Pseudomonas Ice- is a genetically modified bacteria used in agriculture to protect crops from frost damage. Is there a possibility that by adding these GMOs to the environment we are creating long term droughts in countries where they are being used, like California, Texas or Australia?
I donot have any idea.Frost is not a serious problem in most parts of the country
Craig,
I support the idea in general. There are enough data to suggest that the microbiome of the upper troposphere has important impacts on the hydrological cycle, clouds, and climate. See http://www.pnas.org/content/110/7/2575,
but, I do not think that GMO bacteria are enough competitive to take place of natural icp+ strains in atmosphere.
Besides just ice nucleation function, I believe that icp is mainly used by bacteria and fungi to condensate water from dry air at temperatures above 0oC. Sorry, I have no experimental support yet.
and some others references:
Airborne bacteria as cloud condensation (nucleihttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003JD003545/pdf)
http://abordonseng.wordpress.com/tag/clouds/
http://www.biogeosciences.net/5/1425/2008/bg-5-1425-2008.pdf
Is this the ice-minus Pseudomonas from the late 1980s/ early 1990s? Dr Lindow's work?
To answer Puppala Vijaya Kumar reply--I am speculating that in terms of atmospheric bacteria, especially those forming and living in clouds, the whole planet could be one giant petri dish for them without boundaries?
So if farmers add Ice-Minus in their fields in Texas or California to protect their strawberry crops, that that strain gets airborne and may go around the world and displace the Ice-Plus strains forming rain clouds for India for example?
What I am interested, is if anyone has followed the movement of any Ice-Minus applied to a field somewhere, to see how far do they travel, and once in their new locations, how effective are they in displacing the Ice-Plus strains in the neighborhood?
I repeat my question. Is this the ice-minus Pseudomonas from the late 1980s/ early 1990s? Dr Lindow's work? Apart from that, unless I am missing something, there are no ice-minus bacteria (except those that may occur naturally) that currently exist in clouds or anywhere else. This is suely an old story.
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