Food Security in the Asia Pacific: Can we have our fuel and eat it too? Presentation by Prof Robert J Henry, Director of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation at the University of Queensland

1. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Food Security in the Asia-Pacific:
Can we have our fuel and eat it ?II
Robert J Henry
Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation

2. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
RESEARCH FRONTIERS
Meeting the global challenge
Innovations to feed, fuel & heal a growing & aging
population in an environmentally sustainable way
UQ Research frontiers

3. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Food Security

4. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Africa

5. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Australia-Asia

6. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
World population growth
Population growth

7. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Food consumption per person
One billion starving Two billion obese

8. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Progress in crop production
Ray et al. (2013) PLOS One 8: ee66428

9. Advances in DNA Technology

10. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Global importance of Australian Rice
Sotowa M, Ootsuka K, Kobayashi Y, Hao Y,
Tanaka K, Ichitani K, Flowers JM, Purugganan
MD, Nakamura I, Sato Y-I, Sato T, Crayn D,
Simon B, Waters DLE, Henry RJ and Ishikawa R
(2013) Molecular relationships between
Australian annual wild rice, Oryza meridionalis,
and two related perennial forms. Rice

11. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Asian and Australian rice
Species A
Species B
Asian
Australian
Oryza meridionalis
Oryza australiensis

12. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Aleurone
Endosperm
Pericarp
Embryo
Protein, Starch
Minerals, Vitamins
Dietary Fibre
Antioxidants
Processed Fibre
Bioactives
Next Generation Wheat Initiative

13. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Chapatti quality

14. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Protein and loaf volume
Test baking Glen Fox and Terry Taylor

15. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Starches and Human Health
Wheat relative
A and B type Granules
A: <10µM
B: 10-50µM
Rice like Granules
Rigid dodecahedrons
2-5µM
Compound granules
Sorghum granules
10-30µM
Spherical to
non-uniform polyhedral

16. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Koepke T, Schaeffer S, Harper A, Dicenta F, Henry RJ, Moller BL, Sanchez-Perez R, Dhingra A (2013)
Comparative Genomics Analysis in Prunoideae to Identify Biologically Relevant Polymorphisms. Plant
Biotechnology Journal 11, 883-893.
Whole genome comparative DNA analysis for crop improvement

17. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Why Coffee?
Coffee is one the most traded commodities worldwide and is the second commodity exported
by developing countries.
More than 75 million families, almost exclusively in Southern countries, rely on coffee
production.
Out of the more than 100 Coffea species, only 2 are widely cultivated, C. arabica (75% of the
market) and C. canephora (25%).
Improvement is still necessary to better tolerate biotic (fungi, bacteria, nematodes, insects…)
and abiotic (drought) stresses.
XIX PAG 2011

18. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Coffee Consortium
Nestlé R&D:
Dominique Crouzillat
Michel Rigoreau
UMR DIADE:
Alexandre de Kochko
Romain Guyot
Christine Tranchant
Valérie Poncet
Perla Hamon
Serge Hamon
Claudine Campa
Stéphane Dussert
Thierry Joët
UMR RPB:
Philippe Lashermes
Benoît Bertrand
Marie-Christine Combes
François Anthony
UMR AGAP:
Xavier Argout
Thierry Leroy
GENOSCOPE:
Patrick Wincker
Università di Trieste:
Giorgio Graziosi
Alberto Pallavicini
ENEA:
Giovanni Giuliano
Gaetano Perrotta
EMBRAPA:
Alan C. Andrade
University at Buffalo:
Victor Albert
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign:
Ray Ming
Hawaii Agriculture Research Center:
Chifumi Nagai
Ming-Li Wang
University of Arizona:
Steve Rounsley
University of Queensland:
Robert Henry
University of Ottawa:
David SANKOFF
ICCRI:
Priyono
Coffee Bord of India:
Jayarama

19. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Wild coffee species

20. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Energy security

21. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Declining Australian oil production
Australian production
Imported
Oilconsumption
2010 2020
Source: ABARE
$30
Billion

22. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Bioenergy
 Economics
 Climate change
 Security of energy supply

23. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
US and Australian Navy

24. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Biofuel from non-food plants
Biomass
(cellulose)
Sugars
Pre-
treatment Enzyme
Ethanol Aviation FuelBiodiesel

25. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Sugarcane
 Souza GM, Berges H, Bocs S, Casu R, D’Hont A, Ferreira JE, Henry R, Ming R Potier B, Van Sluys
MA, Vincentz M and Paterson AH (2011) The sugarcane genome challenges: Strategies for
sequencing a highly complex genome. Tropical Plant Biology 4: 145-156.

26. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB)
in sugarcane leaves
McQualter et al UQ
Biodegradable plastics from plants

27. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Eucalypts
Shepherd M, Bartle, J, Lee DJ, Brawner J, Bush D, Turnbull P, Macdonell P, Brown TR,
Simmons B and Henry R (2011) Eucalypts as a biofuel feedstock. Biofuels 2: 639-657.

28. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Domestication of New Crops
Henry RJ (2011) Next generation
sequencing for understanding and
accelerating crop domestication. Briefings
in Functional Genomics 11: 51-56.

29. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Domestication of new grains for food

30. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Domes&ca&on
of
new
species
for
bioenergy

31. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Conflict between human
and natural selection
 Fragrance
Bradbury LME, Gillies SA, Brushett D, Waters DLE, Henry RJ (2008) Inactivation of an
aminoaldehyde dehydrogenase is responsible for fragrance in rice. Plant Molecular
Biology 68: 439-449.

32. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Impact of climate change on biodiversity and agriculture
Cronin, JK, Bundock, PC, Henry, RJ and Nevo, E (2007) Adaptive Climatic
Molecular Evolution in Wild Barley at the Isa Defense Locus. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Science USA, 104: 2773-2778.

33. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Adaptation to Climate
Collection sites from sea level to mountain tops
Fitzgerald TL, Shapter FM, McDonald S, Waters DLE, Chivers IH, Drenth A, Nevo E and
Henry RJ (2011) Genome diversity in wild grasses under environmental stress.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 108, 21139-21144.

34. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Website
http://www.climatechangegenomics.org/index.php

35. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Improved Genetics for Food and Energy
Sexton TR, Henry RJ, Harwood CE, Thomas DS, McManus LJ, Raymond C, Henson M
and Shepherd M (2012) Pectin methylesterase genes influence solid wood properties of
Eucalyptus pilularis. Plant Physiology 158: 531-541
Kharabian-Masouleh A, Waters DLE, Reinke RF, Ward R, Henry RJ (2012)
SNP in starch biosynthesis genes associated with nutritional and functional
properties of rice.
Scientific Reports 2, 557

36. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
New Land for Agriculture

37. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Rainfall to Support Agriculture

38. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
World Population Increasing in the Tropics

39. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
QS Ranking of Universities
Field of Agriculture and Forestry 2013
World Rank Country Rank
1 Davis
1 Wageningen
4 Cornell
5 Wisconsin
5 Texas A&M
6 Purdue
7 University of Queensland 1
29 The University of Adelaide 2
30 The Australian National University 3
42 University of Melbourne 4
49 The University of Sydney 5

40. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Food, Fibre, Energy & Biomaterials
Science for Sustainable Agriculture and Food
QAAFI is funded by the
University of Queensland and the Queensland Government