scientist Dr Alex Zelinsky were the signatories who put the wheels in motion for a centre that is also designed to link Tasmania to national food research networks and initiate joint research projects.

Foundation director Professor Roger Stanley said that there is a widespread belief that Tasmania is the right place to produce, process and package quality food that can feed the nation.

“This university has the ability to reach the producers through its Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture, and then pull in areas such as the Australian Maritime College with its logistics expertise and the School of Human Life Sciences with its knowledge of nutrition and exercise physiology.

"I’m also aiming to involve the School of Art to provide knowledge of visual communication and to make the products we develop stand out,” he said.

Research projects driven by industry needs will include:

• Increasing export market access for fresh produce by extending shelf life using innovative processing and packaging technologies.

• Developing key technologies to make and test specialised foods that could find dual use in defence and civilian markets such as sports performance nutrition, aged care feeding and shelf-stable foods for emergency response.

• Characterising and communicating the benefits of regional foods and local heritage cultivars to promote appreciation of our unique environment and products to differentiate and brand Tasmanian foods.

CSIRO Chief of Animal, Food and Health Sciences Prof Martin Cole said of the food security challenges that lie ahead, locally and globally: “Innovative processing will be crucial to delivering safe and nutritious food to an increasingly urbanised population".

DSTO’s Chief Defence Scientist Dr Alex Zelinsky added: "DSTO plays a key role in supporting innovation in defence and the Centre for Food Innovation provides us with the perfect mechanism to conceive and transition our innovative ideas into products that will feed our troops”.

New focus on the future of food

Research to Reality 1

UTAS Centre for Food Innovation collaborative agreement signatories, from left, CSIRO Chief of Animal, Food and Health Sciences Professor Martin Cole, UTAS Vice-Chancellor Peter Rathjen and DSTO’s Chief Defence Scientist Dr Alex Zelinsky.

By Lana Best

The Centre for Food Innovation is base-funded by UTAS and the DSTO and operated in collaboration with CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences delivering research projects.

Most people think there is only one native bee in Tasmania, quietly buzzing about taking a backseat to the bigger, louder and more high-profile honey bees and bumble bees.

But there are 101 known native bee types in the State, and one UTAS researcher is just starting to discover what effective pollinators they are and how important they could be to sustaining one of our major tourist attractions as well as future food production.

On calm, sunny days (when the bees are about) School of Geography and Environmental Studies honours student Melanie Bottrill can be found visiting several sites from Huntingfield to Tunbridge to conduct a bee survey.

Armed with net and brightly coloured trays of detergent she replicates the attractive qualities of a flower for the native bees and either waits for them to land or sneaks up on them on a shrub.

The little bee bodies end up back in the lab where they’re identified and studied, with one observation being they are incredibly good at carrying pollen compared with other bees.

“Basically they’re messy feeders,” she said.

“They end up with pollen everywhere on their underside and hind legs and consequently they transfer a lot of it to other plants, whereas the honey bees and bumble bees carry a neat little amount that is not as effective for pollination purposes.”

Last year the 22-year-old approached the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens (RTBG) in Hobart offering to volunteer but was instead given a research project.

The RTBG grows a number of threatened plant species as seed orchards to secure conservation collections in their seed bank, but had been experiencing very poor seed set – they needed to find out whether they could encourage native pollinators into the nursery.

So far she has identified about 60 native bee species and determined that the magnificent gardens do not appear to have enough nesting sites, and there may be too much human disturbance.

“Perhaps the most unusual finding is that native bees strongly prefer blue, yellow or white flowers, rather than the bright reds and oranges,” she said.

According to Ms Bottrill’s supervisor, Dr Peter McQuillan, her research could also add weight to the growing evidence that suggests farms in Tasmania’s Midlands will need to find ways to protect and encourage native bees.

“Native bees are attracted to the nectar and pollen on some weeds like dandelions, and remnant native shrubs like prickly box and banksia are also important nectar sources – farmers will need to keep some of those plants in their area to make sure the bees are about and local councils will need to consider cutting back on roadside spraying.”

Her bee research is showing that some native bees only go to certain plants and that weather conditions also affect which type of bee will operate.

“The major threat to our native bees is habitat loss and competition from other bees, along with climate change, pesticides, herbicides and monocultures,” she said.

“The message here is that we need to look after our native bees – they can do a job that no other bee can.”

Tassie’s food and flowers rely on flight of the native bee

2 Research to Reality

By Lana Best

Main image: Melanie Bottrill and Dr Peter McQuillan in the field at Tunbridge. Inset images: Two of the 101 known native bee species – left, Lasioglossum lanarium heavily dusted with pollen; right, Lasioglossum helichrysi taking nectar at a dandelion flower.

The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens has funded this research project from a bequest from Ms Amelie Rauner.

In her own words, PhD candidate Lea Coates has come a long way in her food career spanning more than 20 years.

“I’ve got to be the most over-qualified butcher’s wife I know,” she quips. Mrs Coates is set to graduate this year with her thesis, King Island and a Sustainable Agri-food Future.

Her research has looked at the viability and sustainability of King Island’s internationally renowned food brand. She has aimed to address the dilemma facing the small, isolated and peripheral economy, which was dominated until recently by two multi-national food companies.

“Food systems are political systems,” she said. “King Island was built on dairy and beef industries, both of which have faced upheavals over the years, most recently with JB Swift closing the island’s abattoir.

“It is a very resilient community, but how do you plan for a future that is not reactionary to global market forces, but planned and owned by the community?”

A farmer’s daughter, Mrs Coates moved with her family to King Island, where her father became a dairy farmer, from Victoria when she was 14 years old. She left at the age of 18 when she married Raymond, a smallgoods butcher from King Island. Together they have spent the past 20 years operating and owning successful butcheries in Hobart, Forth and now Ulverstone.

A bookkeeper by trade, she began her tertiary studies seven years ago studying a Bachelor of Regional Resource Management at the UTAS Cradle Coast campus. Her interest in socio-economic innovation and enterprise surrounding the food industry underpinned her honours thesis, Tasmania: Food Bowl or Commodity Ghetto?

She received a UTAS Elite Scholarship in 2009 to pursue her PhD studies through the Institute for Regional Development at the Cradle Coast campus.

“My father went broke during the ‘80s when the dairy industry faced major upheaval, so I’ve seen first-hand how communities react to hard times,” she said. “With the abattoir closing last year, all the literature said it was inevitable. Yet the disappointing aspect is no one was prepared for it.”

Through using regional development theory, she looked at what policy platforms regional development could offer a community so it could proactively shape a sustainable economic, environmental and social future. She suggests that the designing of a locally owned and operated regional innovation system, which is a collective of local economy, governance, knowledge, infrastructure, community and culture, would enable a regional advantage that is competitive, sustainable and, most importantly, local.

“When you are looking at a place like King Island and turning its constraints of distance, isolation, etc., into opportunities, local ownership of economic assets is very important,” she said.

Having a butcher’s at the future of the King Island food brand

PhD candidate Lea Coates in the Ulverstone shop … “I’ve got to be the most over-qualified butcher’s wife I know”.

Research to Reality 7Research to Reality 3

By Anna Osborne

We know that human cancer is not contagious – you just don’t catch it! But devil facial tumour disease (known as DFTD) is different. It breaks this ‘rule’. DFTD is a transmissible cancer that devils pass on to each other by biting. The process of devil-to-devil ‘DFTD transmission’ has continued for more than 15 years and has now affected approximately 85 per cent of the Tasmanian devil population, highlighting the possibility of extinction in the wild.

DFTD is similar to an organ transplant. The DFTD cancer cells from one devil are transplanted to another devil. Unless you are an identical twin giving tissue to your other twin the human immune system will recognise the transplant as foreign and try and reject or destroy it. This same ‘rejection’ does not occur in devils where the transplanted cancer cells grow without rejection by their immune systems. There are no exceptions. All devils appear to be susceptible. Why devils fail to reject the

cancer cells could be due to a poor immune system or that devils (like twins) are genetically similar.

Our research has shown that devils have a very good immune system. Therefore they should respond to the foreign DFTD tumour cells. There must be something missing from DFTD

cancer cells to avoid rejection by the devil’s immune system.

Researchers from the Menzies Research Institute collaborated with researchers from the School of Zoology at the University of Tasmania, Tasmania DPIPWE’s Animal Health

Laboratory, the University of Sydney, the University of Cambridge (UK) and the University of South Denmark. The research investigated whether the DFTD

cancer cells were invisible to the devil’s immune system.

On the surface of nearly every cell are major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules. These molecules are ‘immune recognition molecules’ that enable

the immune system to determine if a cell is healthy, diseased (e.g. infected by a virus or a cancer cell) or foreign (e.g. from another individual). If the

cell is healthy, no action is needed. If the cell is not healthy, an immune response is activated.

Our research reveals that DFTD cancer cells lack these ‘immune recognition molecules’. DFTD cancer cells are therefore invisible to

the devil’s immune system allowing them to develop into the disfiguring cancers, eventually causing the death of the devil.

The discovery that DFTD cancer cells do not display the ‘immune recognition molecules’ on their cell surface is a major advance in our understanding of how

this cancer can be transmitted between devils without inducing an immune response. A limited genetic difference between devils may contribute, but lack of expression of these

molecules is the main reason for transmission.

Path to a devil’s vaccine turns on an ‘invisibility’ gene

4 Research to Reality

By Professor Greg Woods

Unfortunately for the devil, the cancer cells are ‘invisible’ to the devil’s immune system. The devil has no chance of responding unless the DFTD cancer cells are made ‘visible’ to the devil’s immune system. The good news is that the genes that code for the ‘immune recognition molecules’ are still present and it should be possible to turn them back on. Our research discovered that by treating the DFTD cancer cells in the laboratory with natural chemicals produced by the devil’s immune

system these ‘immune recognition molecules’ can be turned back on. This would make the DFTD cancer cells become visible to the devil’s immune system, resulting in an immune response to these foreign cells.

The ability to turn on these ’immune recognition molecules’ provides an important clue towards the development of a vaccine. But it is a clue, not an answer. There are no guarantees as there are many challenges to convert this clue into an effective vaccine. An immediate challenge is to turn these genes back on long enough to induce a response.

Our research aims to overcome such challenges with the primary objective to protect the Tasmanian devil in the wild. Should a safe and effective vaccine be developed it could initially be used to protect devils in the insurance population before they are re-introduced into the wild. It could also be used in physically isolated areas where an intensive trapping and vaccination program could be undertaken.

*This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in the Sunday Tasmanian.

Path to a devil’s vaccine turns on an ‘invisibility’ gene

Research to Reality 5

This project is funded by the Australian Research Council (a Linkage Project grant of $490,000), Dr Eric Guiler Tasmanian Devil Research Grants of $164,000 and $US70, 000 from the Turner Foundation.

Above: The author, Professor Greg Woods … the ability to turn on these ‘immune recognition molecules’ provides an important clue towards the development of a vaccine; left: a devil affected by DFTD.

Beetles are sensitive little creatures, so it made sense to UTAS School of Plant Science and School of Zoology PhD student Nicholas Fountain-Jones that they would be a great indicator of how logging affects biodiversity in our forests.

For more than two years he has been collecting, counting and identifying beetles around the edges of forest coupes near

Geeveston – concentrating on managed landscapes where old growth meets regrowth.

The information being gathered for his thesis will determine if beetles recolonise regrowth forests or if they

remain on an “island” of untouched bushland. It appears that beetles are happy to set up home in a regrowth area – Mr Fountain-Jones has collected more than 12,000 beetles from nearly 300 species, including many species from the

family Staphylinidae (commonly known as rove beetles) that have yet to be described.

“This research is about variable retention forestry (VR forestry) or ecological forestry, where instead of clear-felling entire coups, remnants of mature forest within the coupe

are retained to protect organisms that rely on old-growth habitat,” he said.

“These remnants act as ‘life boats’ that enable old growth species to re-colonise the harvested area.

“While it works well short-term, no-one was sure if this method of forestry will work well over the long-term.”

He has studied the boundaries of old growth forests and forests that were clear-felled in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s to get a long-term picture of how beetles re-colonise.

“After 10 years, there was very little re-colonisation into the regrowth, after 20 years there was an increase and after 40 years the beetle numbers and species were similar in the regrowth to what you would expect in old growth habitat, ” he said.

Forestry Tasmania has, for the past 20 years at least, created a vast forest insect collection that Mr Fountain-Jones has been able to use to help identify his own captives. He also uses DNA sequences to help him identify the really challenging species.

Using high-tech equipment – antifreeze in a beer cup and some PVC tubing sunk into the ground – a total of 330 beetle pit-fall traps are set and the contents collected after a month in the forest. Most of the beetles are less than 2mm in length but make an impressive image when they’re magnified and photographed.

In what to every young boy must appear like a dream job, he is continuing to add to his beetle collection, and he admits he has a soft spot for the Cryptorynchinae group, a type of weevil that has proven to be a “good little indicator” of life in old-growth forests.

“They look like a little stone, they don’t have wings so they have to crawl everywhere, they also love living in mature forest litter – they’re a great beetle for tracking a forest’s health,” he said.

“Luckily our beetles appear to adapt very well to disturbance, maybe because of our history of bushfires. As long as we maintain significant patches of mature forest throughout our landscape, it is possible to log ecologically knowing that biodiversity will return relatively quickly.”

Regrowth forests shown to be crawling with beetles

6 Research to Reality

PhD student Nicholas Fountain-Jones collecting forestry beetles near Geeveston. Inset images: some of the more than 12,000 beetles found by Nicholas.

By Lana Best

‘Lost’ legume creeps from island to Tasmania – tomorrow the world?

The field trial site at Tomahawk. Pictured far left are Eric Hall (right) and Dr Rowan Smith from TIA. The KI Creepa is pictured in flower second from the right.

More than 10 years ago Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) senior technical officer and herbage development program leader Mr Eric Hall travelled to the central Asia country of Kazakhstan with two lucerne breeders from South Australia, looking for a perennial legume with “magical” properties.

He sought a yellow-flowering Siberian lucerne that he suspected would not just cope with everything from water-logged, acidic soils in southern Australia to the dry, cold, coastal dunes of Tasmania – but thrive and spread with the help of its rhizomatous roots.

However, what he was looking for he eventually found much closer to home, when he stumbled upon a 50-year-old stand of lucerne on King Island.

The single hybrid plants he found, some up to 10 m wide, were survivors from a CSIRO-bred variety called Cancreep, which over time had taken hold and spread across the dunes.

Mr Hall spent the next seven years crossing the plants he selected as vegetative material from King Island and, through phenotypic selection, improved the resulting plants until he had a more productive and higher seed yielding

lucerne, to which he gave the rather sinister-sounding but appropriate name of KI Creepa.

Not only does it thrive in sandy soil and have increased grazing, drought and cold tolerance, but it will “creep” up to half a metre per year and live for more than 20 years.

The first commercial seed crops of KI Creepa are now in the ground and the seed is expected to be in demand throughout Australia and around the world.

For Tasmania’s coastal farmers it could be the key to turning bare, low-lying dunes into productive grazing areas and the amazing abilities of TIA’s new cultivars are becoming evident through a Waterhouse Discussion Group trial funded by NRM North established on Tim Gunn’s property at Tomahawk in spring 2012.

Late last year local farmers met at the site to inspect 18 grass varieties and several herbs that were cross-sewn with legumes in four different soil types so they could compare and judge how they were growing.

Mr Hall and junior research fellow Dr Rowan Smith outlined the experiment and gave advice on what would grow best

in the region, at the same time emphasising that traditional grass types were not always the best.

“In the past grazing systems in low rainfall regions of Tasmania have relied heavily on the traditional perennial ryegrass and white clover to provide year-round cover, however over the past 10 to 15 years changing rainfall patterns have meant that these traditional species are no longer adapted,” he said.

“The failure of these species to persist and the resulting lack of perennial vegetation cover across the region has become a major threat to the sustainability of the land and agriculture.

“Landowners can now choose from a completely new selection of species developed by TIA, which can fare better and be productive in this changing environment.”

A bare dune at Tomahawk now covered in green KI Creepa is helping farmers get the message.

“These plants have the ability to tolerate the harsh conditions that pasture is subject to in the target areas including drought, low soil pH, cold winters and hot summers, wind, pasture grubs and extensive grazing.”

Research to Reality 7

By Lana Best

NRM North contributed $12,875 to help TIA establish the Waterhouse resilient pasture demonstration site on Tim Gunn’s Tomahawk property.

The University of Tasmania is contributing to the federally funded National Biochar Initiative, which is currently in its second phase of research. This project is being conducted under the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s Carbon Farming Futures program, targeting greenhouse gas reduction and carbon storage in land use systems. CSIRO, NSW Department of Primary Industries and University of Sydney are also collaborating with this research, which has potential positive implications for sequestering carbon as well as improving agricultural soil productivity.

Biochar is a stable form of charcoal produced from heating natural organic materials (crop and other waste, woodchips, poultry manure) in a high-temperature, low- or zero-oxygen process known as pyrolysis. The result is a product chemically and biologically more stable than the organic matter from which it is made.

Horticultural scientist and UTAS Research Fellow Dr Mark Boersma (pictured) is the Chief Investigator for the Tasmanian component of the National Biochar Initiative II. “There are two main drivers of the interest in biochar. Firstly it’s an effective way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere in a stable form that can be buried into the soil. It also has potential benefits to mainstream agriculture as

a soil amendment, so as a geo-engineering tool it’s quite effective. What we are trying to establish is how much of the carbon added to the soil as char is stable for long periods of time, when it does and doesn’t work, and how it influences nitrous oxide emissions.’’

The typically very low nutrient content of biochars, the highly stable forms of carbon and a high degree of aromaticity suggest that an increase in crop productivity may not be caused by a single biochar characteristic but rather due to (bio)chemical reactions between the soil, biochar and microbial activity.

Biochar production and utilisation could potentially contribute to climate change mitigation through several processes:

• biomass carbon stabilisation, which delays CO2 emission from decomposition

• bioenergy production to displace fossil energy sources

• reducing nitrous oxide emissions from soil

• reducing farming operations’ fuel use

• stabilising native soil organic matter and reducing its rate of decomposition.

The first phase of this project investigated the performance of 70 different types of feedstock used

to produce the biochar. From that wheat straw and woodchips were selected as the two most effective. In the second phase Dr Boersma said, ‘’We are trying to understand how a eucalypt feed stock performs in different soils and climate zones. We have standardised what we use. To allow comparison to our trial sites in NSW we have selected a single source of Eucalypt green waste to use across all of the trial sites. Our calculations are based on a 100-year time frame which is a requirement of the Climate Futures Initiative methodology.’’

Commencing in July 2012, three research sites have been established in Tasmania. The one at Elliot Research Station, has microplots of soil (600 mm diameter) supplied with 13C carbon-labelled biochar. “This potentially allows us to track the fate of the carbon we add to the system, how much of it is going into the atmosphere and how much is being captured in the soil and how much is leaching through the soil profile. From that we are able to model how much

will be left after 100 years and to know whether it will last hundreds or thousands of years. However, it’s still too early to draw any precise conclusions,’’ Dr Boersma said.

Biochar initiative seeks to bring carbon capture down to earth

This collaborative project is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; funding totals $1,050,411.

8 Research to Reality

By Aaron Smith

More than 90 per cent of the world’s goods are carried by sea. More than $202 billion of international exports passed through Australian ports in 2008-2009 alone. That’s about 10 per cent of the world’s tonnage.

It’s big business.

But in this era of environmental awareness and emissions trading schemes, the shipping industry recognises the need to be a good global citizen and play its part in reducing emissions to the atmosphere.

However, there is currently limited knowledge about both the emissions from ships in coastal regions and ports in Australia, and the effects of these emissions on air quality and the atmosphere in coastal urban regions. As part of the Australian National Ship Exhaust Emissions Inventory, Dr Laurie Goldsworthy of the National Centre for Maritime Engineering and Hydrodynamics (NCMEH) at the Australian Maritime College is studying ways to quantify and potentially reduce the emissions from ship exhausts in Australia.

Dr Goldsworthy, along with his son Brett, also from NCMEH, has quantified the emissions that are coming from ships in Australia using a year’s worth of ship movement data from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).

He says that there are numerous options available to assist the shipping industry in its quest to lower emissions, but the crucial factor is economics.

“To be economical, the shipping industry needs cheap fuel, but cheap fuel has a lot of sulphur in it compared with what is being used in other forms of transport. Sulphur emissions are one of the biggest causes of health problems,’’ he said.

Alternative fuels include low-sulphur petroleum diesel, LNG and renewables, though cost and availability are limitations. According to Dr Goldsworthy it’s not just a matter of providing alternatives. It’s about setting the legislative frameworks that encourage the technological developments.

“In Australia we have options under the International Maritime Organisation conventions to implement more

stringent requirements on ship emissions,’’ he said. “This includes special Emission Control Areas (ECAs), where ships have to run on very low sulphur content fuel. Even though ships operating in any part of the world will be required to use lower sulphur content fuel by 2020, in ECAs the requirements are more stringent and come into play sooner. In ECAs, emissions of another pollutant, oxides of nitrogen, are required to be greatly reduced.

“We don’t know whether ship emissions in Australia have significant health impacts or whether introduction of an ECA is justified,’’ Dr Goldsworthy said. “We would need to develop a thorough quantification of all emissions and use public health models to clarify the health benefits, before considering an ECA. The study that we are doing is one of the first steps. It is a chance to be proactive and learn from the experiences of others.”

AMC helps steer shipping industry towards a renewable-fuel future

This project has received total funding of $90,000 from the Australian Shipowners’ Association, Fremantle Ports, Newcastle Ports Corporation, North Queensland Bulk Ports Corporation Limited, Port Hedland Port Authority, Port Kembla Port Corporation, Port of Melbourne Corporation and Port of Townsville Ltd.

Research to Reality 9

By Kirsten Woolley

Credits

Editor: Peter Cochrane, UTAS Communications and Media Office

Photography: Peter Mathew, Lana Best, Chris Crerar, Newspix

Main cover image by Peter Mathew

Design and Production: Clemenger Tasmania

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