Agriculture sciences

Whether in ice cream, pizza, chocolate or biodiesel, palm oil is one of the world's most versatile plant-based oils. That makes it one of the most important raw materials for the bio-based economy. Demand today is higher than ever. About 60 million tonnes of palm oil and palm-kernel oil are produced annually. The area cultivated worldwide is 17 million hectares, about half the land mass of Germany. Around 1.8 million tonnes of palm oil are consumed each year here. The lion's share, 41 per cent, is used in the manufacturing of biodiesel.

They have names like field bindweed, ragweed or couch grass – but poppies and corncockle count amongst them as well. For farmers, all these plants are weeds. Nature conservationists, on the other hand, speak of wild herbs or 'arable flora'. Many weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to herbicides, hindering the growth of actual crops in the process. The consequences can already be measured in terms of lower harvests.

This acquisition is the biggest of its kind by a German firm. Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto for 66 billion US dollars is now set to go ahead. The regulators have yet to approve the deal, however. According to the German chemical corporation, it is willing to pay 128 dollars per share, valuing Monsanto at 66 billion dollars. That works out at about 58.8 billion euros. Data from financial news agency Bloomberg indicate that this is the second-largest cash acquisition in world history.

Floods and droughts are presenting increasing challenges for agriculture throughout the world. For many years, therefore, research efforts have been focussed on the search for more resistant plants that can cope with the environmental challenges. "To do this, we need to gain a better understanding of important crop plants such as rice, which is reckoned to be the world's most important source of food," explains Michael Riemann of the Molecular Cell Biology working group at the KIT's Botanical Institute.

The research initiative coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) aims at quantifying the sensitivity of ecosystem functions and their subsequent ecosystem services to environmental pressures in representative agriculturally dominated landscapes in Europe. The project receives funding within the BiodivERsA/FACCE initiative.

Earlier this year, Monsanto let Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta slip through its hands. After several rejected takeover attempts, Syngenta eventually agreed to be acquired by Chinese chemical corporation ChemChina for €39bn. Now, Monsanto is apparently on the lookout for new expansion targets.

According to reports by Reuters, sources says that the US company has approached Bayer AG with an interest towards acquiring the German company’s crop science unit. A potential takeover would be worth more than US$30bn, the reports says.

Bayer’s new partner, based in Redmond, Washington is involved in a wide range of space-based enterprises, including asteroid mining. With the new deal, Bayer intends to purchase data from Planetary Resources to create new agricultural products and improve existing ones. The new collaboration will be part of Bayer’s Digital Farming Initiative. Financial details were not disclosed.

In its 81st year, the world’s largest trade fair of its kind has met a record: 1,660 exhibitors from 65 countries are represented this year at the annual event. The Green Week, however, is not just about displaying culinary delights from all over the world; the bioeconomy has also found a firm foothold at the international exhibition. Once again visitors will be convinced at how biobased raw materials are becoming increasingly more common in our daily lives at the specialist trade fair within the Green week for bioeconomy – nature.tec in Hall 4.2.

Over the past ten years, an international team of plant scientists have put great faith in decoding the wheat genome. Now the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) has announced that that it will be able to present the complete sequence of bread wheat by 2017. The scientists are convinced that the knowledge of the molecular blueprint of the crop will spur the development of new resistant and high-yielding varieties of wheat.

In Germany, the majority of this precious mineral ends up as fertilizer for arable land. A neglected source of phosphate is animal meal, which is produced from slaughterhouse waste and subsequently fed to livestock or incinerated. Now researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg have developed a new method to recover the important mineral from the animal meal.