Food and Energy Security has now published its latest issue featuring a number of articles focussing on improving global security of energy and food resouces by using agricultural methods. The following articles have been selected by Editor-in-Chief: Martin Parry:

Metallic trace elements in cereal grain – a review: how much metal do we eat?
Tihana Tekli?, Zdenko Lon?ari?, Vlado Kova?evi? and Bal Ram Singh
Summary: This review aimed to give an overview of data regarding metallic trace elements (Fe, Mn, Zn, and Cu) content in the grain of globally most important cereals – wheat, rice, and maize. As an important component of human and animal food, cereal grains represent a plant available load of these metals into the food chain.

Avoiding damage and achieving cold tolerance in rice plants
Renata Pereira da Cruz, Raul Antonio Sperotto, Denise Cargnelutti, Janete Mariza Adamski, Tatiana de FreitasTerra and Janette Palma Fett
Summary: Cold temperatures can have negative impacts on rice plants during germination, vegetative growth, and reproductive stages, leading to decreased productivity. Here we review the efforts that have been made to achieve cold tolerance in rice through breeding, the major tools used for evaluating cold tolerance in rice plants, the discovery of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and genes related to this tolerance and the results obtained so far by genetic transformation of rice plants with potential cold-tolerance genes. Possible future approaches are suggested.

 Alternate wetting and drying irrigation for rice in Bangladesh: Is it sustainable and has plant breeding something to offer?
Adam H. Price, Gareth J. Norton, David E. Salt, Oliver Ebenhoeh, Andrew A. Meharg, Caroline Meharg, M. Rafiqul Islam, Ramen N. Sarma, Tapash Dasgupta, Abdelbagi M. Ismail, Kenneth L. McNally, Hao Zhang, Ian C. Dodd and William J. Davies
Summary: The article describes the technique of alternate wetting and drying (AWD) which is being promoted in Bangladesh as a water saving technique for dry season rice production. It highlights the unknown aspects of the adoption of the method which relate to its effectiveness in the long term. Finally it reports an innovative multi-disciplinary project which aims to examine sustainability and offer solutions through genomics, soil biogeochemistry, plant physiology and systems biology.

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Food and Energy Security is a new high quality open access journal publishing high impact original research on agricultural crop and forest productivity to improve food and energy security. We are delighted by the high level of readership which our first two issues received and we would like to inform you that Issue 2.1 of this journal has now been published and is free for all to read, download and share.

Highlights from this issue include:

 Food and thriving people: paradigm shifts for fair and sustainable food systems
by Geoff Tansey
Summary: This article looks beyond the physical sciences to address the problems of hunger, malnutrition, and environmental degradation. It discusses the challenges and problems with global food security and where and why paradigm shifts are needed to meet those challenges in a fair and sustainable way.

 Biomass properties from different Miscanthus species
by Chenchen Liu, Liang Xiao, Jianxiong Jiang, Wangxia Wang, Feng Gu, Dongliang Song, Zili Yi, Yongcan Jin and Laigeng Li
Summary: Miscanthus has been considered a potential energy crop for lignocellulosic biomass production. Four Miscanthus species widely distributed in China were assessed for their biomass production, chemical composition, and saccharification efficiency.
 
 Prospects of doubling global wheat yields
by Malcolm J. Hawkesford, Jose-Luis Araus, Robert Park, Daniel Calderini, Daniel Miralles, Tianmin Shen, Jianping Zhang and Martin A. J. Parry
Summary: Whilst an adequate supply of food can be achieved at present for the current global population, sustaining this into the future will be difficult in the face of a steadily increasing population. Wheat alone provides ?20% of the calories and the protein for the world’s population, and the value and need to increase the production is recognized widely.

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Food and Energy Security is a new high quality open access journal publishing high impact original research on agricultural crop and forest productivity to improve food and energy security.

Issue 2 of this journal has now been published and is free for all to read, download and share. Highlights from this issue include:

Pine oleoresin: tapping green chemicals, biofuels, food protection, and carbon sequestration from multipurpose trees by Kelly Cristine da Silva Rodrigues-Corrêa, Júlio César de Lima and Arthur Germano Fett-Neto
Summary: Plants of the genus Pinus are able to grow in a wide range of environments, many of which quite harsh and extreme. Pine forests work as sinks of atmospheric carbon, contributing to greenhouse effect mitigation. They are important sources of numerous useful products, including not only wood and cellulose, but also non-wood products used by the chemical, food, biofuel, and pharmaceutical industries, as well as for biorefineries.

An overview of climate change impacts on European viticulture by H. Fraga, A. C. Malheiro, J. Moutinho-Pereira and J. A. Santos
Summary: The importance of viticulture and of the winemaking socio-economic sector in Europe is largely acknowledged. Given the strong influence of the atmospheric factors on this crop, climate change can significantly affect yield and wine quality under future conditions. An overview of the current scientific knowledge, mostly concerning the European viticulture, the potential climate change impacts and feasible adaptation measures is provided herein.

We would like to invite you to submit your next article to Food and Energy Security>
All new articles will now publish under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, which complies with the Wellcome Trust and RC-UK mandates coming into effect from April 2013.

We are delighted to announce that Food and Energy Security has recently appointed an international editorial board to compliment and support the activities of the existing senior editor team. Each new editor is an expert in their field, providing unique insight into a specific area of food and energy security, and its associated disciplines. 

The editorial board now includes 8 Chinese editors, 4 of which are based at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The strength of representation from China is in keeping with the journals ambition to attract the best research from this key region and with interests as varied as Weiming Shi’s study into Root Biology and Rhizosphere Processes for Sustainable Agriculture and Yihua Zhou’s focus upon the production of biofuel and new energy we feel confident the journal is now well positioned to achieve this goal.

Sally Wilkinson, one of five editors from the UK, is focused on developing and improving perennial non-food biomass and bioproduct crops. Her research is directly involved in several large international projects funded by the European Commission. Li Laigeng, at the same time, is committed to exploring plant biomass as an important renewable source for energy, fiber material and biochemicals. Gail Taylor at the University of Southampton has a long standing interest in the use of woody plants as sources of renewable energy for heat, power and more recently for liquid biofuels such as bioethanol. To further the possibility of biomass becoming a real fuel source, Ashutosh Mittal, based at the National Renewable Energy Centre at the US, is currently leading research to develop the conversion of biomass into fuel in a cost-effective manner.

Several of the new editorial board have a particular interest in drought, and research into the drought tolerance of plants. Andrew Leakey is currently investigating the genetic basis of drought tolerance in C4 grasses at the University of Illinois, while Chun-Peng Song’s research at Henan University in China centres on plant response to abiotic stress such as drought stress. Ruilian Jing is leading several national projects at the Institute of Crop Germplasm, CAS, aiming to improve crop drought tolerance and water use efficiency. Zhizhong Gong’s research into plant defence at the China Agricultural University s also focused on three aspects of the salt, drought and cold hardiness of the plant.

A select number of the editorial board specialise in nutrition improvement in crops. Chun-Ming Liu at the renowned Institute of Botany at CAS uses rice and Arabidopsis as models for research on seed development and Adam Price at the University of Aberdeenis involved in the release of a better-rooted rice cultivar in India produced via marker assisted selection. Gustavo A. Slafer (University of Lleida, Spain) is focused on the mechanisms, at the crop level of organization, underlying the responses of grain crops to environmental and genetic factors.

Our two South American editors – Paulo Mazzafera of the University of Campinas in Brazil and María Patricia Benavides of the University of Buenos Aries, Argentina – are both interested in secondary metabolism . María Patricia Benavides is currently involved in a study of nitrogen metabolism under heavy metal stress. Meanwhile Nigel Halford’s work at Rothamsted Research UK concerns the genetics of metabolic regulation in crop plants, particularly how environmental stresses affect plant metabolism.

Both Leon Terry (University of Cranfield, UK) and Umezuruike Linus Opara (Stellenbosch University, South Africa) are concerned with the processes surrounding the harvest. Opara, the first board member from Africa, is currently leading research projects on design of the ‘Packaging of the Future’ supported by the South African Postharvest Innovation Programme. Terry’s research is similarly committed to reducing waste and increasing food security around the world.

For a full list of the editorial board members please visit the Food and Energy Security website. To submit your paper to Food and Energy Security visit our online submission site.

Food and Energy Security is a new high impact open access journal publishing original research on acricultural crop and forest productivity to improve food and energy security. It is published in association with the AAB. Our full aims and scopes can be found here. We would like to encourage you to submit your paper . “Our intention is to offer a forum for the discussion of the most important advances in this field and to promote an integrative approach of scientific disciplines.” (Martin Parry, Editor-in-Chief). Our inaugural issue has been widely read and we have also published these top articles below. These, and all papers are free to read, download and share:

 What is new in the research on cadmium-induced stress in plants?
Ricardo A. Azevedo, Priscila L. Gratão, Carolina C. Monteiro and Rogério F. Carvalho
Abstract: We review the most recent research carried on cadmium-induced stress in plants and suggest key aspects that deserve attention in future research on this subject.

  Nutritional-rich and stress-tolerant crops by saccharopine pathway manipulation
Paulo Arruda and Izabella Pena Neshich
Abstract: Lysine is a limiting essential amino acid in cereals. The saccharopine pathway that converts lysine to ?-aminoadipate can be manipulated to engineer crops for increased nutritional value and stress tolerance.

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