Although cytokinin responses are homogenously distributed in these meristems, the pWUS:eGFP-WUS pattern does not clearly show strong WUS expression in the peripheral regions where cytokinin induced stability might be expected. The results of cycloheximide and MG132 treatments do not help clarify this situation, as the alternating patterns of stability and instability cannot easily be explained in terms of the cytokinin signaling pathway alone. To do so requires assuming that the cytokinin phosphor-relay system has a previously undetected branch pathway, potentially regulating a protease with equally unusual phospho-dependent activity. However, this model is not much different than the observation that cytokinin influences WUS stability through both protein translation protein pathways, as both models require multiple steps with poorly known intermediates. Attempts to identify the possible intermediates using lists of cytokinin-targeted genes do not clearly help resolve this situation, as a meta-analysis found only five translation related genes, two of which modify mRNA, one that modified tRNA, and two that are involved with ribosomal RNA processing. The same list of cytokinin targets also contains six protease genes , while a single representative from the ubiquitin/proteosome pathway was down-regulated. In the absence of a clearly direct cytokinin-WUS connection, it is quite tempting to speculate that protein stability is a secondary effect of cytokinin responses. If so, stability may be a generic feature of cytokinin responses, which has the potential to affect all proteins simultaneously. Experiments with auxin on the other hand, suggest a much more direct link with WUS stability. Four hours of exogenous NAA treatment dramatically reduced pWUS:eGFP-WUS fluorescent levels,pot blueberries while comparable treatments with cytokinin took a minimum of 12 hours to show the slightest response in WUS expression.

The auxin–induced degradation was also readily blocked by cycloheximide treatments , indicating that the response requires protein translation. Still, exactly which proteins are translated, and how they affect WUS stability is not clear. Auxin induced degradation may have a functional significance for lateral anlagen though, as the concentration of auxin responses in distinct foci, would help rapidly reprogram the anlagen cells by degrading conflicting developmental proteins. This hypothesis is consistent with the large marginal voids of WUS and CLV3 expression found when cytokinin responses are ectopically induced with the pCLV3:GR-LhG4 x p6xOP:ARR1ΔDDK-GR system , which were often correlated to the presence of leaf primordia and sites of auxin accumulation.Although not quite as direct, other research has also shown that WUS transcript levels are indirectly linked to auxin transport. In addition callus tissue studies have found that induction of SAMs does not require cytokinin alone, but instead requires an appropriately high concentration of auxin or a balanced auxin/cytokinin ratio, clearly implying that auxin is a significant part of the process. Considering the overall organization of the SAM, this suggests a model where WUS helps stabilize the mutually exclusive pattern of auxin and cytokinin responses in the PZ and RM by activating the biosynthesis of both hormones and auxin transport genes within the CZ. The lack of hormone responses in the very cells that produce them is consistent with a similar pattern in root development, and given the often symplast-like environment in the SAM, a repressive mechanism may be necessary to prevent hormone response proteins from spreading into the CZ and suppressing biosynthesis. The fields of protein stability and instability brought about by the hormone responses also appears to define the number of WUS producing cells, and eventually, the concentration of WUS molecules that reach the CZ, forming an indirect, but stable set of feedback loops that share WUS as an anchor.

The CLV3 pathway may represent another feedback loop within this framework, as it is also activated by WUS in the CZ, similar to the postulated activation of hormone biosynthesis genes. Although the intermediate steps are not clear, CLV3 appears to suppress cytokinin-induced proliferation, as seen by the hypersensitive response of clv3-2 mutant to exogenous cytokinin . By doing so, it may potentially function as a third feedback loop, negatively regulating WUS transcription though a mechanism that is slightly more direct than either hormone pathway alone. It would thus be of great interest to learn what proteins regulate WUS transcription in the RM, as the ahk2/3/4 RNA in-situ clearly shows that cytokinin responses are not involved.Meristems used for nuclear/cytoplasmic measurements were stained with FM4-64 and DAPI to help delimit cell walls and nuclei, respectively. Cell volume was assumed to be cubic rectangular, and estimated by calculating depth as an average of length and width measurements. Nuclei were assumed to be spherical, and their volumes were calculated directly from their maximum cross-sectional diameter. The relative concentration of fluorophores in each subcellular compartment was then estimated by sampling a representative volume to calculate the average concentration in “fluorphore units/µM3 ” units, based on the voxel dimensions in the optical section. This figure was then multiplied by the volume of each subcellar compartment to estimate the relative amount of fluorophore units present in each. At least 4 cells from each of three tissue layers were sampled in each meristem, and a minimum of 5 meristems were sampled for each treatment, for a total of 180 measurements. In May 2016, an environmental scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, T.V. Ramachandra, made headlines with his assertion that Bengaluru 1 — the center of India’s information technology boom and one of its fastest growing cities—would be “dead” in five years . The claim struck a nerve, and led to a series of English medium news articles and social media posts debating Ramachandra’s statement . As evidence of its continuing resonance, the discussion again surfaced in August 2017, with headlines proclaiming Bengaluru’s demise in three years . Although Ramachandra’s contentious argument was based on his study about environmental degradation in the city , he expressed the effects of this decay in terms of food and urban life.

He is quoted in Deccan Herald as saying, “what’s the point [of] earning better when the food that you eat is adulterated? As a result of unplanned urbanisation, Bengaluru is going to be an unliveable and dead city in the next five years” . With this bleak prediction, Ramachandra challenged narratives proclaiming the economic advantages of rapid urban development—higher wages and a burgeoning middle class—by suggesting that money means little when one’s food is inedible and the urban environment is uninhabitable. Ramachandra’s assertion and the intense debate that it inspired are indicative of the broader insecurities and aspirations that anchor this dissertation. I trace the shifting food supply chain that connects Bengaluru with its agrarian periphery in order to understand the changing relationships among food producers and consumers in the context of rapid urbanization. With analmost 47% urban growth rate between the 2001 and 2011 , Bengaluru and its outlying communities have changed drastically since the start of the city’s information technology boom in the early 1990s. As the city expands and its landscapes and livelihoods shift, urban residents express regret at the loss of the calm and idyllic “Garden City,” replaced by unhealthy ecologies and human communities. But, they also proudly proclaim Bengaluru to be a “cosmopolitan” city, with restaurants and bars befitting a globally connected technology hub. This ambiguous relationship with Bengaluru’s shifting food scene extends to the edges of the city, where farmers whose fields sit alongside factories and housing developments are in an economically and environmentally precarious position, and who recognize that they are likely the last generation to farm their land. They are also aware, however, that their proximity to the city opens up new opportunities, including higher prices for their commodities,square plastic plant pots access to private schooling for their children, and the potential to sell their land at a great profit to real estate developers. Food, a daily need packed with political and cultural meaning, is a particularly productive site of analysis to discover how processes of production, exchange, and consumption intersect with the insecurities and aspirations of an expanding cityscape. This project analyzes the relationship between food supply chains and the city. Tracing food networks illuminates shifting desires and consumption patterns as well as changing relationships among urban and agrarian communities. Examining how the expanding city affects food supply chains sheds light on how changing livelihood structures, infrastructures, and class relationships intersect with issues such as food safety and access. How food is produced, exchanged, and consumed can tell us about the relationship between bodies and changing cityscapes. Advocates of the second intervention that I consider in detail in this dissertation understand their project as a challenge to corporate assertions about the efficacy of “direct” supply networks. Increasingly, urban middle and upper class residents of Bengaluru are growing their own food for home consumption. For these individuals, gardening offers two interventions: one, a way to ensure food quality and safety in the context of increasingly untrustworthy food sources; and two, a site to contest the social and environmental ills of urban development. In asserting the value of food cultivation among urban professionals, Bengaluru’s middle and upper class gardeners generate new understandings and practices of contemporary urban life. However, these projects remain anchored in existing class and caste inequalities that make cultivation a leisure activity for some and a livelihood strategy for others.

The stakes for these projects are high—while they are guided by the concerns and desires of a particular class segment , they have repercussions for the entire food system and thus affect everyone. It is therefore critical that we understand these projects, as ideological forms and concrete practices that promise to shape Bengaluru’s food ecologies going forward. What is lost by focusing on some problems and ignoring others? What solutions emerge to answer these problems? Whom do these solutions benefit, both intentionally and otherwise? It is critical to consider these questions because the rate of urbanization worldwide has generated multi-fold challenges for ensuring food security, sustainability, and safety. Yet the effects of urbanization on food systems remain understudied . Feeding the world’s growing cities is of pressing concern as farmers abandon agriculture in the face of mounting economic insecurity and climate-related instability. This dynamic is particularly pressing in India, where UN-Habitat’s 2016 World Cities Report predicts that the urban population is expected to grow by an additional 300 million residents by 2050. In this context, a primary concern is feeding the burgeoning urban population while also ensuring food security for rural communities. Hunger and malnutrition remain critical struggles in India. The results of the 4th National Family Health Survey show that among children under five years old, 38.4% are stunted , 21% are wasted , 7.5 are severely wasted, and 35.7% are underweight . These numbers are closely linked with poverty: the percentage of underweight children decreases as the “wealth quintile” increases, from 49% among the lowest to 20% in the highest. Among adults, “deficiencies in the diet of both women and men are observed among those with little or no schooling, those in rural areas, those in poorer households, and those belonging to scheduled tribes and scheduled castes” . As these numbers suggest, many in India struggle with food insecurity, and this struggle is especially acute among marginal communities. My interviews with residents of a slum community in Bengaluru suggested that hunger was a daily reality. For these families, the rations provided by India’s Public Distribution System were not sufficient to cover their families’ dietary needs. They supplemented their rations in several ways—with food from their family members who remained farmers in their ancestral village, for example, or vegetables that were damaged and therefore cheaper—but they struggled to have enough to eat. This dissertation does not explore the lived realities of food insecurity among the urban and rural poor. This is not due to the declining significance of hunger, but rather because in India today, problems other than food insecurity motivate many interventions into the food system. Despite the continued challenges of hunger and malnutrition, the majority of my interlocutors— ranging from government officials to NGO leaders—who were involved in making and advising policy decisions were relatively unconcerned with food insecurity. This is at least in part due to my empirical focus on fruits and vegetables, which have not been part of India’s strategy for ensuring national food security.