Talking Biotech 054 -- Peanut Breeding; Talking about GMO Technology

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You're listening to Talking Biotech, a weekly podcast illuminating issues in agricultural and medical biotechnology. Your questions and concerns are addressed using a science-based approach with the goal of driving discovery to application with communication. Now here's your host, And now, your host, Dr. Kevin Folta.

Well, not quite Kevin Folta, but instead Vern Blayzak, formerly of the Vern Blayzak Science Power Hour. Today on Talking Biotech, I'll be flying right-left seat— that's where the pilot sits— and at least starting the podcast. You see, it's a disaster out there in Florida. The tropics have conspired to send a Category 3 hurricane into the Sunshine State, and the streets are littered, literally, with debris. Now, Kevin is supposed to be here, but he was at the laboratory making sure everything was in order, as he does.

Yes, I was.

And our time together to record today was a little bit delayed, so I'll start by talking about the Talking Biotech Podcast, the podcast that features information and guests about medicine, agriculture, and other critters that are designed or changed by biotechnology. But of course, it's not strictly about biotechnology. You've heard amazing stories of domestication of animals and plants. Now, I'm not exactly sure what today's episode will bring, and he should be— oh, here he is now.

Hey, Vern, yeah, sorry I'm late, it's a mess out there. Um, what's going on?

Well, I already started recording the podcast. Grab a seat and take it from there.

Did you talk about the topic yet?

Well, no, uh, not really. Frankly, I'm fingers crossed for something on platypuses or sea monkeys, Tasmanian devils.

Yeah, well, it's peanuts.

Oh, fascinating topic. I mean, it's, uh, goober peas are certainly something that I am a fan of and would be very interested to know more about the topic.

Well, today's your lucky day. We have with us Dr. Peggy Ozias Akins. She comes to us from the Tifton campus of the University of Georgia.

All right, thank you. Let's get to it.

Yeah, let's get to it.

Today on the Talking Biotech podcast, it's really a pleasure to talk about a crop that we kind of take for granted, and its products are all around us. It's something that we eat in many different forms and that's enjoyed by many cultures all over the world, but we don't talk enough about peanuts, unless it's negative. We hear about peanut allergies, we hear about, you know, other kinds of problems and issues in peanuts. But what's true, what's not, where did it come from, and what does the future look like for this important crop? So I have with me today a peanut expert. Peggy Ozias-Akins joins us from the University of Georgia's Tifton Ag Research Campus. Dr. Ozias-Akins is a professor and institute director in the Department of Horticulture there. And welcome to the podcast, Dr. Ozias-Akins. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dr. Folta.

Hi there.

Well, this is really great. I've wanted to talk to you forever. I think I first reached out about, what, about a year ago? And, you know, we really have wanted to connect on this important topic. So could you start out by telling us a little bit about your research and other efforts in peanut?

Yes. So we work generally in the area of genomics and biotechnology in peanut. And we work very closely with breeding programs. to try to move this information from basic research to application.

Okay, so if we go backwards, um, what— well, we talk about applications. When you talk about applications, what are some of the applications that we don't normally think of for peanuts?

In terms of the products that are generated from peanuts?

Yeah, I think there's probably more than peanut butter and salted peanuts. What are some other things that that are done even industrially, or are there any other ones?

Oh sure, there are many. So yes, you mentioned peanut butter, there are peanuts in candy bars and roasted nuts that we know or encounter most frequently. But peanut oil is actually very widely used around the world. We probably don't use as much here in the United States as— there's a much greater use in China and India for the oil. But in fact, we really can attribute our, our industry, I suppose, to George Washington Carver, who came up with around 300 different uses for peanut. Some of those have survived and some of them not, but he was certainly the most creative in trying to identify different uses for peanut. Another use actually that's important globally is peanuts as an ingredient in Plumpy'Nut or MedicaMamba, which are ready-to-use therapeutic foods that are endorsed by the United Nations for treatment of acute malnutrition.

That's right. I've heard of this before. This is a— it's like a peanut base, but it's like a— like how we think about in the West, I guess, is something like a high caloric density, but Very rich in diverse nutrients, that kind of thing?

Yes, that's correct. And it's also packaged in a way that it has a long shelf life without refrigeration. So it, in developing countries, it's certainly a very useful product.

So where does the peanut come to us from in time and in geography? Where did it start and where was it domesticated?

So geographically, it comes from South America. That's the center of diversity for Uh, the genus, Arachis, is the name of the genus, and Arachis hypogea is the cultivated peanut. So peanut was domesticated in South America, but there also are some wild relatives of peanut that initially were used by humans in South America. I don't know that we know really what they did with them, but they obviously were nutritious food. Uh, I don't think we know how they prepared them, but they're is archaeological evidence for use of peanut several thousand years ago.

What's always kind of puzzled me about peanut, and as I learned more about it here and there from people who worked in peanuts, it's kind of a strange plant and has some odd physiology and odd behaviors. And even the peanut structure itself is kind of a, you know, an odd, odd situation. Could you tell us more about what, what is the peanut itself And what are some of the interesting aspects of the plant?

So the peanut pod is actually a fruit, but this fruit develops underground, so that's one of the more unique features. Peanut is a legume, it's not a true nut, so it's, it's in the pea family. So it flowers above ground, it's generally a low-growing plant with yellow flowers. It flowers above ground But its fruit actually are produced underground. So obviously that poses challenges for unique harvesting machinery, also for soil-borne pests and diseases that are going to affect the fruit.

It is really cool because it's really, it's neither a pea nor a nut. But there's this process of pegging, a very interesting thing about their physiology that I think most people don't know.

Yes, so the flower develops above ground, just like most flowers that we see. You get normal pollination. It's typically self-pollinated, although there can be some bee activity on peanut flowers that can cause some cross-pollination. But after pollination, the embryo begins to develop in what will be the seed. But it actually stops development after a few cell divisions, becomes quiescent, and only after what we call the peg actually causes a region of the female structure to elongate and push underground, to push the developing embryo underground, does the embryo resume those cell divisions and ultimately develop into the seed.

Yeah, that's really cool.

It's kind of the kangaroo of the plant world.

Yes.

It's like it's got fertilization in one place and the development somewhere else. It's pretty cool. So where are most of our peanuts coming from, both in the United States or say North America and all over the world? Where are they, the kind of growing regions and places we might recognize?

So globally, China and India grow a lot more peanuts than the US, but the US is third or sometimes fourth as a a global producer. In the United States, Georgia actually is where around 40 to 45% of the peanuts are produced, and it's the, the southern part of the U.S., so certainly Georgia is one of the more important states. Also, Florida and Alabama are very important in their peanut production.

And when we're talking about the varieties of peanuts that are out there, What are the major traits that farmers are looking for and that breeders are breeding for?

It depends a little bit on the industry or the market target. So many of the peanut types that are grown in the southeastern U.S. are runner-type peanuts that are used in the peanut butter industry. And so these have certain characteristics that are a little bit different than what would be grown, say, in the Virginia-South Carolina region. Where they're growing more for an in-shell, large-seeded type of peanut. We, in breeding, of course, yield is paramount, but in addition to that, of course, breeders are cognizant of what the industry needs are in terms of quality and also what the growers' needs are in terms of pest and disease resistance.

Yeah, I heard I heard Barry Tillman, you probably know Barry, give a talk not too long ago about some new varieties he's bred, and was very interested to hear about the way that the industry, the different metrics that the industry likes to satisfy in terms of a good peanut and a good quality peanut. And it was really very interesting because it really opened my eyes to this a whole lot more, as is this whole conversation here. Really, I guess right now we should take a couple-minute break. I'm speaking today with Dr. Peggy Ozias-Akins, who's a professor at the University of Georgia's Tifton campus, who works with breeding and genetic improvement of peanuts through a variety of different methods. And when we come back, we'll talk about ways in which biotechnology is changing the peanut.

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So we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast today talking about peanuts. Not the cartoon, but the thing that is neither a pea or a nut, as we've heard. I'm speaking with Dr. Peggy Ozias-Akins at the University of Georgia's Tifton campus, and we're talking about first the domestication and cultivation of peanuts. But now I'd like to kind of segue into more of the modern biotechnology and other applications around the crop. And what are some of the things that your laboratory has done to accelerate, let's just say, variety improvement using the tools of biotechnology?

So we've been working in several different areas. Most recently, we've actually been involved in a global group that's been generating peanut genome sequence. And that's already having application in breeding. We also, even before that, had worked extensively with the production of transgenic peanut, first developing a system to be able to transform peanut, and then using it to target a number of pests and diseases.

And are any of those really in the line towards commercialization, or are they just kind of proof of concept at this point?

So for transgenic peanut, it's been proof of concept, and one of the main reasons for that is that it's just very expensive to bring a product to market. Also, some portion of the U.S. peanuts are marketed to Europe, which is very anti-GMO. So although the U.S. peanut industry in principle embraces GMOs, it still might affect the ability to market to Europe. And so they've hesitated to bring those to market.

Yeah, I guess I hear that a lot. And that's one of the big concerns, even with something like citrus, is you lose your European market. And of course, wheat and other things. But we were talking about the— you're talking about disease and insect resistance. Were these genes that would actually be perhaps more— or plant products that would be more sustainable for the environment because they would require fewer inputs, or what kind of improvements were they?

Well, so a couple of examples. One is for tomato spotted wilt virus. That is a disease for which there is no treatment, and so really genetic resistance has been the only way to control the effect of that disease on peanut. And thank goodness there actually is some genetic resistance in the gene pool of cultivated peanut that was actually quite rapidly used by peanut breeders to essentially rescue the crop from devastating— what could have been devastation. However, we were looking at alternatives Or, I guess, additional ways that we could actually introduce genetic resistance using a portion of the virus itself for tomato spotted wilt virus.

One of the big problems in peanuts that we see emerging is this allergy to peanuts. And I've understood that there have been at least several groups that have stepped out to try to use transgenic approaches to create a hypoallergenic peanut. And could you tell me about efforts in that area?

Yes, so we've been working for several years to, to look at what happens when you do remove allergenic proteins from peanut. This is not an easy problem to approach because there actually are 13 different proteins in the peanut seed that have been implicated as allergens. Some of them are probably essential to the growth and development development of that seed, and others, once we start altering the composition of the seed, might affect the flavor and the quality. So it's a rather high-risk approach, but I think that there are some creative thinkers out there that are moving forward with perhaps looking at the possibilities.

Are there specific seed storage proteins or abundant proteins which are more problematic in terms of their allergenicity?

Yes, in particular there's one group of proteins, one protein class that is particularly allergenic and probably responsible for causing a large number of the anaphylactic reactions. And so this is actually the protein group that we had targeted for silencing quite successfully.

And is that just using traditional transgenic approaches, or are there— is there room for like CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in the near future?

Absolutely. So initially we did use silencing approach with transgenics, so RNA interference, and then we also moved on to trying to create mutations in these allergen genes. genes, but doing it in a way where it was a random mutagenesis approach. However, our screening was screening for the specific genes that we wanted to alter. So it gets a little complicated again in peanut because peanut is polyploid. It has more than 2 sets of chromosomes. It actually has 4 sets of chromosomes. And we're— it's necessary for us to target at least 2 genes for every protein that we want to try to eliminate. Using other gene editing methods, or using any gene editing method, is where we can now target specific genes, is certainly a good approach to take.

And in preparation for today, I read online somewhere that you were even looking at wild populations of peanuts to identify those that had potentially lower allergenicity Proteins and, or lower allergenicity proteins. And then was the thought to breed those in or was it to, you know, what, what was the thinking there?

reactivity to these particular proteins and identifying some difference there. It is possible that we could use some of those variants in breeding for a lower allergenicity peanut. It is not that straightforward with using wild species for peanut breeding. It's fairly long-term because the wild species are diploid. Cultivated peanut is tetraploid, so there are So there are a variety of strategies that you have to use to overcome that ploidy barrier.

And one of the other production problems, I guess it is, that I hear about in peanuts is wrestling with this issue of aflatoxin. What is it, and why is it of concern to the peanut industry?

Aflatoxin is a fungal toxin that's produced by some species in the genus Aspergillus This is a ubiquitous fungus. It's in the soil, and so it's impossible to avoid the fungus. The toxin, however, is typically only produced under certain environmental conditions. So the fungus may invade a peanut pod, but aflatoxin may not be produced by the fungus until the peanut plant encounters drought. And so when the plant is under stress, there's high temperature and less water, then that's a very conducive environment for aflatoxin production. It's not a problem, however, only in peanut. It's a problem in maize, it's a problem in cottonseed, in tree nuts, and some other crops.

And what approaches can you use in genetics to decrease human exposure to aflatoxins?

Yes, we've been researching this problem for a long time as well, initially thinking that we might use some fungal resistance genes to tackle the aflatoxin contamination problem. More recently, we've been looking at the potential for natural genetic resistance, both pre-harvest and post-harvest. It's also known that insect damage can greatly reduce aflatoxin levels. greatly increase the level of aflatoxin contamination. And so some work that we did early on was really with insect resistance, because if you don't have insect damage, then you have less aflatoxin contamination. There are other groups who are now looking at RNAi targeting the fungal toxin biosynthetic pathway, but through the plant. So this is— Interesting.

So what are your favorite peanut-based products?

Well, I do like M&M's. I do like peanut butter, but I don't eat quite as much as I probably should, I guess because I'm not able to eat a whole jar within a period of time after it's open, but I need to eat it.

Yeah, see, I go through that stuff like water. Yeah, yeah, I eat a lot of peanut butter and I eat a lot of that powdered peanut stuff.

That's become very popular. I don't like it so much. I guess I like the fat content of the traditional peanut butter.

Yeah, I use it just to add a different protein source. I try to, you know, but, but, but it tastes good too. And so you put that in, in with your Soylent and some You know, or whatever you're putting it into.

Yeah, yeah, I just recently heard about Soylent.

It's actually a really good product. I don't want to do a commercial for them here, but actually I don't mind. It actually isn't a bad replacement when you don't want to eat something, you know. So if someone wanted to follow your work and your laboratory's work, where's the best place for them to go online?

Yes, well, I do have a website at Nespal, although it is a bit out of date, so I need to improve the content there.

So thank you very, very much for spending the time with us, Dr. Ozias Akins, professor at the University of Georgia's Tifton campus. Thank you very much for telling us all about peanuts.

You're very welcome, my pleasure.

In the last part of today's Talking Biotech podcast, I'd like to discuss something that I don't discuss on the podcast, or at least I don't think I've touched on, yet I travel all over the country talking about it. What this is, is how do we connect with the concerned public, particularly someone in the family or friends who might have opinions that are not consistent with the science around the issues in biotechnology and genetic engineering. I have a friend at work, and she works in the office, and she says to me, you know, I don't know how you do this, that I've got a sister-in-law who doesn't vaccinate her kids, who doesn't feed them anything, like they can't eat peanuts or wheat or any— anything. She says, oh, any— everything is GMO, so we can't eat anything. And how do you talk to someone like that? How do you begin? To open the conversation. And unfortunately, she walks away in frustration every time. So I gave her kind of my formula, and I think I should share that with you too. The most important part is to remember that even though we may consider their actions to be really contradictory to science, and even though we may look at this as, you know, what's wrong with these people, we have to remember That they really are victims. And they're victims of bad information. That whether it's the, you know, the Jeffrey Smiths, the Vonnie Harries, these folks who outright lie to people in order to sell a product. These are the folks that are resonating because scientists and farmers have not been in the communication space. And when we have been, we've done it wrong. So what you have to do is understand that The people who have concerns, for the most part— and of course it depends on the issue— but they've been fooled by charlatans. And the only way to get them back isn't to say, listen, you've been fooled by charlatans. It's to show them why we are the ones they should trust, and not TV doctors and TV celebrity chefs. So how do we do that? And it's really actually a pretty simple formula. But you have to know that it's true. I don't want you to just say, well, you know, think of this as some sort of formula for insincerity. You have to know the science to some degree, and you also have to be honest about approaching this particular topic. And it starts with listening. You have to have empathy for those who are feeling these feelings. You can't invalidate how they feel. Or the decisions that they've made based upon the information they've gathered. What I like to do is say, what makes you feel that way? And then let them tell me about when they saw Food, Inc., or when they watched the TV— the movie Consumed, or when they read a book by someone who says her child has allergies. You know, all right, great. You've just told me all the media that you've consumed to reach the conclusion that you've made. And then I always say, yeah, you know, if I read that stuff and I looked at those websites, I'd probably feel the same way too. But it's important to be listening and not trying to debate them, but it's about really understanding why they've reached the conclusion that they've made. After you've shown that you understand, and this is the important part too, you need to show them that you understand. So it's usually a good idea to repeat back Why they've made the conclusion that they've reached. So by saying, yeah, I heard you, I saw Genetic Roulette, and, you know, like you say, it lays out a story there that could be pretty compelling, but let me tell you about what I know as somebody who follows the science. But before you go into the science and before you go into the nuts and bolts details, You have to remember that this is not— and many sociologists have discovered this— this is not correcting a deficit. There's so much good information out there. It's not about giving people facts because those don't matter. It's who to trust. So before you can give anybody facts, you have to establish trust. And that's part of the problem. So how do we earn trust? Well, the way to earn trust is to lead with our values, lead with what's important to us. And so when— after somebody says, here are my concerns and why I feel that way, I usually say, what are the things that are most important to you about food? And they'll say, it has to be safe. It has to be affordable. That it has to be free of dangerous chemicals, that it has to be something that is environmentally sound. And then I'll say, well, sure, that's the same thing I believe. You know, that's how I like to see farming work. And in addition, I like to really think about how we can help feed other people in other places, maybe by giving them better genetics or production techniques rather than just sending them food. And I think that that idea right there, that by connecting with somebody about what their values are and showing that you're on the same page— yeah, we— I care about the same stuff you do— now what you can do is show how biotech solutions can help achieve those values. And usually it's not terribly effective to work with, you know, Bt corn or Roundup Ready you know, soybeans. Those don't move the needle, even though they are perfectly good examples of how these technologies help farmers achieve better profits with fewer inputs. But what can we talk about? Well, I like to talk about insulin, a biotechnology product that thousands, millions, maybe a billion people on this planet are dependent upon. insulin comes through a genetic engineering process. Yet many of its critics, folks like Neil Young, use insulin derived from biotechnology. Meanwhile, they go out and write songs that are against biotechnology. At the same time, we can think about other good applications, like the Hawaiian papaya, the papaya that saved an industry, that back when they banned GM crops from the island of Hawaii, if you years ago, they said, well, we— these, these crops are dangerous. They're poisoning us. They're giving us cancer, autism, and causing all these problems. But except for the papaya, that one's okay. So it shows the value of this crop to that particular island and that particular industry. Stick with the story of the papaya and go back to episode 26 of To listen to Dr. Dennis Gonsalves talk about the Hawaiian papaya. The other place where you really can move the needle is by talking about biofortified crops, things like the beta-carotene-producing banana that we heard about in episode 4, golden rice that we'll talk about soon in the near future, and also other issues like the biofortified cassava. These are world staple crops that really lack critical vitamins that people need to live, yet genetic engineering can introduce them. This is a really important aspect of these technologies, that you can save lives in the developing world simply by adding biochemical pathways that we have here in the West in things like carrots and squash, things they don't necessarily have or can't cultivate or don't want to cultivate in the developing world. So lead with those important kinds of innovations, the innovations that really satisfy the values that we share. The other side of the coin is to show if we don't use these technologies, here's what happens. And this is really an important point because over the last 10 years, we could have easily deployed beta-carotene-enriched crops. Unfortunately, we didn't. I know there's been estimates that over 1.4 million human life years have been lost because of the lack of action in biofortified crops, and that's an old number. So the way to actually get people to change their mind or begin to think about this in a different way is to divorce the discussion of From big biotech companies, which really have not much to do with the science other than they are users of the science. The science belongs to everybody. It's science that we can use to achieve our shared values. So don't try to correct a deficit. Listen to their concerns and acknowledge them. Share your personal values, and then show how these kinds of technologies can help meet those shared values, and of course, maybe touch on what happens if we don't use a technology. Sometimes I'll even liken it to if we had a drug that could stop Ebola, but refused to let people in Africa have it, yet we could have it here in the US. There would be outrage. So the communication strategy with people who are skeptical or concerned has to really start with the idea of love and care. We're trying to help people who are simply concerned about their food and what they're feeding their families, and that's a good thing. We just have to earn the trust, and we have to show that we have the halo as scientists and farmers that are using these technologies. That's it for the Talking Biotech podcast today. My name's Kevin Folta. Thank you very much for listening. Please write a review on iTunes And maybe tell a friend. The podcast continues to grow. I keep getting good comments about old episodes, about places where people started into the series, and we're so happy to hear about coffee and papayas and bananas and, and other crops that we don't normally think of as traditionally having anything to do with genetic engineering. Again, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you again next week.

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