Improved plants or new carbon capture tools

A research team in the United States is working on improving plant technology to double the ability of plants to capture carbon by photosynthesis in the next few decades, the website of the organization of American physicists reported recently At present, plant photosynthesis captures only 3 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year In order to control climate degradation, it needs to reduce about 9 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year The study was published in the October issue of bioscience The research was carried out by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in order to explore a way to better use biomass energy crops to control the rising level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere Christo Jensen, the first author of the paper and a senior researcher in the Earth Science Department of Berkeley Laboratory, said that the ability of plants to capture carbon by photosynthesis will be doubled in the next few decades By 2050, the capacity of using plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere will reach 5 billion to 6 billion tons, most of which will come from herbaceous or woody bioenergy crops Bioenergy crops can resist climate change from two aspects: on the one hand, plant fiber can be converted into neutral carbon as transport fuel to replace fossil fuel; on the other hand, plants can absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and fix a large amount of carbon in the soil through the root system to form a kind of biochar If a kind of grass can combine the advantages of high energy and high additional, and reduce the carbon in the atmosphere, people will first choose it as a biofuel, such as a potential biofuel material, awn grass, which has a huge root system, can capture carbon from the air, and fix the carbon in the soil for thousands of years, is the best candidate for bioenergy crops However, Jensen and his team first considered how to improve the carbon sequestration capacity of these plants They described several ways: first, to transform the canopy of plants and enhance its efficiency of intercepting sunlight; second, to improve the ability of plants to absorb and utilize sunlight to improve the efficiency of carbon dioxide synthetic substances; third, to improve the ability of plants to transport the captured carbon to the roots, and more At last, under the premise of keeping the yield constant, strengthen the tolerance of plants to various pressures Jensen believes that when people use bioenergy crops, they can first consider genetic improvement, and introduce some good properties to bioenergy crops, such as making them resistant to drought, or using brine, salty wastewater or seawater for irrigation, so as to avoid increasing the burden of fresh water supply Bioenergy crops are easy to be genetically modified, and the carbon content in the atmosphere can be greatly reduced by strengthening their ability to withstand pressure and fix carbon.