Chennai, India (CU)_ Scientists have discovered a slew of novel innovative approaches to employ biotechnology as a weapon to combat climate change which will decrease emissions, extract carbon from the atmosphere, and strengthen the ecosystem’s resilience to changing temperatures in recent years. Biotechnology could be highly recommended to be included in any federal initiative to combat global warming.
The emission of carbon dioxide accounts for the vast majority of our global warming and greenhouse gas emission issues. Although reducing the amount of carbon dioxide we release is the most widely discussed option for combating climate change, techniques for absorbing it before it could reach the atmosphere could be equally important.
Even before the existence of humans on the planet, plants were extracting carbon dioxide from the air. However, when a plant dies, most of the Co2 is emitted back into the atmosphere. Scientists at the Salk Institute in San Diego have discovered a molecule called suberin that allows plants to store more carbon dioxide in their roots even after they decompose.
Biotechnology can also provide a solution to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers, which are necessary for agriculture but are extremely energy intensive. According to the data, roughly 3% of global natural gas is utilized to produce nitrogen fertilizer. Every year, the production and usage of nitrogen fertilizer emits the equivalent of 1.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the environment.
Thus far, researchers have not discovered a technique to cultivate crops without nitrogen fertilizer on a large scale. However, biotechnology may have a solution for this. The recent research by the Boston-based Joyn Bio is working on microorganisms that can extract nitrogen from the air and transport it to plant roots. This could eventually reduce the usage of nitrogen fertilizers.
Biotech innovations like this rarely gain attention as other climate-change solutions. Biotechnology, on the other hand, is on the verge of providing climatic innovations that were previously inconceivable. This emerging field of research deserves to play a vital role as we create new strategies for saving our planet.
