<\/p>\n
Farming immediately sparks images of lush fields of leafy greens under a blue sky, corn blowing in the wind, or majestic terraced rice paddies carved into mountainsides. Agriculture changed societies and our food habits roughly 12,000 years ago<\/a> when humans switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to more permanent settlements.<\/p>\n In recent centuries, innovative farming equipment and synthetic chemical fertilizers have boosted food production to feed an increasingly growing population of people. But as any backyard gardener knows, growing plant-based food\u2014lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, grains, pumpkins\u2014still mostly relies on the age-old strategy: Plant seeds in nutritious soil, keep them well hydrated with plenty of sunlight, and wait for them to grow.<\/p>\n This strategy has downsides. Agriculture uses nearly half of the world\u2019s habitable land and accounts for up to a third of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, wrote<\/a> Feng Jiao at the Washington University in St. Louis and his team in a recent analysis.<\/p>\n The reason? While sunny regions naturally provide enough light to grow crops, areas with colder winters often need grow lights and greenhouses part of the year. This increases energy consumption, logistical headaches, and ultimately, food costs.<\/p>\n In their paper, Jiao and colleagues argue for a new method that could dramatically revamp farming practices to reduce land use and greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n Dubbed \u201celectro-agriculture,\u201d the approach uses solar panels to trigger a chemical reaction that turns ambient CO2 <\/sub>into an energy source called acetate. Certain mushrooms, yeast, and algae already consume acetate as food. With a slight genetic tweak, we could also engineer other common foods such as grains, tomatoes, or lettuce to consume acetate.<\/p>\n It could be \u201ca groundbreaking revolution in farming,\u201d wrote the team.<\/p>\n According to one estimate, if the US were to fully adopt electro-agriculture, it would reduce agricultural land use by nearly 90 percent. A similar system could also allow more efficient crop growth during spaceflight, where efficiency in small spaces is key. With more research, it might even be possible to bypass traditional photosynthesis with acetate and grow plants in the dark.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole point of this new process [is] to try to boost the efficiency of photosynthesis,\u201d said<\/a> Jiao in a press release. \u201cRight now, we are at about four percent efficiency, which is already four times higher than for photosynthesis, and because everything is more efficient with this method, the CO2<\/sub> footprint associated with the production of the food becomes much smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n Agriculture is one of the most difficult domains in which to reduce carbon emissions. As the global population increases, its impact on the environment will likely grow.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is an urgent need for the global food system to be reimagined to sustain a habitable planet,\u201d wrote the team.<\/p>\n Photosynthesis is at the heart of agriculture. In plants and some bacteria, green-tinted molecular machines called chloroplasts absorb sunlight and churn that light into energy. It\u2019s no coincidence most farms are in sun-bathed areas liked central California.<\/p>\n Farmers and scientists have tried shrinking the agricultural footprint with vertical farming<\/a>. True to form, vertical farms grow crops on stacked shelves rather than large horizontal fields. The method often relies on hydroponics, in which plants absorb nutrients from a water-based system instead of soil, similar to AeroGarden<\/a> but at an industrial scale.<\/p>\n These systems run indoors, so plants can grow all year. But heavy reliance on artificial grow lights means high energy consumption limits their ability to scale.<\/p>\n Part of the problem is efficiency. Much of the \u201celectricity supplied to the LED grow lights in conventional vertical farming is lost to heat,\u201d explained the team.<\/p>\n Electro-agriculture, or \u201celectro-ag,\u201d skirts these challenges. The system captures ambient CO2<\/sub> from the air and uses water and electricity to convert the gas into different molecules\u2014including ethanol and acetate, which is \u201cplant food\u201d for some species.<\/p>\n Acetate is a vinegar-like chemical at the heart of many biological reactions. One recent study<\/a> found that acetate made from CO2<\/sub> could be used to cultivate yeast, mushrooms, and a type of green algae in total darkness without the need for natural photosynthesis<\/a>. With some sunlight, the chemical boosted growth four-fold in nine different crop types compared to traditional farming techniques.<\/p>\n These initial results got scientists wondering: Can we use acetate alone to replace photosynthesis?<\/p>\n Not quite. Most adult crop plants naturally require photosynthesis to build up their weight and size. Plants grown with electro-ag would need to shift their metabolism to consume acetate\u2014which most adult plants struggle to process\u2014as a primary food source.<\/p>\n But plants can<\/em> use the molecule for energy as they\u2019re germinating from seeds. It\u2019s a bit like people who drank milk as infants but later became lactose intolerant. The genetic programming is still there; it just needs to be reactivated.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where genetic engineering<\/a> comes in.<\/p>\n By tweaking genes involved in acetate metabolism, it might be possible to reawaken the plants\u2019 natural ability to digest the molecule. The strategy hasn\u2019t been directly tested yet. But in bacteria, amping up a gene<\/a> involved in acetate metabolism boosted their ability to eat it.<\/p>\n Engineering plants that eat acetate is a \u201ccritical step\u201d toward building an electro-ag system.<\/p>\n The team envision a vertically stacked set-up to reduce land usage, kind of like a fridge with three sections. The first section\u2014the roof\u2014would be covered in solar panels to gather energy. The middle section would use this energy to break down CO2<\/sub> and generate acetate to feed plants growing in the bottom section. Depending on the type of crop, this section could hold roughly three to seven \u201cfloors\u201d of plants stacked on top of each other, like trays in a fridge.<\/p>\n Electro-ag could benefit the environment, slashing total land usage for farming by roughly 88 percent in the US alone. This would free up over one billion acres of land that could be restored to natural ecosystems, such as dense forests. The technology could also help stabilize food prices. As weather becomes increasingly unpredictable due to climate change, developing nations are often hit hardest. A large-scale indoor system could help put a lid on volatility.<\/p>\n But how much all this would cost is still uncertain. The field is still in a very early stage. Currently, scientists are tweaking tomato and lettuce genes to increase their abilities to use acetate as food. High-calorie staple crops, such as potato, corn, rice, and wheat, are next on the list. Plants aside, a similar technology\u2014in theory\u2014could also be used for cultivating dairy and plant-based meat, although the idea hasn\u2019t been tested yet.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is just the first step for this research, and I think there\u2019s a hope that its efficiency and cost will be significantly improved in the near future,\u201d said Jiao.<\/p>\n Image Credit: Francesco Gallarotti<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n \nFuente: https:\/\/ift.tt\/F0Zhy9u Farming immediately sparks images of lush fields of leafy greens under a blue sky, corn blowing in the wind, or majestic terraced rice paddies carved into mountainsides. Agriculture changed societies and our food habits roughly 12,000 years ago when humans switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to more permanent settlements. In recent centuries, innovative farming equipment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[75,76,77],"class_list":["post-5463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-todos-los-feeds","tag-news","tag-noticias","tag-viral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5464,"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5463\/revisions\/5464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hectorkott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Man Versus Food<\/h2>\n
Into the Wild<\/h2>\n
\nPublicado: October 24, 2024 at 02:40PM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"