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Green roofs gain in popularity in big cities as environmentally friendly industry comes into its own. The Washington Nationals’ new baseball stadium opened the 2008 season with one. Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics will feature many more. And earlier this year Minneapolis decreed that the city’s voluminous Target Center arena will have one too.

Suddenly, green roofs are sprouting across North America. Designed to curb air pollution, decrease energy expenses and reduce storm runoff, the environmentally friendly assemblies are adding a decidedly earthy element to urban skylines — a sign that the green roof industry is rapidly coming into its own.

Particularly in cities, the rise of roof-topping grasses, succulents and other vegetation is fueling a boom for landscape architects, growers, builders and consultants in the know. As the roofs bloom in size and number, cities are weighing new incentives to developers and owners to install the admittedly costly growing medium and plant life as a long-term investment that could benefit both businesses and surrounding communities. And with a strengthening infrastructure to support them, designers are branching out in new directions.

Steven Peck, founder and president of the Toronto-based industry association Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, said the industry’s “mother ship” hails from Europe, particularly Germany. Research there in the 1970s on lightweight, low-maintenance green roof systems dominated by hardy sedum grasses, he said, “opened up thousands of miles of roofscapes that had been unavailable to any sort of greenery.”

German policymakers quickly took notice of the advantages, including the potential to reduce both stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect associated with asphalt, concrete and metal surfaces. In response, they created dozens of incentives and regulations encouraging more green roof construction. In the mid-’90s, a European industry mostly dominated by French and German firms began expanding into North America and introducing the basic concepts to a new generation of specialists.

Peck, himself introduced to the idea in 1997, was tasked with leading a federal study on its benefits and barriers in Canada, only to find that there was little scientific information available for North America. “There was no proof, it was all in German academic studies,” he said.

One of his committee member spent hours translating many of the studies into English. And even those reports sidestepped analysis of big-picture benefits that had been largely taken for granted.

A decade later, the industry has been buttressed by research and case studies detailing both individual benefits like savings on cooling costs and enhanced commercial values, and bigger-picture pluses like reduced air pollution and storm water overflows.

Another essential element has been building expertise across a talent pool that remains unevenly distributed. Peck’s group has been working for five years on an accreditation program modeled in part on LEED certification (Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design). The new Green Roof Professional, or GRP system, should roll out sometime next year, he said. In the meantime, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities has grown to include more than 80 corporate members and has trained more than 4,500 individuals. “You can’t have an industry unless you can have people who can design and deliver,” he said.

Most green roofs still feature sedum and ice plant succulents, which can tolerate harsh growing conditions and are ideally suited for low-maintenance rooftops. These “extensive” roofs, as they’re known, require only a few inches of growing medium, reducing overall weight and cost. Read more »

A recent paper published in the journal Plant Physiology provides a comprehensive overview of the genomics tools and resources available for the rapidly growing Rosaceae scientific community. Rosaceae is an economically important group of plants that comprises more than 3,000 species, including strawberry, apple, peach and pear. Members of this plant family provide high-value nutritional foods and they are also the source of other desirable aesthetic and industrial products.

Modern breeding programs have produced numerous cultivars that play a significant role in commercial agricultural markets in the United States and around the world. In recent years, a global community of Rosaceae scientists has arisen that is benefiting from collaborative efforts designed to develop genetic and genomic resources for representative crops in this family such as apple, peach and strawberry. These crops are emerging as attractive organisms for functional genomics studies due to the availability of resources like expressed sequence tags, bacterial artificial chromosome libraries, physical and genetic maps, molecular markers, genetic transformation protocols and bioinformatic tools.

In the past few years, for example, researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and the Department of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech have developed new procedures for the efficient transfer of specific DNA sequences into the genome of the woodland strawberry Fragaria vesca. They have also developed tools for reverse and forward engineering genetics in this plant. Due to the small size of its genome, short reproductive cycle and small plant size, F. vesca is an ideal model system for genomic studies in commercial strawberry. Developments like high throughput transformation make the Rosaceae attractive as model systems for genomics research.

Vladimir Shulaev, associate professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and corresponding author of the article, remarked: “The review article has been compiled by some of the leading practitioners in Rosaceae genomics. It serves as a synopsis of the resources and initiatives of the Rosaceae community, covers recent developments in Rosaceae genomics, and summarizes plans to apply newly accumulated knowledge and resources toward breeding and crop improvement.”

High throughput sequencing technologies, methods for quantitative gene expression analyses and novel phenotyping platforms are also under development. Researchers looking to study the crop species in the Rosaceae family are well positioned to benefit from these emerging technologies as well as the considerable genomics tools and resources already available for the Rosaceae community.

The paper, “Multiple models for Rosaceae genomics” appeared in the May 16, 2008 issue of Plant Physiology.

The June 2008 issue of the ISHS Pineapple Working Group newsletter ( (Pineapple News 15) is now available for download from the ISHS Scientific Structure pages at www.ishs.org/science/

The cacao plant is to become the latest organism to have its complete genetic code sequenced, but it is no idle exercise to generate tastier products for chocoholics.

The five-year project is expected to help crop scientists identify genes in different varieties of cacao trees that make them resilient to drought and resistant to pests and diseases.

By using the information to direct crop breeding programmes, scientists believe they will be able to grow hybrid cacao trees that are more robust and produce higher yields than existing varieties.

In the past 15 years, three funguses called witches’ broom, frosty pod and black pod have devastated the global cocoa crop, costing growers an estimated £350m a year. The losses, exacerbated by political unrest in Africa where much of the crop is grown, have contributed to a 50% rise in cocoa prices in the past year.

Understanding more about the tree’s genetic make-up could give scientists clues on how best to protect crops against water shortages and diseases which may emerge as climate change takes hold.

An estimated 500m pairs of letters make up the cocoa genome, which will be analysed by IBM’s Blue Gene computer, the second fastest in the world. The computer firm is joining forces in the $10m (£5m) Chocolate Genome Project with the US department of agriculture and the confectionery company Mars.

“Once we have the whole genome, they’ll be able to go in and look at all the genes they’re interested in,” said Ray Schnell, a geneticist at the US agriculture department’s subtropical horticulture research station in Florida. “They’ll all be interested in flavour genes.” When the project is finished, the complete set of genes will be made public.

Researchers have begun field trials of cacao trees in West Africa, Papua New Guinea, and South and Central America.

USDA - ARS

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has announced a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to sponsor the Banana Conference 2008

The Pan-African conference, the first of its kind to link state-of-the-art research to new markets, aims to develop a 10-year research-for-development strategy that will stimulate trade and boost the growth of the banana industry across Africa. Banana researchers, major industry players and farmers’ groups will be participating in the conference.

Bananas are among the most important food and staple crops in Africa, providing food security, nutrition and livelihood for millions of smallholder farmers. In the Great Lakes area of East Africa alone, the crop is worth some US$ 1.7 billion annually to 14 million resource-poor farmers.

The conference seeks to link research, production, and marketing needs to support banana production and trade growth in Africa.  The role of research and the importance of public-private sector partnerships will also be highlighted.

The US$ 74,000 grant will be used to support the participation of Africa-based farmer groups, cooperatives and entrepreneurs at the conference, where they will have the opportunity to present their products and services at stands and booths.

The conference will explore the breadth of the banana industry in Africa, including disease control, seed improvement, and the development of local and regional markets. Of particular interest are farmers’ groups and cooperatives that provide loans to support banana production and new markets, and entrepreneurs involved in innovative income-generating banana activities.

“The support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for this conference is a major indication of the importance with which this conference is being viewed for its benefit to Africa,” said Dr. Thomas Dubois, coordinator of the Banana Conference 2008.  “The funding will make attendance possible for up to 50 small farmers and regional entrepreneurs, giving them a chance to showcase their products and services.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development initiative is working with a wide range of partners to provide millions of small farmers in the developing world with tools and opportunities to boost their productivity, increase their incomes, and build better lives for themselves and their families.

The foundation invests in efforts across the agricultural value chain - from seeds and soil to farm management and market access. The foundation also supports data collection, research, and policy analysis.

“We are eager to support opportunities to listen to the small scale farmers we are trying to serve,” said Dr. Rajiv Shah, Director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“This conference presents an opportunity for small banana farmers and entrepreneurs to forge links that will support their ability to increase yields and incomes - a critical step so they can lead healthy and productive lives.”

The conference will be held from 5 to 9 October 2008 in the coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya. It will be opened by Anna Tibaijuka, Undersecretary-General of the United Nations and Director of UN-HABITAT, and by Karl Falkenberg, Deputy Director General for Trade of the European Commission.

The event is organized and coordinated by IITA in cooperation with Bioversity International, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the International Society for Horticultural Science; and supported by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, the National Agricultural Research Organization of Uganda and Du Roi.

Check out: www.banana2008.com

By Jules Janick, ISHS Board Member and Director of Publications

Eugene Garfield, a linguist, is the remarkable founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).

In the 1960s, Garfield came up with an intriguing concept that has become indispensable to the scientific community, one that he has bankrolled into an influential publishing industry. The concept is that citations in a scientific paper can be used to determine the importance of not only scientific research but also researchers and research journals (Garfield, 1979).

The way it works is that ISI, using a prescribed list of journals, computerizes the citations of each paper of each issue and from this source of information extrapolates a number of intriguing statistics such as how many times a work is cited and who cites it. The basic assumption is that the importance and impact of a scientific work is directly related to the number of times it is cited.

The current dogma is that if a paper is frequently cited it has high impact and is therefore important.

The converse follows: if it is infrequently cited it has low impact and is unimportant. (There are some famous exceptions: see letter below regarding Gregor Mendel, the author of the most famous paper in biology and horticulture.)

To: Abbot Franz Cyrill Napp, Augustinian Monastery of Brno
From: Bishop A.E. Schaffgotsche, Brno
Re: Gregor Mendel
Date: February 1, 1868
The Archbishop of Prague has determined that monastery funds for the construction of a greenhouse have been used to support a research project concerning peas of Gregor Mendel, a member of your order, that may reflect on the effects of the study of science on the spiritual calling of the monastery. As a consequence, we have opened up an investigation to determine the value and impact of this research in two ways: peer review and a citation evaluation. We sent a paper entitled Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden (Experiments on Plant Hybrids) published in Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn 4:3-47, 1866 to the eminent Botany Professor Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli, who informed us that he had already received correspondence with Mendel about this topic. Professor Nägeli was unimpressed with the research but admitted he could not spare the time to read the entire document. He had suggested that Mendel should cease working with horticultural crops and investigate Hieracium (hawkweed), a truly botanical species. We further tested the significance of the pea work through a two year citation analysis and found that the impact factor (derived from number of citations of the paper) had a value of zero. It has never been cited at all. We conclude that the lack of citations confirms the opinion of Professor Nägeli. In view of the poor review and low impact statement we suggest that Dr. Mendel ceases all research in this area. We strongly urge Father Mendel to find a better use of his time and we suggest administration. ¹

¹ Mendel assumed the position of Abbot on March 30, 1868.

Based on this information, the concept of impact of a journal or a paper has been developed. Furthermore, journals can be rated on their importance by the number of times they are cited in their own journal and in other journals. (Of course, it is a bit depressing when you find that no one cites your paper but yourself.)

Indeed, journals develop strategies to improve their impact factor by rejecting papers that they deem unworthy. A related H-index (Hirsch-index but often called the Heat Factor) integrates productivity and impact over a career (Vinkler, 2007). Introduced in 2005 by Jorge Hirsch, the index is a metric for estimating “the importance, significance and broad impact of a scientist’s cumulative contributions” and takes into account both the number of an individual’s publications and their impact on peers, as indicated by citation counts.

The impact factor concept has been bought, hook-line-and-sinker, by administrators worldwide. After all, what could be simpler than finding a specific number, like IQ, to evaluate performance. The mere quantity of publications is no longer of interest, but rather it is their impact vis-a-vis the impact factor. (Of course, many administrators are more interested in how much funding you can garner.)

More and more the careers of young researchers appear to be dependent on this statistic. As a result some young, ambitious scientists are reluctant to publish in low impact journals. Even scientists from undeveloped countries have succumbed to this concept and they increasingly want to know the impact factor of journals chosen for submission.

Sadly, the impact factor can be gamed: to increase your impact factor: make sure you are included as coauthors and cited in your colleagues’ papers by promising to include them in yours; self citation will help you directly; avoid anything that will prevent you from publishing in a less prestigious journal lest it ruins your chances for acceptance in a higher impact journal.

Clearly, the concept of impact has merit in some areas, molecular biology for example, but works less well in others. In many fields of applied science such as engineering where research is often published from proceedings, technical reports, and patents, the impact factor is clearly not as appropriate. And, it cannot be denied that we in horticultural science and particularly ISHS, are suffering from this statistic.

Horticulture journals deal with a small (and decreasing) specialized audience and so citations as measured by ISI will be low, even for the most outstanding papers. ISHS is in the unfortunate position of being subject to the fact that ISI, a private organization, determines what journals are to be considered science in their world.

Acta Horticulturae, because it does not meet ISI’s criterion of a journal (it is not published in regular installments, for example), is excluded (although some “selected” issues are included in the “book citation index”), and thus, its citations are not considered.

This is despite the fact that there are currently almost 800 Actas with more than 40,000 articles available on line with a consistent pattern of over 28,000 daily page views. In essence, ISI by choosing the journals that it considers worthy of counting citations, determines what is to be considered science and undervalues what is excluded.

For example, review articles published in scientific journals are highly cited, and authors get a large impact factor, while review journals such as Horticultural Reviews and Plant Breeding Reviews, are not counted because they come out annually and are not considered journals. ISI also does not include journals from less developed countries. There are some other strange things. The citation does not discriminate between first names. Thus, Jules Janick is cited as J. Janick. Thus I am pleased that my citation index is increased because ISI mixes up Jules Janick and John Janick. I suspect the Parks, Kims, Lees and Wus will be pleased to see their citations increasing.

The citation index does not distinguish self-citation (hint to authors: do not be bashful, cite yourself). We can agree that the Impact Factor is a serious threat to horticultural science in general and to ISHS in particular, since its main publication, Acta Horticulturae, despite its usefulness, is not a prescribed journal of ISI where citations are enumerated.

Can anything be done about it? Probably not much.

We have tried pleading with ISI to include Acta Horticulturae, probably the most cited horticultural publication ever, but we have not been successful. Suing ISI does not seem to be a logical approach.
We have attempted to determine our own impact factor by keeping records of downloads on our website but it is doubtful if they will be accepted by those in other fields or will influence administrators.
Perhaps we should just be stoic and accept the fact that life is just not fair, that we need to believe in ourselves and in the fact that horticulture is important, that we serve a useful function, and stop worrying about something that we cannot control.

REFERENCES

• Garfield, E. 1979. Citation Indexing, Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology and Humanities. Wiley, New York.
• Vinkler, P. 2007. Eminence of scientists in the light of the h-index and other scientometric indicators. J. Information. Science 33(4):481-391.

The kiwifruit picker project was born after business development manager Garth Atkinson heard a report on the kiwifruit industry’s perennial crisis: not enough pickers. He and Dr Flemmer, an industrial automation specialist, worked out a way to automate picking, something that had not previously been possible mechanically because the fruit were too easily damaged.

The kiwifruit picking robot is a development of Dr Rory Flemmer and a team led by PhD scholar Alistair Scarfe

The key to their design is an artificial vision system that enables the robot to select and pick 14,000 kiwifruit an hour. It is scheduled to begin working in orchards this year. Massey marketing director Sarah Vining says the kiwifruit picker has the potential to revolutionise the entire horticulture industry.

For more details check out www.massey.ac.nz

MAF Biosecurity New Zealand (MAFBNZ) has today (June 4, 2008) withdrawn phytosanitary certification for New Zealand fresh tomato and capsicum export produce until further notice, following the confirmation of a new disease-causing bacterium in three commercial hot-house operations in the North Island.

MAFBNZ Director Border Standards Tim Knox says the withdrawal of phytosanitary certification is a pre-cautionary measure until more information about the bacterium is available. Mr Knox says little is known about if or how the bacterium may have entered New Zealand, or its transmission, effect, and distribution –“we have initiated a programme of research to answer these questions. The results, of this research, will help determine the feasibility of options for managing the disease.

“Initial findings suggest that the bacterium may be transmitted by a small insect called the tomato/ potato psyllid - there are no considered human health issues associated with the bacterium or with eating tomatoes or capsicum.” Mr Knox says MAFBNZ is working closely with Horticulture New Zealand and sector representatives from the fresh tomato and capsicum industry to discuss the situation and consider possible response options.

Q & A’s for a new tomato bacterium in New Zealand…
Read more »

Acta Horticulturae 786; International Workshop on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISBN 978-90-66052-48-2 ), Acta Horticulturae 787; International Workshop on Tropical and Subtropical Fruits (ISBN 978-90-66052-89-5 ); Acta Horticulturae 788 International Workshop on Ornamental Plants (ISBN 978-90-66053-29-8 ) and Acta Horticulturae 789; XV Meeting of the EUCARPIA Tomato Working Group (ISBN 978-90-66053-69-4 ) have just been released.

For further details, orders and article downloads go to www.actahort.org

The Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe is known for its knockout landscapes and blooms, but it’s more than just a pretty face.

The garden, which has boosted its cadre of scientists from two to 22 in the last decade, will break ground Tuesday on a $50 million conservation science center to make its botanists more visible, give them state-of-the-art laboratories to probe the mysteries of plant life and enlarge its bank of prairie seeds and dried plants.

The new Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center will more firmly root the garden’s reputation as one of the nation’s premier conservation and biology research institutions, experts said.

“This is probably the best plant conservation program in the country, and it ranks right up there internationally,” said Peggy Olwell, plant conservation program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, based in Washington, D.C.

“You’re lucky you have them in your backyard.”
Chicago Botanic Garden to break ground on $50 million conservation center

Visitors can observe scientists in nine labs as they pass through a central atrium lined with windows. They also will have access to a 10,000-square-foot living green roof, which will be used as an educational tool and to evaluate which plants and pollinators thrive best on urban rooftops.

The center’s opening is scheduled for fall 2009.

The garden’s relative youth has served as an advantage, said Peter Crane, a professor at the University of Chicago and former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London.

“Chicago Botanic Garden has developed in a pretty amazing way in the last 20 years or so,” said Crane, who is on the garden’s board of directors. “They’ve organized their work in a very pragmatic way with biology and conservation first and foremost.”

Private donations and grants will pay for the 36,000-square-foot Rice Center. The botanic garden, which sprawls across 385 acres owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, is managed by the non-profit Chicago Horticultural Society. The Forest Preserve District funded about 32 percent of the botanic garden’s expenses last year, with the rest coming from memberships, grants and donations.

The projected cost includes nearly $30 million for the building, $10 million for an endowment and about $10 million for a drawbridge, evaluation garden, perimeter fence and other outdoor amenities.
Read more »