devinitorg/iati-policy-markers huggingface dataset:
Drivers and dynamics of antimicrobial resistance and Salmonella in Brazilian pig and poultry production Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of bacteria found in livestock represent a grave threat to the health of both animals and humans; resistant infections in livestock also have a significant economic impact. Salmonella enterica is one of the most important bacterial pathogens in pigs and poultry, which are thought to be two of the major reservoirs for human infections. Brazil is one of the world's largest producers and exporters of pig and chicken meat, and these industries are significant contributors to the country's economy. Change in these production systems over the last 10-15 years, including massive intensification and introduction of a Salmonella Enteritidis vaccine in poultry, have led to dramatic shifts in the Salmonella serotype prevalence observed from pigs and poultry in Brazil. These shifts are probably driven by antimicrobial use and resistance, but this issue has not been fully investigated.  The research outlined in our proposal builds on our one-year pump-priming grant investigating the diversity and evolution of AMR determinants in Salmonella isolated from Brazilian pigs and poultry over the last 10 years. In the course of our work, we will dramatically increase the number of available Salmonella genome sequences from Brazilian livestock; by doing so, we can identify where they fit in the global context and identify when specific subtypes emerged in Brazil. We will also look at the genetic determinants, such as AMR, facilitating the persistence of Salmonella through the food chain. By investigating the changes in AMR and serotype over the life course of livestock animals, we will help inform potential vaccine strategies. Finally, by examining AMR in the gut co-resident non-pathogenic bacteria in livestock and correlating total resistance with antimicrobial usage, we will ascertain their potential role as a reservoir of AMR genes for pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella, as AMR genes can move between bacteria through horizontal gene transfer. We will achieve these aims using whole genome sequencing, state-of-the-art long read sequencing, combined with molecular biology and epidemiology. This proposal exploits the effective and productive collaboration between Dr Alison Mather and Dr Justin O'Grady at Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB) in the UK, and Dr Andrea Moreno, Dr Terezinha Knöbl and Dr Luisa Moreno at the University of São Paulo (USP), along with collaborators Dr Emma Doughty at QIB and Dr Liljana Petrovska at the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Antimicrobial consumption in livestock is expected to nearly double in Brazil by 2030; this research will tackle the huge health and economic threat posed by AMR to Brazilian livestock species, which will help identify where suitable control strategies could be applied most effectively. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Burkholderia species in sugarcane: the relationship among antifungal production, intrinsic antimicrobial resistance, and pest biocontrol The Burkholderiaceae comprises a family of environmental bacteria widespread around the planet, which reside in diverse environments and in association with plants, insects, animals, and humans and also display extraordinarily high multidrug, intrinsic antibiotic resistance. Intrinsic resistance means that these bacteria can tolerate large concentrations of many different classes of antibiotics. Burkholderia are very useful microorganisms for mankind. They can serve as agents for bioremediation, plant growth promotion, and pest biocontrol, but these beneficial properties remain virtually unexploitable because of fear of infection and antibiotic resistance. Indeed, some Burkholderia species are particularly dangerous to humans and domestic animals (e.g. melioidosis and glanders) and they are singled out as bioterrorism agents, while others (e.g. B. cenocepacia and B. multivorans) cause debilitating and often transmissible lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients.   Burkholderia spp. is a main bacterium of the sugarcane cultivable bacterial community in Brazil, and can control fungal and infections by producing many different antifungal compounds. Research in our laboratories show that strains with high-level antimicrobial resistance and increased bacterial virulence in a widely used insect infection model (Galleria mellonella) display higher capacity to inhibit sugarcane pathogenic fungi. These observations suggest that antimicrobial resistance and antifungal production are interrelated.   We hypothesise that antimicrobial resistance and antifungal compound production are coordinated to allow Burkholderia survival in the presence of a polymicrobial flora in the plants and also to defend and complete for nutrients against other organisms in the rhizosphere. Our proposal aims to exploit this idea to find new ways to maximise the beneficial properties of Burkholderia for use in the field (e.g. antifungal production) while reducing antimicrobial resistance in the clinic. We will combine molecular microbiology, genomics, and infection models in plants and insects to assess the hypothesis that antifungal production drives antimicrobial resistance by influencing the production of molecules that enhance bacterial cell envelope impermeability resulting in increased antibiotic resistance, which in turn increases bacterial virulence. We will also exploit these findings to develop novel ways to inhibit antimicrobial resistance and enhance pest biocontrol. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Climate ready rice: Optimising transpiration to protect rice yields under abiotic stresses Stomata are microscopic pores on the surface of leaves that allow gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere. They are crucial for photosynthesis, but much water vapour is lost by transpiration through leaf stomata. When water is limiting, the stomatal pores adjust to prevent water loss but they can never completely close. We have shown with the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana that reducing the number of stomata can improve plant drought resistance by reducing water loss through transpiration, and help to conserve the amount of water in soils. Conversely, increasing the number of stomata enhances evaporative cooling and would be expected to increase tolerance to heat stress. We would like to apply this strategy to rice so that we can test whether reducing stomatal numbers could improve crop drought and heat stress tolerances, both increasingly major limitations to yield in many parts of the world. We will carry out experiments that aim to re-direct plant water loss to allow enhanced evaporative cooling in reproductive organs without compromising plant drought tolerance, which could be important in future hot and dry environments and at higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. We have already generated rice plants with genetically reduced or increased stomatal numbers, and propose to test whether growing these under drought or high temperature conditions can improve the total yield of grain harvested. These experiments will be performed on genetically modified (GM) plants but we also propose to isolate and study rice variants in genes that are involved in stomatal development through non-GM techniques, and include these in our studies and test them for drought and heat resistance. We believe that our work will be strategically relevant to the production of rice crops with enhanced drought and heat stress tolerance, and an important step towards improving food security across Asia.   Our project directly addresses the following aims of the Newton Rice Research funding scheme:  - Greater resilience to abiotic stresses (in this project drought and heat stresses).  - Improved resource use efficiency (in this project enhanced water use efficiency).  - Novel research tool and technology development (in this project screening and characterisation of germplasm for gene and trait discovery). The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
14CONFAP: Implications of enhanced ecological intensification and resilience for smallholder farming in the eastern Amazonia region The former 'arc of deforestation' of peripheral Amazonia is dominated by extensive pastures and slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. These land management interventions have resulted in severe environmental degradation, restricted agricultural productivity and caused rural poverty. As populations continue to rise, there is a clear need for a more ecologically sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture with high eco-efficiency and low external inputs. This project aims to create a new research partnership to tackle biodiversity and ecosystems resilience and assess the impacts of ecological intensification (more productive, reduced input sustainable systems) on smallholder farming at the eastern fringe of Amazonia. We will focus on four key priority areas namely: i) landscape ecology; ii) soil carbon and nutrient management; iii) global change biology and iv) conservation and biodiversity.   i) Landscape ecology: Ecological intensification of agriculture requires an appreciation of how ecosystem processes at the landscape-scale can be integrated with existing smallholder farming systems, priorities and constraints. Key questions that need to be addressed include: 1) how should forests be managed to deliver optimal livelihood and environmental benefits? and 2) how can we ensure that forest management at the interface with neighbouring farming systems is sustainable and not over-exploited by farming communities? ii) Carbon and nutrients Traditional smallholder farming relies on low input strategies and future efforts must strive to increase resilience to minimize external risks. Sustainable low-input agriculture is difficult to achieve in the humid tropics, due to a combination of factors that reduce nutrient-efficiencies of crops. Key questions to be considered include: 1) how does smallholder land management impact on soil quality and 2) how can soils best be restored? iii) Global change biology  Global changes at field, regional and global scales are transforming agriculture and socio-economics and we urgently require a better understanding of the processes and patterns involved. The key questions to be addressed here are: 1) to what extent can crop management mitigate against environment change-related stresses such as droughts, flooding? and 2) what is the short- and long-term effect of salinity intrusions into freshwater wetlands? iv) Conservation and use of biodiversity Biodiversity is essential to the sustainable management of ecosystems. Key questions to include: 1) how might forest wastes benefit farming systems; and 4) how does biodiversity provide more resilience to agricultural landscapes to cope with extreme events? The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
14CONFAP Comparative genomic and physiological analysis of C4 plant-microbe symbiosis Miscanthus (grown in the  UK) is a perrenial crop containing large amounts of carbon, that we can burn in power stations to produce energy, or digest biologically to produce useful chemicals (e.g. for production of bioplastics). Sugarcane (grown in Brazil) is a very similar crop, bred for its sugar content.   Both plants have bacteria called endophytes living in their roots. The plant has a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria; some of the bacteria help the plant fix nitrogen, others may help the plant tolerate drought stress.   This project aims to exchange knowledge and expertise on these endophytes including what types of endophytes are present and how they function. In the long term, this could lead to us being able to innoculate plants with specific beneficial bacteria, thereby making them more tolerant to drought, and to increase their growth. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
India-UK Nitrogen Fixation Centre (IUNFC) Nitrogen is an essential element of biological molecules and life on earth. Lack of usable nitrogen limits growth of microbes, plants, and animals. Lack of nitrogen in agricultural soils limits plant production of food, feed, fibre and fuel. Nature solved the nitrogen limitation problem via evolution of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) in diazotrophic bacteria that reduce atmospheric N2 to NH3, which is readily assimilated into biological molecules. Biological nitrogen fixation is catalyzed by a complex metalloenzyme called nitrogenase whose oxygen-sensitivity may explain its restricted distribution amongst prokaryotes. Some plants, including most legumes and a few non-legumes form intimate, nitrogen-fixing symbioses with diazotrophs that provide the plants with ammonia. As a consequence, legumes have been an integral part of sustainable agricultural systems for thousands of years. However, in an effort to increase plant yields large-scale use of industrially-produced N-fertilizer has doubled the influx of N into the terrestrial biogeochemical N-cycle, with serious negative consequences for human health and the natural environment. Therefore, the long-term sustainability of massive N-fertilizer inputs in agriculture has come into question. A team of eight investigators in India and two in the UK have come together to enhance the use of legumes, increase their effectiveness at fixing nitrogen and develop endophytic diazotrophs for use on cereals such as rice. Our focus is on pigeon pea, which is the second most widely planted legume in India but suffers from poor rates of BNF and low yields. We will select elite lines of pigeon pea and competitive rhizobial inoculants to maximise yields while improving their robustness. In addition we will develop phosphate solubilising strains of rhizobia as the supply of phosphorous often limits the rates on BNF and plant yield. Desirable traits for BNF and phosphate solubilisation will then be stacked into rhizobial inocula. A final long-term aim is the transfer of BNF to cereals, particularly rice, by the use of endophytic diazoptophs that can be inoculated onto cereals. This will be done both by selection of new endophytic diazotrophs and by manipulation of the control of BNF and ammonia secretion in elite strains. To achieve these aims we bring together the national leaders in India and the UK with expertise in bacterial and plant genetics, genomics, biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, physiology, synthetic biology combined with a deep knowledge of BNF in Indian soils and different regions. Improving BNF in our target plants will increase croyields for resource-poor farmers while decreasing the use and environmental-impact of industrial N-fertilizers. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
UK-China partnership on Global Food Security: Combating avian tumor diseases for sustainable poultry production Infectious diseases result in direct and indirect losses at various steps of poultry farming and amongst them neoplastic disease caused by viruses is a major economic problem faced by the poultry industry worldwide. The oncogenic viruses causing neoplastic infection in chickens are herpesviruses comprising of Marek's disease virus (MDV) and retroviruses comprising of reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV) and avian leucosis virus (ALV). ALV is the most common naturally occurring avian retrovirus that can cause a variety of neoplastic disease conditions in chickens. In addition to causing neoplasia, ALV is known to be associated with reduced productivity and other production problems in affected flocks.  Based on the properties of viral envelope glycoproteins, ALV is classified into six subgroups: A, B, C, D, E and J.  Originally isolated by the Pirbright Institute in the late 1980s, ALV-J spreads widely and induces myeloid leukosis and a broad spectrum of additional disorders, such as histiocytic sarcoma, hemangiomas and erythroblastosis. The original strains have almost been eradicated from most of the commercial poultry flocks in Europe and the United States but in Asia, the virus evolved into a great variety and recently emerging Chinese isolates coarsely induce various tumours in both commercial laying hen flocks as well as native Chinese breeds of chickens. Defining the molecular background of the tumorigenesisis is needed to develop more effective control and eradication programmes in China. In this proposal, we aim to obtain detailed comprehensive picture on the molecular events to understand and predict the molecular pathways to ALV-J induced cancer. This includes non-coding RNA profiling for the role of non-coding RNAs in ALV-J induced oncogenesis, oncogene myc targetome identification and the role of myc-binding in maintaining the transformed phenotype and myc knockout by CRISPR/Cas9 system for the role of myc in maintaining the transformed phenotype. As the co-infection of ALV-J with other tumor viruses such as Marek's disease virus and Reticuloendotheliosis virus is very common and caused more serious pathogenic effects, we are going to elucidate the synergistic mechanism of ALV-J+REV/ALV-J+MDV co-infection in vitro and in vivo. The findings will be very valuable in developing new approaches for the eradication of ALV-J in China and control of cancers caused by oncogenic viruses. We also want to establish the resistant cell line by editing ALV-J receptor NHE1 using CRISPR/Cas9 system to explore genetic resistant to ALV-J. Finally, we will develop the rapid diagnostic kits to detect ALV-J infection in the field to aid the ALV-J control and eradication in China. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
14CONFAP Application of quantitative proteomics to accelerate vaccine development against Schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease. Schistosomiasis a neglected tropical disease caused by persistent blood-dwelling parasitic worms, is the focus of this application and remains an important public health problem in Brazil. Treatment with the one available drug does not prevent reinfection so an effective vaccine would enhance control. Sequencing of the worm's transcriptome (2003) and genome (2009) has facilitated post-genomic initiatives. Brazilian science would greatly benefit from an injection of cutting-edge proteomic technologies from UK experts to better orientate the search for novel vaccine candidates. As stated above previous collaborations between the proposed partners have led to publications in high impact journals, which in turn have informed the research of vaccinologists in Brazil and worldwide.  Proteomics is a young subject, expanding into a very sophisticated technology with enormous potential to illuminate many of the disease problems we face in the developed and developing world alike.  The group in Ouro Preto is also in the growth phase.  The proposed project could serve as the springboard to establish a longer-lasting collaboration with a leading group of UK researchers at the cutting edge of Proteomics. The impact that this would have on infectious tropical disease research in Brazil cannot be underestimated. The new collaboration will inject advanced proteomic techniques to underpin and consolidate the inventory of novel proteins we expect to identify and quantitate. We anticipate that the collaboration will kick-start a new round of vaccine testing.  In this programme, we will apply technologies developed at Liverpool to the analysis of potential vaccine candidates. In particular, Liverpool will host scientists and trainees from Ouro Preto, giving them access the super facilities that are located there. In addition, scientists from Liverpool will visit Ouro Preto to provide advanced training and to deliver a formal training course that will be open to other Brazilian scientists. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
UK-Colombia Sustainable Tropical Agricultural Systems Programme Collaborative research programme between CIAT Colombia and UK researchers supporting the establishment of virtual joint centres in tropical agriculture focusing on beans, forage grasses for livestock and pulses for Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Centres will combine biologists, environmental sciences, social scientists and economists. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.
Sequencing and exploitation of the genetic diversity in Vietnamese native rice lines to serve research and breeding programs We propose to develop a modern platform for rice breeding in Vietnam focused on traits of agronomic interest. Rice is a staple food for a population of 90 million in Vietnam and it is also one of the main exporter commodities of the country.  Vietnam is experiencing an exceptional growth in its economic output and population rising as a global leading agricultural country. There is, however, an increasing threat from climate change such as emerging pathogens, periods of droughts and rising sea levels. The areas under greatest risk are the deltas of the Red and Mekong rivers, which represent the major rice growing regions of Vietnam. The rapid selection of rice varieties that are tolerant and resilient to these conditions will help to mitigate some of these challenges and contribute to ensure food security in Vietnam.   The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in the UK and the Agricultural Genetics Institute (AGI) in Vietnam initiated a collaboration to sequence the genome of a reduced number of Vietnamese rice varieties with the purpose to characterise the genetic variations in native lines and develop molecular markers that could be used to accelerate rice breeding.   The application of new genomics technologies to improve crop breeding is one of the priorities at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) at UK. The proposed project continues the partnership initiated between TGAC and AGI as a collaboration with NIAB. We aim at expanding the pilot project phase I to complete the re-sequencing of around 600 lines. We will complement the generation of these data with the development of databases and the application of bioinformatics pipelines to identify associations of alleles with specific phenotypes. We expect to characterise markers that will enable more efficient rice breeding. The application of modern technologies to rice breeding will also provide an excellent example of how these strategies could be applied to other plant species such as wheat and barley. Rice has a simple genome for which many genomics resources have been already generated and it offers an excellent model for the evaluation and assessment of new strategies for breeding that could later be applied to more complex crops. This collaboration with Vietnam will also open opportunities to work with world leading scientists with experience in rice breeding and agronomy. The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.