and wheat along with such livestock products as ruminant (animals like cattle goats and sheep that subsist on plant matter) pork and poultry.
and promoting growth of new forests could tie up as much as 1. 3 gigatons of carbon in plant material annually the team calculated.
because soils can trap plant materials that have converted already atmospheric carbon dioxide into a solid form as well as any carbon dioxide that the solids give off as they decompose.
But such simple steps as leaving slash--the plant waste left over after crop production--on fields after harvests so it could be incorporated into the soil could reintroduce between 0. 4 and 1. 1 gigatons of carbon annually to soil the study says.
and high pressure to turn plants into charcoal releases little carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Under normal conditions decaying plant life inevitably decomposes a process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
But charred plant material takes significantly longer--sometimes centuries--to decompose. So the approach can work to keep carbon that has become bound up in plant life from decaying
and respiring as carbon dioxide. And like working slash into the soil adding biochar to soil can improve its fertility and water retention.
Charcoal has been used as an agricultural amendment for centuries but scientists are only now starting to appreciate its potential for tying up greenhouse gases Cusack said.
environment on plant traitslet's say plant scientists want to develop new lines of corn that will better tolerate long stretches of hot dry weather.
How can they precisely assess the performance of those new plants in different environmental conditions? Field tests can provide some answers.
But how can plant scientists get a true picture of a plant's growth and traits under a wide variety of controlled environmental conditions?
He calls his instrument a transformative leap in the study of plant phenotypes--the look size color development and other observable traits of plants.
We are building resources to benefit plant biology researchers and hopefully the new instrumentation will create a paradigm shift in the plant phenomics area by placing powerful data analysis capability in the hands of researchers.
The project started nearly two years ago with a $119500 seed grant from Iowa State's Plant sciences Institute
The research project has produced already a technical paper Plant chip for high-throughput phenotyping of Arabidopsis published online
If it's a plant's first 10 days we can make parts of the instrument smaller.
Hundreds of the chips-in-mini-greenhouses can grow thousands of plants at the same time each greenhouse providing different environmental conditions.
As the plants within all those chambers grow a camera attached to a robotic arm takes thousands of images of cells seeds roots and shoots.
The images record traits such as leaf color root development and shoot size giving researchers clues to the relationship between a plant's genotype the growing conditions and the observable traits of its phenotype.
The system will largely facilitate plant phenotyping experiments that are impossible by current techniques Dong said.
and increase the availability of plant nutrients he said. Additionally the biochar can be burned as charcoal
#Lignin breakthroughs serve as GPS for plant researchresearchers at North carolina State university have developed the equivalent of GPS directions for future plant scientists to understand how plants adapt to the environment
and to improve plants'productivity and biofuel potential. Two articles published March 11 in The Plant Cell offer a step-by-step approach for studying plant traits drawing on comprehensive quantitative research on lignin formation in black cottonwood.
Lignin an important and complex polymer responsible for plant growth and development provides mechanical strength and water transport that enables some trees to grow 100 meters tall.
However lignin must be removed for biofuel pulp and paper production-a process that involves harsh chemicals and expensive treatments.
The research provides a new approach integrating knowledge of genes proteins plant chemical compounds and engineering modeling to understand how plants make products
and structures needed for growth and development. This work in the new area of plant systems biology integrating biology chemistry and engineering sets a new standard for understanding any complex biological feature in the future.
I describe these findings as Mapquest for plant scientists says Vincent Chiang co-director of NC State's Forest Biotechnology Group the lead team for the project which involved scientists in the College of Natural resources College of Engineering
and composition of lignin as well as why it's often difficult to modify lignin in plants says Ronald Sederoff co-director of Forest Biotechnology Group.
National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program Grant (DBI-0922391) supported graduate students Jina Song and Punith Naik from the College of Engineering;
Vertimass anticipates that the ORNL technology will be in demand by existing corn-based ethanol production plants as well as new refineries coming online that aim to convert non-food crops such as switchgrass
It could also be incorporated into new plant designs to further reduce operating costs. We hope to move from the laboratory scale to a commercially available technology within four to six years.
Bioethanol which is made from the remains of plants after other parts have been used as food or other agricultural products and therefore termed second generation is seen as a strong potential substitute candidate
Cellulose is found everywhere in nature in rich quantities for example in the stems of the corn plant.
Cellulose is organized in long chains in the plant's cell walls and they are hard to break down.
He is particularly proud that all levels in this new way of producing bioethanol are environmentally friendly and accessible for all The catalyst acid is made â#rom readily available plant left overs
and the bioethanol is produced from cellulosic plants that cannot otherwise be used for anything else. Cellulose is the most common biological material in the world so there is plenty of it he adds.
and the University of California Berkeley has discovered that a process that turns on photosynthesis in plants likely developed On earth in ancient microbes 2. 5 billion years ago long before oxygen became available.
Plant and microbial biology professor emeritus Bob B. Buchanan co-led the research and co-authored the paper.
When plants die some of their biomass is trapped in areas that are devoid of oxygen such as the bottom of lakes.
which other organisms convert to carbon dioxide--a product that can be used by plants. This natural process for producing methane forms the basis for treating municipal and industrial wastes helps reduce pollution
Glossophaga soricina a nectar bat feeding on the flowers of a banana plant. Nectar feeding bats comprised one of three evolutionary optima for mechanical advantage among New world Leaf-nosed bats.
Market hogs would arrive at the plant and they were stiff open-mouth breathing had blotchy skin muscle tremors
and nutrients that are beneficial for plant matter. You mentioned Europe is ahead of the game on hydroponics,
since plants can only photosynthesize so much of it. So it's more about perfecting the indoor growing environment.
We actually only water new shrubs or plants that haven't established and stop short of sprinkling the lawn except on very rare occasions.
though, we lose at least some plants every summer to the opposite problem: over watering. Naturally, I read with interest some information
Plant types Soil composition Slope of the soil Sun exposure The type of irrigation you're using (hose versus sprinkler versus drip lines, etc.
The company hopes the plant will help reduce its carbon footprint and boost its use of renewable energy;
 Currently, we have the benefit of a trash-to-energy plant established a few decades ago.
The size of the original plant that we had looked at for the traditional biomass approach...
We're also looking at reviving a smaller hydroelectric plant that will generate more energy.
On top of that, we get a major portion of our thermal energy from a plant nearby, but that same plant takes care of the solid waste from the Berkshire County area.
It's an important systems solution for the area. Berkshire County is a beautiful place to live.
The plant will provide landowners with economic incentive to keep open spaces open. Â Without this particular solution for our challenge
The one thing we don't have is 15 of these plants across the country proving every detail.
when he visited a Suntech solar plant in China. With four stories of automated production lines and the record for polycrystalline silicon efficiency, the company was executing on the mantra,
with a goal of saving 25 percent of all wild plants by 2020. Should we eat the babies?
you build one plant, you build another better, then next one better, and so forth. The key is to climb down the learning curve as fast as you can.
DOE Dept of energy grants can support research and development, a pilot plant, a demonstration facility. Those programs have been out there,
One of the world's largest aerobic facilities, a 100million-lb plant in Loudon, Tenn.
which it has opened a demonstration plant--and biobutanol, for which it has a demonstration plant under construction.
cellulosic, sugarcane, grain (mostly corn from the U s.)600 more plants are needed in next decade.
We expect to get a significant share of these plants operating on our technology, via tech licensing and assistance and support.
The higher fruit is changing the ways you run your plant. Smartplanet: When we talk about the smart grid,
Often what happens is the water that leaves the plant is less than what's brought in--a lot evaporates into the air--so there isn't as much at the end of the plant as there is at the beginning of the plant,
so they're taking new freshwater instead. So we're saying, let's take discharge from another plant and use it here.
If there are 100 gallons of water in the world, 20 goes to industry, 70 goes to agriculture,
And there are a lot of plants in the U s. on the sea taking advantage of that. But there's also the environmental concern in putting warmer water back into the ocean--the long-term fate of the ecology of the ocean.
500 homes instead of pumping the water out into big plants to be treated. People underestimate the amount of energy that it takes to make
That building has a wastewater treatment plant in the basement, and they reuse 98 percent of their water.
At our nuclear plant in Wilmington, North carolina we're doing water treatment there. Our aircraft engines plant in Cincinnati.
so that plants and grass will be watered only when conditions call for it. And not when it is raining;
and our fellow animals and plants, who are at risk of dying out. are worried we enough about saving human civilization to make this time scale, the Anthropocene, more than a mere speck in the geologic time scale?
and turning it into something that we can then put into the soil to help plants grow.
That makes it available for plants to photosynthesize but it also available to trap more heat
which is an important plant fertilizer. And we are making a lot more of that available by digging up massive dung deposits
And better biofuels research, like re-engineering plants, so they do a better job of turning sunlight into fuels than current plants do.
Or bypassing plants altogether, by taking sunlight and somehow turning it into a fuel that you can burn.
We are going to need every little bit of innovation to displace the burning of fossil fuels. SP:
a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds.
Like all creatures, we take energy stored in plant or animal matter. Freitas points out that the isotope gadolinium-148 could provide much of the fuel the body needs.
and tobacco plants were produced. The success of the first tested genetically engineered cotton in 1990 led biotech company Monsanto to introduce herbicide-immune soybeans aka, oeround-Up Ready in 1995,
whether synthetic biology that utilizes plants for food, energy, and medicine might lead to an increase or loss of biodiversity.
The Guardian covered the conference by focusing on a recent lab achievement to produce the antimalarial drug, artemisinin
Along with that loss may come the loss of the plant diversity and a new, less desirable oemonotherapy drug.
Jay Keasling, says that oeanything that can be made in a plant can now be made in a microbe.
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