Global warming and climate change are driven by greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide. During photosynthesis, plants and algae act as natural air filters, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and replacing it with oxygen. About half of the photosynthesis on Earth is performed in the ocean by single-celled algae. Plants and algae both use the enzyme Rubisco to bind carbon dioxide.
Due to climate change more and more arable land is drying out, and subsequently requires irrigation in order to grow crops. However, steady and heavy irrigation causes soil salination, because the salts that are dissolved in the water are diffused into the soil and remain there after the water has evaporated. The salt in turn stunts the growth of the crops and, if left untreated, can even turn soils infertile.
Once the takeover of Monsanto by the Leverkusen-based chemistry giant Bayer is finalised, there will only be three major players left on the field of agricultural chemistry. This has caused suspicion and caution from the cartel authority. Thus, to smoothen the transition Bayer has announced to sell parts of its agricultural chemistry business. BASF has since signed an agreement to acquire significant parts of Bayer’s seed and non-selective herbicide businesses for approximately €5.9 billion.
An estimated significant drop in the insect population has been a news topic for some time but could never be statistically proven. However, a study by researchers at the Radboud University in the Netherlands, the University of Sussex in Britain and dozens of amateur entomologists at the Entomological Society Krefeld in Germany now quantified the change as a 75% loss over the last 27 years.
Biochar is a carbon-rich, charcoal-like substance made from oxygen-deprived plants or other organic material. It can store large amounts of carbon and when applied as a fertilizer it slowly releases nutrients into the ground. However, the exact mechanisms how biochar stores nutrients and promotes plant growth have not been identified yet, which also severely limits its commercial potential. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Tübingen in Germany, deciphered the storage and release mechanisms of biochar.
Air pollution is most commonly associated with traffic and car emissions. However, there are a number of other sources for pollution, such as agricultural emissions due to fertiliser use. According to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, reducing ammonia (NH3) emissions by 50% could avoid the deaths of more than 250,000 people each year that are caused by air pollution worldwide.
24 leading academic institutions and inter-governmental agencies have been working together to track current progress on the relationship between public health and climate change, and their implications for governments’ commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement. The Lancet Countdown’s 2017 report was launched on the October 31st.
Wheat is one of the most important cereal species worldwide and its products like bread or pasta are common staples of food. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and international colleagues have decoded the complex genome sequence of goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii), an ancestor of common wheat.
The western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) is a devastating pest of maize plants, which has spread throughout Europe. This year’s pest monitoring in Germany revealed that the number of beetles caught in traps has again multiplied in comparison to the previous year. Several attempts to target this crop pest biologically by applying entomopathogenic nematodes have failed.
The number of people on the planet and thus the number of hungry mouths to feed is constantly growing and is expected to exceed 9 billion by the year 2050. Thus, there is an urgent need to improve crop yield for food output. To meet this demand, researchers lead by Manajit Hayer-Hartl at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich aim to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis and thus crop productivity by artificially engineering the plant Rubisco enzyme.