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Le journal de l'IRD
n° 36 September October 2006
Translator: Nicholas Flay
Quinoa and climate
A research challenge
M
ichel Laurent,
university professor, specialist in
behavioural neurosciences, was appointed director-general of the IRD on 1 June
2006.
New living-fossil crustacean
new species of
crustacean was
caught in the Coral
Sea, during an oceanographic campaign conducted
in October 2005 by the IRD
and the Paris Muséum national
d’histoire naturelle. Named
Neoglyphea neocaledonica it
is a real living fossil. Lobsterlike, it belongs to the
Glypheoidea group, long thought
to be extinct.
p. 3 News
Borreliosis spreading in West Africa
B
whole, between 1990
and 2005, an average of 11 %
of the population suffered from
borreliosis each year, which represents an
exceptionally high incidence rate for a
disease, whatever the cause.
Even though it has become the most frequent of bacterial infections, this emerging disease is still completely misunderstood among
health-care
providers.
Screening
for this relapsing fever
is in any case
difficult. Moreover, the disease symptoms
are the same as those of malaria which is
common among the same populations.
Borreliosis is hence always confused with
malaria, and the failure of treatment is
attributed to resistance to antimalarial
drugs.
monitoring centre on emerging diseases in
the Indian Ocean. In June 2006 the IRD
took part in a preparatory symposium
about this centre which will have the
vocation of collecting and measuring relevant data, the assessment, early detection
and anticipation of risks and research on
emerging diseases. The IRD chairman and
leading officers of other French research
organizations all advocated that this centre be integrated in an organized network,
involving not only the island States of the
Indian Ocean, but also linked up with a
network of similar centres in Africa, Asia
and the Caribbean-Guiana region.
p. 15 IRD World
Young people’s Club
p. 7-10 Special feature
Desert and desertification
© IRD/V. Simonneaux
Andean ice expedition
T
T
he young people’s club JRD in Bolivia
made a scientific excursion on 8 and
9 June to Zongo glacier in the Andes, at
the foot of Huayna Potosi (6 092 m). Led
by specialists from IRD’s research unit
UR032 Great Ice and by their teachers,
13 senior secondary school pupils from
the Lycée Alcides d’Orbigny of La Paz
experienced a taste in the field of the
problems and techniques they had been
studying for several months in the framework of a workshop entitled “Glaciers
and climate change in the tropical
Andes”.
he French research institutes have
been applying their efforts to desertification and associated questions for
more than 20 years. On the occasion of
the 10th anniversary of the United
Nations
Convention
to
Combat
Desertification in Countries Experiencing
Serious Drought and/or Desertification,
the IRD and Cirad, organizations that are
complementary in their
areas of operation and
their approaches, present
in this special feature
some current
themes of
research and
action
in
Africa.
p. 11 Valorization
Niger
PMR can measure
the water table
I
n the south-west of Niger, the first
geophysical survey campaign using proton magnetic resonance (PMR) was run in
December 2005. It showed that the water
table has paradoxically been rising continually for nearly 40 years, in a situation in
the Sahel which is marked by persistent
©IRD/J. Asseline
© IRD/Bertrant Richer de Forges
A
© IRD/J.P. Raffaillac
p. 2 News
merging diseases are one of the IRD’s
six priorities for action as defined in its
contract of objectives for the period 20062009. The Institute’s researchers were
quick to act when the chikungunya epidemic broke on the island of Reunion in
2005. Christophe Paupy, Didier Fontenille
and other research scientists and technicians from the research unit UR016
Caractérisation et contrôle des populations de vecteurs, ran several missions between December 2005 and February 2006
in Reunion and Mayotte. In order to
enhance this research effort, the Prime
Minister decided to found a research and
decrease in monsoon rainfall. In this rural
environment with high population density
(30 inhabitants/km2), the groundwater
system, the only durable water source, is
of truly vital importance.
p. 11 Valorization
Carbon and nitrogen cycles
Modelling and fertilization
T
he IRD is working with the fertilizer
industry with the aim of reconciling
reasoned agriculture and soil sequestration of carbon. Too much carbon in the
atmosphere, not enough nitrogen in the
soil; global warming and soil degradation are two problems that have a point
in common: the ability of soils to store
carbon and nitrogen, two elements
essential for life and for the great globalscale equilibria. It is by studying the complex chemistry of soils that the researchers seek to reconcile agricultural
production for human food supplies and
conservation of the environment by
maximizing the capacity of soils to hold
carbon. The fertilizer industry is the first
to have an interest and it is also in partnership with it that the IRD can refine its
models with a view to improving farming
practices.
The models were tested on sites on the
Bolivian puna and the Venezuelan paramo. They gave a picture of the process of
nitrogen fertility restoration
that
occurs when
land is left
fallow.
As
Marc Pansu
explains,
“The process
was explained by the
model whereas chemical
analyses did
not allow this.
The maximum
accumulation of labile nitrogen in the
microbial metabolite component, predicted to be around 8-10 years, corresponds
to the period of fallow effectively practised by farmers in these mountain
systems”. The models therefore correspond well with farmers’ traditional knowledge and the soil specialists plan to test
them and apply them on other sites in
order to make available tools for simultaneous management of soil fertility and the
global-scale carbon and nitrogen flows.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site : http://www.ird.fr
© P. Bottner/Cefe-CNRS Montpellier
T
E
© IRD/ M. Dukhan
Michel Laurent,
director
general of IRD
an quinoa be sustainably cultivated by Indian communities, when crop diversification
has to be excluded owing to the
arid conditions that prevail in
the Andean environment?
Since 2001, the IRD research
unit Climat et fonctionnement
des agro-écosystèmes, rôle
de l’agrodiversité dans la stabilité de la
production (UR060 – Clifa) has been investigating in Bolivia the impact of cold and
drought on the biodiversity of quinoa. In
this context, Jean-Pierre Raffaillac, working closely with the agronomy faculties
of public-sector universities of the local
authority areas La Paz and Oruro set up in
September 2003 a quinoa network on
the Bolivian Altiplano for three successive
crop cycles. The objectives are:
• to serve as an experimental base for
agronomic research;
• to provide training in agronomy;
• to participate in the development of the
Altiplano of Bolivia as a support and
demonstration scheme.
The first results have shown the environment to have an important influence in
the delicate stage of establishing plantations during the first two months of the
cycle, on the length of the growing cycle.
Concerning crop quality, variations occur
in grain saponin content and differences
in total protein composition. In 2007, the
planned date for the end of this phase of
field research, the programme will have
obtained a set of data and information
useful both for research and for development.
© IRD
Better knowledge on
nematodes for better control
© IRD/M. Dukhan
p. 3 News
© IRD/J.-F. Trape
© IRD/M.-N. Favier
p. 11 Valorization
Caribbean – Guiana
orreliosis, or tick-borne relapsing
fever, was considered as a rare disease up to the end of the 1980s. Since then,
the work of IRD research unit UR077,
Paludologie afrotropicale, has revealed
that it is the second most common reason
for medical consultations in rural clinics in
the Dakar region.
This disease, caused by bacteria of the
genus Borrelia, induces fevers which
come back repeatedly over long periods.
They can bring on severe meningoencephalitis and sometimes be fatal. In West
Africa, the vector that transmits Borrelia
crocidurae to humans is the tick
Ornithodoros sonrai, which lives in close
contact with small wild rodents through
living in the latter’s burrows.
Epidemiological investigations on the
development of the incidence of this
infection were conducted for 14 years,
focusing on a rural community in
Senegal. Over the period studied as a
© IRD/J.P. Raffaillac
Feature contents:
• Long-term surveillance
• Under Pixy’s eye
• Gerbils invade Senegal
• The West African monsoon: agent or
victim of desertification?
• An information system for pastoralism in the Sahel
• Improving knowledge of production
in the savannah
• Acceptance of arid conditions to live
better
• Keeping satellite focus on water efficiency
• Trees that live off the desert
• How can benefit be gained from
vegetative regeneration at low cost?
• Saharan migrations
• The Jeffara, rural societies and desertification
• Animals designed to live in the desert
• Development of the forests to avoid
desertification
(…) Desertification control, which is
one of the themes of research of the
IRD and Cirad since their inception,
cannot therefore be separated from
the question of sustainable development of arid and semi-arid zones. The
economies of the countries threatened are based on their renewable
natural resources and their GDP and
are highly sensitive to the prolonged
episodes of drought and to the degradation of these resources. All scenarios anticipate an aggravation of this
process in the next few decades,
owing both to climate changes and
inappropriate practices of stock-rearing and crop growing, the instability
of farming prices or insecurity. If
nothing changes, in 25 years’ time,
more than 2 billion people will be
affected, 700 million of whom will be
in Africa. (…)
he research team of Patrick Quénéhervé
(UR141, Diversité et génomes des
plantes cultivées) of IRD laboratory
“Nématologie tropicale” at the PRAM, in
conjunction with a South-African team of
taxonomists recently established the
inventory of plant parasitic nematodes in
the French French overseas areas of the
Caribbean and Guiana. These round
microscopic worms are a crop pest, especially in the tropics. It is important to learn
more about them in order better to devise well-targeted control methods, and
also to monitor their spreading through
the comings and
goings of
i n t e rre g i o n a l
and international
trade.
p. 3 News
Chikungunya
C
© IRD/J.-F. Trape
by Marc Bied-Charreton
Chairman of the CSFD,
Comité Scientifique Français
de la Désertification
© IRD/V. Simonneaux
A disaster for
the Earth
p. 6 Partners
Bolivia
©
p. 1 Editorial
IR
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uk
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Abstracts for the international issue