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Energy efficient cows

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Livestock production – primarily cows – produce nearly 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, mostly in the form of methane emitted by burping caused by the way they process food.  A single cow produces roughly 200 pounds of methane gas per year and there are 1.5 billion heads of cattle in the world.

Researchers at Penn State University have found that supplementing the feed of high-producing dairy cows with the botanical extract capsicum oleoresin – a substance obtained from chili peppers – or a combination of that extract and clove oil resulted in the animals using feed energy more efficiently. 

Adding these substances – which are commonly called essential oils – to the cattle’s feed results in improved efficiency of energy utilization.  It is known that botanicals have the potential to modify fermentation in the cow’s largest stomach – called the rumen.

There have been previous studies for many years adding substances to dairy cow feed – such as seaweed, garlic, and oregano – in an effort to improve milk production and reduce environmental emissions from dairy farms.

The Penn State study was actually not specifically aimed at methane reduction but rather to better use the available energy from the feed to gain body weight.  However, the researchers found that the yield and intensity of methane from the cows in the study were decreased by 11% by the combination of capsicum oleoresin and clove oil.

Botanicals have shown a wide range of anti-microbial properties against bacteria, protozoa, and fungi, as well as being potential rumen modifiers in cattle.  The new study represents an interesting approach to improve the metabolism of dairy cows.

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Dairy cows fed botanicals-supplemented diets use energy more efficiently

Photo, posted April 9, 2012, courtesy of Aimee Brown / OSU via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Bio-based products on the rise

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There is a growing global movement working towards replacing conventional synthetic products – ones that are toxic to make or use, difficult to recycle, and have large carbon footprints – with products made from plants, trees, or fungi that can be safely returned to the earth at the end of their useful life.  This so-called bioeconomy is in its infant stages, but there is increasing interest in turning successful research into manufactured products.

One example is nylon.  Nylon was created in the 1930s by DuPont.  It has been used and continues to be used in a wide range of products.  The problem with it is that it is made from petroleum, it doesn’t biodegrade, and producing it generates nitrous oxide, which is a problematic greenhouse gas.

A San Diego-based company called Genomatica has developed a plant-based nylon using biosynthesis, a process in which a genetically engineered microorganism ferments plant sugars to create a chemical intermediate that can be turned into the nylon-6 polymer, and then into textiles. 

The impetus for developing bio-based products includes the growing public disgust at the mounting environmental toll of plastic, not the least of which is that people and animals are increasingly ingesting it.  Coupled with this, there is a rapidly-growing torrent of funding, especially in the US and Europe, aimed at accelerating the transition away from products that are non-biodegradable, toxic, and that produce carbon emissions.   Last September saw the launch of the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative which will support research and development on such topics as the use of sustainable biomass and waste resources to make non-toxic, bio-based fuels, chemicals, and fertilizers.

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From Lab to Market: Bio-Based Products Are Gaining Momentum

Photo, posted May 27, 2010, courtesy of André C via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Protecting berries with sunflower extract

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Many of us buy blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and more in those little clear plastic clamshell boxes.  We try to check them out at the store to make sure they are ok and even if are, many soon end up coated with gray mold and other fungi.  It is a problem that is both disappointing and expensive.

Researchers from several Chinese Universities recently reported that compounds extracted from sunflower crop waste are quite effective at preventing rotting in blueberries.  They suggest that the food industry could use these natural compounds to protect berries from postharvest diseases.

Sunflowers are grown globally for their seeds and oil.  The flower stems themselves are generally considered to be a waste product.  Sunflowers are known to be particularly resistant to many plant diseases so the researchers decided to investigate whether there might be chemical constituents within the plants that are responsible for the protective property.

Their research led to the isolation of 17 different compounds known as diterpenoids, including four that have never been identified before.  They found that 4 of the compounds, including 2 of the newly discovered ones, were effective at preventing the growth of fungus on the blueberries. 

Berries were wetted with the compounds and then dried off and injected with mold spores.  Half of the treated berries were protected from the mold.

There is no reason that the method couldn’t be applied to a variety of crops.  There is great appeal in the concept of using a harmless extract from a plant to render a food crop safe from fungal infestation.  The technique holds great promise in preventing postharvest disease in fruit.

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Sunflower extract fights fungi to keep blueberries fresh

Photo, posted August 26, 2006, courtesy of Liz West via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

 Restoring Biocrusts | Earth Wise

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Biocrusts are complex ecosystems that form a thin layer on the surface of soils in arid and semiarid environments.  They are composed of variety of microbes including cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, lichens, and mosses.  Biocrusts play a crucial role in maintaining soil health and ecosystem sustainability.

Biocrusts are under assault from human activities including agriculture, urbanization, and off-road vehicle use. Climate change is also placing stress on biocrusts, which are struggling to adapt to increasing temperatures.

Researchers at Arizona State University have proposed a novel approach to restoring healthy biocrusts.  Their idea is to make use of solar energy farms as nurseries for generating fresh biocrust.  The arrays of solar panels serve as shields from excessive heat and allow biocrusts to flourish and develop.  The newly generated biocrusts can then be used to replenish arid lands where the existing biocrusts have been damaged or destroyed.

When such biocrusts are harvested, the natural recovery process is rather slow, taking around six or eight years to fully recuperate.  But the researchers found that when harvested areas are reinoculated with the microbes, the biocrust cover can reach near-original levels within a year.

The ASU researchers demonstrated the viability of the approach in a three-year study at a solar farm in Arizona’s lower Sonoran Desert.  Based on their results, they conclude that the use of large solar farms for this purpose could provide a low-cost, low-impact, and high-capacity method to regenerate biocrusts and enable soil restoration on a regional scale.  They have dubbed their new approach as “crustivoltaics.”

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Using solar farms to generate fresh desert soil crust

Photo, posted March 12, 2023, courtesy of Eric Peterson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Plastic Eating Fungus | Earth Wise

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More than five billion tons of plastic have accumulated on land and sea including the most remote regions of the planet as well as in the bodies of animals and humans.  There is a compelling need to recycle as much plastic as possible but doing so is a major challenge. Plastic comes in many varieties and breaking it down for reuse requires different methods for each.

Polypropylene is one of the biggest challenges for recycling.  It is a very common plastic used for all sorts of products including food containers, coat hangers, plastic wrap, toys, and much more. It accounts for roughly 28% of the world’s plastic waste, but only 1% of it is recycled.

Polypropylene is seldom recycled because it generally has a short life as a packaging material, and it often becomes contaminated by other materials and plastics.  Thus, it generally ends up in landfills.

Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia have discovered that two common strains of fungi were able to successfully biodegrade polypropylene.  The fungi species – with unavoidable Latin names of Aspergillus terreus and Engyodontium album – are typically found in soil and plants.

The researchers found that the fungi were able to break down polypropylene after it had been pre-treated with either UV light or heat, by 21% over 30 days, and by 25-27% over 90 days.  This seems rather slow but compared with the nearly endless life of polypropylene in landfills, it is a major improvement.

The hope is that methods like this could ultimately reduce the amount of plastic polluting the environment by encouraging plastic to biodegrade naturally under the appropriate conditions.

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Fungi makes meal of hard to recycle plastic

Photo, posted March 5, 2010, courtesy of Kevin Krejci via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Mangrove Forests And Climate Change | Earth Wise

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Mangrove forests play a vital role in the health of our planet.  These coastal forests are the second most carbon rich ecosystems in the world.  A patch of mangrove forest the size of a soccer field can store more than 1,000 tons of carbon. It does this by capturing carbon from the air and storing it in leaves, branches, trunks, and roots.

Mangrove forests only grow at tropical and subtropical latitudes near the equator because they cannot withstand freezing temperatures.  These forests can be recognized by their dense tangle of prop roots that make the trees look like they are standing on stilts above the water.  These roots allow the trees to handle the daily rise and fall of tides.  Most mangroves get flooded at least twice a day.  The roots also slow the movement of tidal waters, which allows sediments to settle out of the water and build up on the muddy bottom.  Mangrove forests stabilize coastlines, reducing erosion from storms, currents, waves, and tides.

A new study by the University of Portsmouth in the UK looked at the effects of climate change on how carbon is stored in mangrove forests.  In mangrove ecosystems, a variety of organisms break down fallen wood.  These include fungi, beetle larvae, and termites.  Closer to the ocean, clams known as shipworms degrade organic material.

Climate change is disrupting these processes in at least two ways.  Rising sea levels are changing the way sediments build up and increased ocean acidity is dissolving the shells of marine organisms like shipworms.

Mangrove forests are crucial to mitigating climate change, and changes to the functioning of the carbon cycle of those ecosystems are a threat to their ability to perform that function.

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Study Reveals How Climate Change Can Significantly Impact Carbon-Rich Ecosystem

Photo, posted March 24, 2014, courtesy of Daniel Hartwig via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Plastic-Eating Mushrooms

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Plastic waste has become one of the most pressing environmental issues in the world.  Whether it is about drinking straws, grocery bags, or six-pack rings, getting rid of plastic items in the waste stream is a major focus of attention for more and more people.

Al mismo tiempo, cerca del 35% de los que tomaron Vyleesi sintieron una disminución de la atracción. Además, alrededor del 40% de los participantes en el ensayo clínico sintieron náuseas después de inyectarse Vyleesi, y el 13% tuvo náuseas masculinafuerte.com lo suficientemente graves como para requerir medicación. Los efectos secundarios incluían el oscurecimiento de las encías y la piel, especialmente en la cara y el pecho. Sin embargo, sólo se observó en el 1% de los pacientes.

A really promising way to deal with all the plastic ending up in landfills has grown out of research that was being conducted in the Amazon rain forest in 2012.  Back then, a group of students from Yale University discovered a fungus that eats only polyurethane.  It is a mushroom known as Pestalotiopsis microspore and it not only can survive exclusively on the plastic, but it can do it in anaerobic (that is, oxygen-free) environments.  Thus, these plastic-eating mushrooms could potentially thrive at the bottom of landfills.

More recently, other studies have identified additional mushroom species that can eat plastic.  Some of them are common, such as the oyster mushroom, which itself is edible.  In 2018, the first ever State of the World’s Fungi symposium took place in London.  The event focused on multiple applications for mushrooms, including their use as building materials, their ability to remove pollutants from soil, and their capacity to enable the conversion of waste into biofuels.

Under controlled conditions, it takes just a few weeks for plastic-eating mushrooms to start breaking down plastics.  After a few months, all that is left are puffy white mushrooms which, even if they are not used for anything themselves, can be composted and turned into soil.

So far, there has been relatively little exploitation of mushrooms for improving the environment, but they may well be a big help in dealing with the growing problem of plastic waste.

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Scientists discovered a mushroom that eats plastic, and believe it could clean our landfills

Photo, posted August 12, 2014, courtesy of Tim Sheerman-Chase via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Electricity From A Bionic Mushroom

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In an engineering feat straight out of a weird science-fiction story, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey have taken an ordinary white button mushroom and used 3D printing technology to coat it with graphene microribbons and cyanobacteria to produce a device that generates electricity.

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Carbon And Heating Soil

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Plants are a critical part of the Earth’s carbon cycle.   They take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.   Eventually, dead leaves, branches and other materials fall to the ground where bacteria and fungi decompose the materials and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere.  This carbon-soil feedback loop is a complicated one that is critical to the overall carbon balance because soils actually contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere.

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