A delegation from the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering traveled to Beijing in April 2016 to jointly run a workshop on technology advances in food safety with the Chinese Academy of Engineering. This brief summary from the Australian delegation identifies the pyramid of inter- locking issues which must be addressed to deliver food safety. Systems and technology provide the necessary base, on which culture and then trust can be built to facilitate the delivery of food safety now and in the future.

This review charts the major developments in the genetic manipulation of plant cells that have taken place since the first gene transfer experiments using Ti plasmids in 1983. Tremendous progress has been made in both our scientific understanding and technological capabilities since the first genetically modified (GM) crops were developed with single gene resistances to herbicides, insects, viruses, and the silencing of unde-sirable genes. Despite opposition in some parts of the world, the area planted with first generation GM crops has grown from 1.7 Mhm² in 1996 to 179.7 Mhm² hectares in 2015. The toolkit available for genetic modification has expanded greatly since 1996 and recently Nobel Laureates have called on Greenpeace to end their blanket opposition, and plant scientists have urged that consideration be given to the benefits of GM crops based on actual evidence. It is now possible to use GM to breed new crop cultivars resistant to a much wider range of pests and diseases, and to produce crops better able to adapt to climate change. The advent of new CRISPR-based technologies makes it possible to contemplate a much wider range of improvements based on transfer of new metabolic pathways and traits to improve nutritional quality, with a much greater degree of precision. Use of GM, sometimes in conjunction with other approaches, offers great opportunities for improving food quality, safety, and security in a changing world.

Autophagy is an evolutionary conserved recycling process in eukaryotes whereby intracellular components are engulfed by autophagosomes, which are subsequently transferred to the vacuoles for further degradation and reuse. In organisms like yeast and metazoans, autophagy is actively engaged during environmental perturbation either by degrading denatured proteins and organelles or by interfacing with stress related signaling molecules. Studies over the last decade have also revealed numerous important mechanisms where autophagy is widely involved in plant abiotic stress responses. Autophagy serves as a pivotal route for nutrient remobilization by the degradation of superfluous or damaged cellular cytoplasmic material and organelles. It is also reported to regulate the accumulation of reactive oxygen species, to maintain the cellular redox balance of plants under stressful conditions. Furthermore, autophagy is essential in regulating cellular toxicity by removing aggregated and/or denatured proteins and thereby improving plant stress tolerance. In this review, recent advances in our understanding of autophagy, along with pathways and regulatory networks through which it influences many aspects of plant growth and development in response to nutrient starvation, oxidative stress, osmotic stress and extreme temperatures are discussed.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) were designed to replace existing, labor-intensive machine milking and are an area of rapid development in modern dairy farming. The popularity of AMS lies in the convenience of management, decreasing workloads and the consistency of milking compared with non-automated machine milking. Nevertheless, this innovation has not been reviewed comprehensively and the practical benefits of AMS are still unclear. This review gives a brief overview of the historical development of milking machines and the workflow process of state-of-the-art AMS. In addition, a series of comparisons between AMS and current milking machines are made with respect to labor savings, quality parameters, udder health, herd behavior and mastitis detection and are summarized on the basis of relevant studies to show the benefits of the technological changes achieved by AMS. Finally, this review addresses several deficiencies in the technology and procedures of current AMS that need to be improved and also assesses recent advances in milking techniques with a particular focus on their potential for application in AMS.

Wheat stripe rust caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici is one of the most devastating diseases of wheat worldwide and resistant cultivars are vital for its management. Therefore, investigating the heterozygosity of the pathogen is important because of rapid virulence changes in isolates heterozygous for avirulence/virulence. An isolate of P. striiformis f. sp. tritici was selfed on Berberis shensiana to determine the heterozygosity for avirulence/virulence loci. One hundred and twenty progeny isolates obtained from this selfing were phenotyped using 25 lines of wheat containing Yr genes and genotyped with 96 simple sequencing repeat markers, with 51 pathotypes and 55 multi-locus genotypes being identified. All of these were avirulent on lines with Yr5, Yr10, Yr15, Yr24 and Yr26 and virulent on lines with Yr17, Yr25 and YrA, indicating that the parental isolate was homozygously avirulent or homozygously virulent for these loci. Segregation was found for wheat lines with Yr1, Yr2, Yr4, Yr6, Yr7, Yr8, Yr9, Yr27, Yr28, Yr32, Yr43, Yr44, YrExp2, YrSp, YrTr1, YrTye and YrV23. The 17 cultivars to which the Pst was identified as heterozygous with respect to virulence/avirulence should not be given priority in breeding programs to obtain new resistant cultivars.

Chinese milk vetch (CMV) and rice straw (RS) were incorporated into soil to substitute for synthetic N fertilizers and to maintain soil fertility. However, little is known about the integrated impacts of CMV and RS incorporation on CH ₄ and N ₂ O emissions in double-rice cropping systems in southern China. A field experiment was conducted to estimate the integrated impacts of CMV and RS incorporation in the early- and late-rice seasons on CH ₄ and N ₂ O emissions. All treatments received uniform N inputs, 6%–37% of which was replaced by CMV and RS crop residue. CMV and/or RS incorporation produced equivalent or slightly more grain yield, while reducing N ₂ O emissions by 3%–43%. However, both CMV and RS incorporation increased CH ₄ emissions. Annual CH ₄ emissions ranged from 321 to 614 kg·hm ^{− 2} from CMV and RS amendment treatments, which were 1.5–2.9 times higher than that from synthetic N. Compared with single synthetic N fertilizer, incorporation of CMV and/or RS increased GWP and yield-scaled GWP by 45%–164% and 45%–153%, respectively. Our results demonstrate CMV and RS amendments replacing N fertilizer, maintained stable yield, mitigated N ₂ O emission, but enhanced CH ₄ emission. Further study is needed on crop residue management in double-cropping rice systems.

To explore the distribution of food demand and the projected trend in future food demand in China, this paper analyzed the change in current (1998–2012) per-capita demand for grain, grain-consuming and herbivorous livestock products, and predicted the food demand in 2020. The results indicated that in 1998–2012, the national per-capita consumption of grain ration declined by about 36.66%, and the per-capita consumption of grain-consu-ming and herbivorous livestock products increased by about 48% and 34.09%, respectively. The grain-consu-ming livestock products have become the primary source of both calories and protein for consumers. The proportion of herbivorous livestock products in consumer diets has increased steadily and there has been huge potential in substituting beef and mutton for pork in this dynamic market. The demand for food in different provinces of China is highly variable, which is important for planning grassland agriculture development and ensuring food safety. The demand for grain, and grain-consuming and herbivorous livestock products will increase by about 3.3%, 20% and 14% respectively by 2020. Based on the food demand and trend in the development of grassland agriculture, the 31 provinces in China are divided into three priority groups for grassland agriculture development.

A bulk polymerization monomer dehydro- abietic acid-(2-acryloyloxy-ethoxy)-ethyl ester (DHA-DG-AC) was synthesized from dehydroabietic acid (DHA). The chemical structure of DHA-DG-AC was characterized by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, MS and FT-IR. The kinetics of the bulk polymerization of DHA-DG-AC was investigated by Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC). Two kinds of kinetic model (nth-order model and autocatalytic model) were used to investigate the polymerization process. The results showed that the experimental DSC curves were consistent with the computational data generated by the autocatalytic kinetic model, and the value of E_a was 95.73 kJ·mol⁻¹.

A series of dehydroabietic acid-based diarylamines have been synthesized in order to investigate their fluorescent properties, photostability, cell toxicity and in vitro fluorescence imaging. The geometries as well as their molecular properties were optimized at the B3LYP/6-31G* level using Gaussian 03. The results indicate that molecular geometry, HOMO and LUMO energies, and energy gaps are important to predict absorption and fluorescent properties. Five of the compounds can be effectively taken up by human cervical carcinoma, human hepatocellular carcinoma SMMC-7721, human gastric cancer SGC-7901 and human lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells and strong blue fluorescent signals are detected in these cells. These compounds are potential candidates for fluorescent probes in biological diagnosis.

Cellulose aerogel, with abundant three-dimensional architecture, has been considered as a class of ideal eco-friendly matrix materials to encapsulate various nanoparticles for synthesis of miscellaneous functional materials. In the present paper, hexagonal single-crystalline MnFe₂O₄ was fabricated and inserted into the cellulose aerogel using an in situ chemical precipitation method. The as-prepared MnFe₂O₄ nanoparticles were well dispersed and immobilized in the micro/nanoscale pore structure of the aerogel, and exhibited superparamagnetic behavior. In addition, the nanocomposite was easily actuated under the effect of an external magnetic field, revealing its strong magnetic responsiveness. Combined with the advantages of environmental benefits, facile synthesis method, strong magnetic responsiveness, and unique structural feature, this class of MnFe₂O₄/cellulose aerogel nanocomposite has possible uses for applications such as magnetically actuated adsorbents.