Agricultural Research Service Southern Regional Research Center Research for a Growing World (2005, 10 min. 47 sec.) Narrator Located in New Orleans ARS' Southern Regional Research Center, SRRC, was established at a time when fields of cotton, sweet potatoes and sugarcane once dominated the southern landscape. Staples like these were the driving forces behind the first SRRC research and while cotton production, cotton textile technologies and sugar production still feature prominently in the center's work other research projects are flourishing too. For instances, one laboratory within SRRC is dedicated to making America's food supply safer. Microbiologist Ed Cleveland is the unit's research leader. Thomas E. Cleveland, Microbiologist Well in the last 18 years, our primary mission has been finding technologies to eliminate a fungal poison known as aflatoxin which the fungus invades various crops in the US and around the world and produces this toxin which makes the crop unsellable. So our mission has been to develop strategies to prevent that problem from occurring in crops before they are harvested. Narrator These toxin producing fungi can ruin crops like corn, tree nuts and peanuts and cotton seed which is an important feed for livestock. But SRRC scientists have found one way to battle the molds. They are using fungi to fight fungi. Researchers have found fungal strains, tough but harmless, that can be seeded on to fields to squeeze out their poisonous cousins. Thomas E. Cleveland, Microbiologist This has been carried out in Arizona where aflatoxin is a chronic problem on cotton and very large scale field tests are in progress to actually distribute these nontoxin producing molds into the field have been showing very high levels of success in out competing the toxin producing molds. Narrator In another strategy, SRRC scientists are trying to boost the plant's own defenses against toxin producing molds. To help give corn the extra protection it needs, SRRC researchers are looking to some rather special corn from Nigeria for help. The African corn has built in resistance to the toxic fungi. Robert L. Brown, plant pathologist These lines are in very poor backgrounds and they are not commercial useful, so we study these lines and are in the process of identifying the traits that cause the resistance and then these traits can be used as markers for breeders to look for as they transfer resistance from these lines to more commercially useful lines and by doing it this way they can transfer those traits that are important for resistance at the same time minimize the transfer of other traits which might not be desired. Narrator SRRC researchers are not only interested in the seed that comes from cotton, they are also conducting research on the plant's most recognizable parts, it's fibers. As a fabric, cotton is naturally soft and breathable but with textile mills closing around the country and domestic processing of cotton down the future of American grown cotton is a challenge. The task to make cotton "King" once again is a tough one but one of the researchers' strategies is fairly simple, find a better way to measure the fuzzy white fibers. Devron P. Thibodeaux, Physical Scientist The fiber is a single cell. It is very interesting and it ... the wall of the cell thickens and it is essentially pure cellulose. It is laid down in a process that we call biosynthesis. It becomes thick and the thickness of the cell wall of the fiber will determine a lot about its physical properties especially in terms of how strong it will be, how much dye it will absorb. Narrator Un-dyeable white specks and immature fibers are a costly problem for textile makers so SRRC cotton researchers are developing methods to find these flaws early on. Devron P. Thibodeaux, Physical Scientist And so, essentially what we were looking for was a way of replacing the current instrument that is used for grading the cotton with an instrument that would be a better measure the maturity of the fiber. So to do this we've done, over a number of years, we've done work on essentially a reference method for measuring maturity. That method has to do with taking, sampling, bundles of the fibers that have been arranged in a parallel array, embedding them in a type of a polymer and then cutting this bundle into very thin sections, putting them on a microscope and measuring the cross sectional characteristics of a population of fibers which would be a very good measure of the physical property of maturity. Narrator Paring the method with the latest computer technology, SRRC cotton researchers are now able to characterize tens of thousands of fibers in just a few hours. Once the technology is transferred to industry, cotton fiber quality will improve and so will the appearance of finished textiles available to consumers. On another front, SRRC researchers are doing work that could help the hundreds of thousands of Americans living with a food allergies. One to two percent of adults in the US have some type of food allergy and many of these people are suffering from peanut allergy, a potentially fatal condition. Researchers at SRRC's Food Processing and Sensory Quality Research Unit are making great strides searching for a peanut that won't make allergy suffers sick. Soheila J. Maleki, Chemist We've been really excited, the first hundred or something samples that we screened, we found one that is completely missing one of the allergens so that's really exciting and I think that, that shows a lot of promise and we are actually getting funding from the Georgia Peanut Commission, Peanut Foundation, National Peanut Board and several places for this project to be maintained and to continue as a show of support of the ARS research. I think that's really important. Narrator Maleki is also trying to answer a question that many expectant mothers with food allergies might have. "Will I be able to breast-feed?" In other words, will the peanut proteins in breast milk sensitize a child and make them prone to peanut allergies or could it have the reverse effect and make them tolerant. Soheila J. Maleki, Chemist One of the things we are working on is hoping detect, to be able to answer that question before a mother is or a woman is pregnant or ready to breast-feed so they can come in the office for example way before they are do or before they are pregnant and say will I be somebody that can breast-feed, eat peanuts or something while I'm breast-feeding or not. Narrator Maleki attributes part of her research group's success to the multi-disciplinary approach taken by ARS research centers. Soheila J. Maleki, Chemist I think that the ARS in general and our center, Southern Regional Research Center, are very diverse in their research and multi-disciplinary and I think that's really important because I can walk down the hall and have somebody that has an expertise in something that I want to do that I don't have expertise in. For example, just somebody two doors down has an instrument that I have never used in my life but I know what it does and I know how to interpret the data and they've helped us a lot in deciphering the structure of some of the allergens before and after roasting, being able to determine the differences. Narrator Another SRRC researcher who depends on the collaboration allowed by the ARS laboratories framework is microbiologist Alan Lax. He is the research leader for the Formosan Subterranean Termite Research Unit at SRRC that's looking to keep the invasive and voracious termites in check. Alan R. Lax, Plant Physiologist We have collaborations with several other ARS labs including the Natural Products Utilization Research Unit in Oxford, Mississippi. We work closely with the Gainesville Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology on a variety of aspects. Narrator SRRC's termite researchers are helping to maintain the structure integrity of one of the nation's most famous historic districts, the New Orleans French Quarter. Alan R. Lax, Plant Physiologist We began the integrated pest management and control of 15 blocks in the French Quarter about 5 years ago with our partners in the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board in Louisiana State University. In that program , we treated virtually every property within that 15 blocks with one of the new offensive-minded products, baits or non repellent liquid termiticides, that are designed to kill the populations of the termite rather than simply repel them and drive them to another location that they might infest. Since then we've reduced the populations by approximately 50% in the French Quarter. Narrator And it's not just historic homes that the wood loving insects attack. Alan R. Lax, Plant Physiologist The Formosan subterranean termite is insidious in that it not only it infests structures, which we more typically relate to the native subterranean termite, but also infests over 50 species of living plants. In the New Orleans area you can go virtually no where that the Formosan subterranean termite is not established. They are in urban forests, such as in New Orleans City Park. They infest as many as 30% of the trees in the New Orleans area and that is devastating from a variety of standpoints, not only do they weaken the structural integrity of the tree causing some of them to fail during high winds or storms, but they also ... it provides a base for the termites to develop a colony within that tree and thereby attack a nearby structure.