ABSTRACT
The Chernobyl accident led to a long-term crisis that affected agriculture, food and living conditions in complex ways, and that modified the usual economical, political and social relations between public and private stakeholders at local, national and international level. The EC FARMING project aims to create a European stakeholder network to consider possible rehabilitation strategies for rural areas contaminated after a nuclear accident. The Institute of Patrimonial Strategies of the National Institute on Agronomy had responsibility for setting up the French stakeholder group. The objective was to develop favourable conditions and ways whereby stakeholders could deal with such a complex situation as a nuclear emergency and develop rehabilitation strategies. The results from the 3-year work programme on both strategic and technical aspects, showed an increasing commitment from the stakeholders that led to the building up of a common understanding of what a nuclear accident could be and how it could be dealt with.
Subject(s)
Decision Support Systems, Management/organization & administration , Food Contamination, Radioactive/prevention & control , Radioactive Hazard Release , Safety Management/methods , Safety Management/organization & administration , Agriculture , Animals , Databases, Factual , Decision Support Systems, Management/trends , Decontamination/methods , Disaster Planning , Food Supply , France , Humans , Program Development , Safety Management/trendsABSTRACT
Disruption of ipdC, a gene involved in indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) production by the indole pyruvate pathway in Azospirillum brasilense Sp7, resulted in a mutant strain that was not impaired in IAA production with lactate or pyruvate as the carbon source. A tryptophan auxotroph that is unable to convert indole to tryptophan produced IAA if tryptophan was present but did not synthesise IAA from indole. Similar results were obtained for a mutant strain with additional mutations in the genes ipdC and trpD. This suggests the existence of an alternative Trp-dependent route for IAA synthesis. On gluconate as a carbon source, IAA production by the ipdC mutant was inhibited, suggesting that the alternative route is regulated by catabolite repression. Using permeabilised cells we observed the enzymatic conversion of tryptamine and indole-3-acetonitrile to IAA, both in the wild-type and in the ipdC mutant. IAA production from tryptamine was strongly decreased when gluconate was the carbon source.