Spurned by Swiss Syngenta earlier this year, Monsanto is still looking to expand. According to press reports, the US agribusiness giant is in talks with Bayer concerning the German company’s seed and crop protection business.
German chemicals giant BASF is negotiating with Dutch chemical technology company Avantium to launch a joint venture producing polymer building blocks from renewable resources.
Since the discovery of the gene editing technique CRISPR/CAS9, the celebrated genetic “scissors” have become a staple of the genome editing toolbox, along with other methods such as TALENS and ZFNs.
Chicory is popular as a lettuce for its slightly bitter taste and can be eaten raw, baked, roasted or stuffed. Favoured for its yellowish-white creamy head of leaves, chicory is grown underground in the absence of sunlight to prevent the leaves turning green or opening up, with only the tips of the leaves showing above the surface.
The residents of these high-rise buildings are not your usual inner city residents – tomatoes grow on the fifth floor, herbs and cucumbers on the third. This is how engineers from the German Center for Aerospace (DLR) in Bremen imagine agriculture of the future.
Hessen-based company Brain AG has almost made the jump from technology startup to listed company, in spite of recent turbulence on the stock market.
Lithium-ion batteries are the energy source for many electronic devices. But the alkaline material is expensive and its extraction is damaging to the environment. A much more environment friendly and cost effective alternative, however, are sodium-ion batteries.
The International Green Week is once again in full swing. From 15th to 24th January the exhibition halls below the Berlin Radio Tower are dedicated to everything to do with agriculture, nutrition and horticulture.
After rice, wheat and maize are the most important food crops worldwide. But climate change threatens the harvest and consequently the global food production for a growing world population.
The Hessen town of Zwingenberg has been one of the main locations of German industrial biotechnology. Originally a technology start-up, today Brain AG has grown into a corporation of six companies with 240 employees.
Phosphate is not just a vital element for humans, in addition to nitrogen, the mineral is one of the most important plant nutrients. Since Germany does not have its own natural resources, the raw material has to be imported in large quantities from abroad where it is extracted from mines.
Algae are a rich source of valuable substances, which are prized in both the pharma and cosmetic industries. But there’s a lot more than meets the eye with the microscopic organism: their supporting skeletal structure is made from a substance called alginate.
Healthy nutrients are found in many fruits and vegetables, but vast quantities must be consumed to achieve an efficient dose of the natural compounds because they are often low-concentrated in plants.
At the Global Bioeconomy Summit in Berlin, about 700 participants from 82 nations set themselves the goal of increasing the involvement of the bioeconomy in sustainable development and the battle against climate change.
Bioplastics may be biobased, but they are not necessarily environmentally friendly. In addition, the basic chemical building blocks for bioplastic production are still mostly produced from the starchy fruits of agricultural crops.
