The ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the regulation of crops created with new molecular and genome-editing breeding techniques was announced yesterday, July 25th, in Luxembourg. The long-awaited decision was met with cheers by environmental groups and consumer organisations, but caused disillusionment and lack of understanding among researchers and entrepreneurs
Soil is much more than dirt. It contains a slew of microorganisms, fungi and roots of a plethora of plants. All of which interact with each other and together, they make up the soil microbiome. Headed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the University of Tartu in Estonia, an international research team for the first time conducted a study of bacteria and fungi in soil.
The genome of the arguably most important crop worldwide, bread wheat, has been decoded. The results of the thirteen-year scientific endeavor of 200 scientists from 73 research institutions in 20 countries were published in the journal “Science”.
Not only humans rely on photosynthesis by plants for the coveted oxygen. For plants themselves photosynthesis is an essential metabolic pathway. And for it to work well, they require chlorophyll – the green “blood” of plants. However, in order to produce enough chlorophyll, plants require iron, which in turn is often hardly soluble from the soil.
Plants get their nutrients from the ground via their root network. However, many nutrients are nearly insoluble or very rare. Therefore, many plants live in symbiosis with root fungi that facilitate the plants’ nutrient uptake and help them thrive under extreme conditions. In fact, more than 70% of higher plants establish an association with these fungi, so-called mycorrhiza, which are believed to be more than 400 million years old. The mutualistic association allows the plant to better absorb nutrients, such as phosphate – an especially important but rare nutrient.
For thousands of years people have been breeding crops such as wheat, maize and tomatoes. When doing so, farmers and breeders have been particularly concerned with increasing crop yields. However, targeted breeding has resulted in the loss of other useful traits and genetic diversity, and modern cultivated plants are often more susceptible to disease and have a reduced vitamin and nutrient content. The problem: Characteristics that are determined by the interplay of numerous genes cannot be restored by classical breeding.
The summer of 2018 was unique in many ways. Some aspects, however, were less pleasant than others: several regions of Germany saw losses in arable crops of up to 50%. Given climate change and global warming, such weather extremes will most likely increase even further in the future. In order to secure food sources, it is therefore paramount that agriculture adapts to climate change. This includes new strategies for agronomic management and breeding of more heat- and drought-tolerant crops.
Laughing gas, also known as nitrous oxide or N2O, damages the ozone layer and belongs to the so-called greenhouse gases. Six percent of man-made global warming is attributed to this gas. And most of the global N2O emissions are caused by livestock farming. However, an interdisciplinary research group from the University of Applied Sciences Bingen and the Heidelberg University now reports that plants also emit substantial amounts of this gas and therefore share a previously underestimated amount of the global nitrous oxide emissions.
Evonik has been committed to the balanced and healthy feeding of poultry for years. The Essen-based specialty chemicals company is now expanding its investment in precision livestock farming and in particular automated poultry production by investing in the Chesterfield-based British start-up OPTIfarm.
In July of this year, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that organisms obtained by using new techniques of directed mutagenesis, including those known as ‘gene editing techniques’ such as CRISPR-Cas, are genetically modified organisms (GMOs). As GMOs, they are subject to the corresponding legislation, the so-called GMO-Directive.