Many people in Cuba have avocado trees in their yards, for family consumption. Credit: Ivet González/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Dec 20 2012 (IPS)

During some parts of the year, a layer of salt can be seen on the ground in eastern Cuba, which makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to farm. Since agronomist Orlando Coto saw this with his own eyes, he has been searching for salt-tolerant fruit trees.

“The main causes of this phenomenon are associated with climate change, like drought and penetration by seawater,” said Coto, of the governmental Tropical Fruit Research Institute (IIFT). “Alternatives have to be found that come up with faster results than the traditional plant breeding techniques, to deal with this problem.”

Coto, a university professor, discussed with IPS the extent of the problem of saline soils in Cuba and a project of induced mutation to produce cultivars of avocado and citrus trees that would be more resistant to hostile conditions.

Q: What is salinisation of the soil? What causes it?

A: It’s the concentration of salt in the soil, a complex problem that has multiple causes. It can be caused, for example, by drought, whether due to lack of rainfall or high temperatures, the penetration of the sea in low-lying areas, the availability of nutrients in the soil, or the contamination of the aquifers because of the overuse of agrochemicals.

In the case of Cuba, the main causes of salinity in the soil are the lengthening of the dry periods and seawater intrusion, factors associated with climate change. As the amount of water available in the soil declines, the concentration of compounds like sodium and chloride – which are naturally found in the soil separately, but together make up salt – increases.

For that reason, farmers would welcome new cultivars of all kinds, especially fruit trees, that are tolerant of salinity and drought, and that would make it possible to save water and to use other irrigation methods.

Q: What parts of Cuba are hit hardest by this phenomenon?

A: Soil salinity is bad in the entire southern stretch of Guantánamo (at the eastern tip of the island), because of drought and because it’s very low-lying land, and the seawater penetrates through the aquifers. The entire southern portion of eastern Cuba is dry and thus tends to have high levels of salinity.

In this country, we don’t have any extremely dry or saline areas. The ones that have the driest, most saline conditions are the abovementioned part of Guantánamo and the region north of Santa Clara (east of the Cuban capital). The latter has a kind of clay in the soil that creates lumps, which make it difficult for plants to absorb water and nutrients.

In the 1990s, I took part in a multidisciplinary study carried out in the south of Guantánamo, where rapid changes were detected in the salinity of the soil, and in a smaller area, very different – that is, contrasting – concentrations of salt were found.

Q: What challenges does this ever-changing reality pose for research into new saline- and drought-resistant varieties?

A: So-called precision agriculture, which consists of applying scientific-technical advances in much more localised areas to obtain specific results for small farmers or agricultural businesses, is gaining more and more ground.

On the other hand, science requires time to come up with solutions, while the changes and the effects of climate change on crops are occurring faster and faster.

Q: What does the search for more tolerant varieties imply, in the case of fruit trees?

A: Fruit trees have specific requirements. Crossbreeding is nearly impossible, because of biological limitations, as can be done in the case of vegetables. In addition, they have a long juvenile period. Orange or avocado trees do not start producing until they are three or five years old on average.

Only after resistance has been transmitted for three generations (in vitro or in the countryside) can it be stated that a new cultivar has been found. In the IIFT we have been experimenting since the last decade with irradiation and in vitro culture of avocado seeds, through a method aimed at accelerating fruit improvement programmes.

Q: What are the goals of the study? Who participated in it?

A: We have worked since 2000 with the Centre for Technological Applications and Nuclear Development and the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, among others in Cuba, and with financing from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is supporting the search for solutions against climate change in agriculture, specifically in terms of drought and salinity.

We started with the irradiation of avocado seeds, to obtain mutant seeds that might possibly be resistant to drought, salinity and a disease (Phytophthora, a group of plant-damaging pathogens) that affects the roots and the trunk of avocado trees, or others like papaya and orange trees.

We chose the only kind of avocado stock used commercially in Cuba. Lately we have incorporated citrus trees in the research in which induced mutation techniques are applied.

Q: How much progress have you made? How much longer will it take?

A: It has been a long process, but we already have the half-lethal dose of radiation to apply on seeds and buds, and we have also adapted an international methodology for improving avocados to our conditions here.

We have established an in vitro selection system where we simulate the average conditions of drought and salinity found, for example, in some soils in southern Guantánamo.

A group of possible mutants were obtained – they’re currently in the study phase – which in the in vitro conditions showed certain levels of tolerance of salinity. But it will still take at least seven years to obtain a cultivar.

Q: What problems to be solved has your centre identified, in order for Cuba to be able to meet local demand for fruit?

A: The main problem is the availability of high-quality, certified seedlings for the entire community of farmers. More knowledge about their cultivation also has to be disseminated through pamphlets and other printed materials, to which small farmers would have better access.

Excerpt:

The Israeli attack seems imminent. Israeli blogger Richard Silverstein circulates a leaked “shock and awe” strategy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak hard zionism to decapitate, paralyze Iran, and New York University professor Alon Ben-Meir warns against believing that Israel is bluffing.

Johan Galtung

Israel may prefer doing so with the U.S. Some believe the nuclear bomb story, others believe that the purpose is Israel as a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates, the Stern Gang charter also promoted by Netanyahu’s late father. The two stories do not exclude each other.

Iran is a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) observer. An attack may trigger responses from the core members, Russia and China. What Israel may gain in Saudi Arabia Sunni support they may lose in considerably more important parts of the world in diplomatic and economic relations. SCO is huge. There is also the real danger of a world war of NATO against SCO.

Iranian devastating responses will come before decapitation is effective, and, maybe those heads are well protected and have alternate systems? Israelis are clever at destructive work, but may also underestimate their enemies.

An old Jewish proverb says, “The best way to get rid of your enemies is to make them your friends.” Bombing Iran would win Israel no true friends, it would only ignite Iran’s desire to develop nuclear weapons, with full understanding from most of the world.

To prove its claim of purely peaceful uses of nuclear energy, Iran should open its nuclear facilities to unimpeded inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But Israel should do the same. The double-standard, “we have a right to possess nuclear weapons, you don’t” is untenable.

Uri Avnery, in “A Putsch Against War: Generals and secret police chiefs get together for an attack on the politicians,” writes: “In our country we are now seeing a verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals who condemn the government’s threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemning the government’s failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.”

Some call anyone who criticizes Israeli policies an “anti-Semite” or a “self-hating Jew”. But who is a better friend, when someone walks blindfolded towards an abyss: who says, “go right ahead, you are on the right track”, or who says, “stop, turn around, you are in grave danger”? Do not try to turn attention away from Israel’s real crises, described by Peter Beinart in “The Crisis of Zionism” and Gershom Gorenberg in “The Unmaking of Israel” (2011).

The solution is a Middle East nuclear-free zone including Iran and Israel. 64 percent of Israelis are in favor, the same in Iran, provided Israel participates. Negotiate such an agreement, and there would be a sigh of relief all over–and both countries would be embraced.

The West is now paying for the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup ousting Iran’s democratically elected president Muhammad Mossadegh and bringing in 25 years of Shah dictatorship. Apologies might carry us far toward solving the “nuclear crisis” which will get worse unless a miracle happens: the U.S./U.K. choose rationality, mediation and conciliation rather than violence and escalation.

Such miracles do occur: Margaret Thatcher sent British troops to Northern Ireland, refusing to talk with “terrorists”, letting hunger strikers die. Tony Blair chose a different course from what he practised with regard to Muslims: he began a dialogue with Sinn Fein, and started withdrawing the British army. Since then no more IRA bombs have exploded in England. Netanyahu=Thatcher.

Is Anglo-America strong enough to admit past mistakes? Or are they still so addicted to belligerence that they prefer another major mistake?

Or, could it be that the whole nuclear issue is only a pretext to pave the way for the dream, Israel between Nile and Euphrates?

That will never work. Israel can attain lasting security only through peace with its neighbours, like in a Middle East Community of Israel with its five Arab neighbours, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Palestine, recognized according to international law, 1967 borders with some exchanges, Israeli cantons on the West bank and Palestinian cantons in northwest Israel. A community modeled after the six-state European Economic Community of 1958, one of the most successful peace projects in history, ending centuries of war between many of the member states.

Decisions would have to be by consensus. Start slowly with free flow of goods, persons, services, ideas; settlement and investment later. Build confidence. Change a relation badly broken by naqba into a peaceful, evolving relation.

Add an open-ended Conference on Security and Cooperation in West Asia, where all parties are at the table and all issues on the table, modeled after the 1972-75 Helsinki Conference, which prepared the end of the Cold War. It can lead to an Organization for Security and Cooperation in West Asia, similar to the OSCE. Entirely feasible, with some will. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Johan Galtung, a professor of Peace Studies, is rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. He is author of many books on peace and related issues, including “50 Years – 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives”.