A company that produces genetically modified plants as a solution to combat climate change

ArabiaWeather - Near a mall in Hayward, California, on the shores of San Francisco Bay, Maddie Hall, co-founder and CEO of environmental technology company Living Carbon, has succeeded in producing more than 200 hybrid seedlings with bright green leaves looking to grow in the ground.

Modified plants absorb carbon dioxide better

Hall says all of these trees are “mother trees.” They have been genetically modified with the aim of making them more efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2). The startup propagates maternal seedlings either for study purposes or to send them to seedling breeding centers for large-scale production.

This spring, 2023, versions of four of its flagship strains were planted on private land in Georgia and Ohio as pilot projects to monitor carbon sequestration, through partnerships with willing landowners. About 170,000 seedlings of different tree species have been planted over an area of about 120 hectares (300 acres), of which about 5% are genetically modified poplars: the company started on a small scale, realizing the importance of avoiding monocultures.

There are projects underway around the world to genetically engineer plants, specifically crops, with the goal of obtaining traits such as increased productivity, disease resistance, drought tolerance, or tolerance to high temperatures. However, efforts to engineer plants to increase their ability to directly absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are innovative and recent by comparison.

Living Carbon, founded in 2019 and has raised $36 million in venture capital funding to date, is a pioneer in tree-planting technology. Meanwhile, a few other institutions are exploring how to apply this technology to agricultural crops. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) at Berkeley, which is a joint project between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, have received significant philanthropic funding for their research in this area.

The potential impact of this approach on global CO2 emissions is already difficult to measure, as it depends on how significant the gains can be made and how widely they are disseminated. However, proponents are optimistic that if these technologies are scaled up, they could make a significant contribution to efforts to combat climate change and save some time.

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions and combating climate change

Certainly, increasing the efficiency of photosynthesis in trees can contribute significantly to reducing carbon dioxide emissions and combating climate change. When trees are able to capture larger amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into organic matter more efficiently, they become a great long-term carbon storehouse. This could have a positive impact on the level of carbon in the atmosphere.

These technologies are part of efforts to develop climate and environmental technology, and if applied successfully and widely, could play an important role in controlling climate change and achieving emissions reduction goals.

Increasing the amount of photosynthesis in plants is not an easy task at all. Most plants face challenges in this process, because they regularly consume oxygen and release some carbon dioxide in daylight, which is the opposite of the general pattern of photosynthesis. Here comes the role of living carbon, which modifies this process to direct carbon dioxide towards tree growth. Maddy Hall, founder of Living Carbon, points out that they've benefited from taking advantage of very similar traits that work well in crop plants, which is what makes their tree innovation so impressive.

In a scientific study published in April of this year, the company noted that modified poplar trees grown in a greenhouse environment for four months increased their biomass by between 35% and 53% compared to trees that were not modified, which equates to an additional removal of between 17% and 27% of carbon dioxide from the air. It is important to note that several patents are currently pending, and in addition to the experimental plantings, a small field trial involving about 600 trees is underway at the University of Oregon to confirm these results.

Source: greenfue