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China has advantages in terms of natural germplasm resources, climatic soil adaptability, and breeding and planting techniques.
It is the consensus of the world to control fossil energy consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and find renewable clean energy. Research on biomass energy has attracted a large number of researchers. However, while the first-generation energy crops such as corn, rice, sugarcane, and soybeans have won the hope of alternative energy sources for human beings, they have also brought with it a series of negative effects such as low net energy output and competition with food crops for arable land. As a result, the search for second-generation energy crops has become an important issue in the field of biomass energy. An energy crop called Miscanthus gathers people's attention...
Second-generation bioenergy R&D "China Advantage"
China is the country with the richest natural resources of Miscanthus. Recently, key breakthroughs have been made in the research of a new generation of energy crops initiated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany, the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences. After three years of planting experiments, Miscanthus that originated in China has abundant genetic diversity. After artificial domestication, it will have a revolutionary impact on the utilization of land resources and energy patterns in China. However, as China's second-generation energy crops research is in its infancy and there are institutional and scientific contradictions in research projects and transformation studies, relevant researchers suggest that the state should focus on projects for second-generation energy crop research and strengthen the integration of production, education and research.
The experiment surprises researchers
Among the 14 species of wild miscanthus in the world, China has seven species that distribute throughout almost the entire climatic zone of China. It also has four species with the highest biomass yield, and is the country with the richest natural resources of Miscanthus.
In 2008, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany, the Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences, and the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences composed the Miscanthus research team. The project was funded by the important direction project of the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the autumn of that year, the collection of wild Miscanthus was initiated. In 2009, Li Jianqiang, a researcher at the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and others collected about 100 Miscanthus species in natural habitats, and they were planted in Xilingoluo National Grassland Ecological Station in Inner Mongolia and Qingyang in Gansu Province on the Loess Plateau. The other species were used as controls in Wuhan.
“We selected three wild species that have the largest biomass and roughly the same flowering time. We don’t start watering or fertilize the second year after planting. We rely on heaven to eat.†Li Jianqiang said that the biological properties and genetics of Miscanthus are unknown. What are the characteristics of the performance of these places in the country, looking forward to heart.
After two growing seasons in 2009 and 2010, Li Jianqiang was pleasantly surprised to find that part of Miscanthus could grow in the cold Xilin Gol, while others were more gratifying in the more dry Qingyang, and the Miscanthus biomass was higher in Qingyang, Gansu. The original habitat of Miscanthus is in the Jiangxia area of ​​Wuhan.
Li Jianqiang said that this shows that Miscanthus species are rich in genetic variation and strong adaptability and can be used to cultivate high-yield energy crops that are cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant and poor-tolerant.
This result made the researchers very excited. After many analyses and conclusions, in May of this year, the research team published the research results online in the magazine Global Change B iology B ioenergy. At the same time, the magazine titled "Miscan th u s A dapts", published a press release on this achievement, and quickly received extensive attention from the international community. The AAA News Agency website (AAA SE ureA lert), Europe Scientific news (A lphaG alileo), Science Daily, Cell News, News News, Science News Line, etc. have all been reported.
Can "point green" in arid and semi-arid regions of China
The research team conducted an investigation of the Loess Plateau region in China, and based on the Miscanthus yield in China, conservatively conducted a benefit calculation.
In addition to cultivated land and unsuitable for planting land, 430,000 square kilometers of the Loess Plateau can be used for planting Miscanthus. According to the output of the Qingyang Experimental Base in Gansu Province, a conservative estimate of 11 tonnes of dry weight of Miscanthus per hectare is calculated, and the total output is 500 million tons. If all of these outputs are converted into ethanol, it will be roughly equivalent to the total amount of gasoline consumed in China in 2010.
According to further calculations, if 100 million hectares (1 million square kilometers) of miscanthus are planted on barren and degraded lands concentrated in northern and northwestern China, the average yield per hectare is 10 tons and the total output is 1 billion tons. 1458 trillion kWh, emission reduction of 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 45% of China's total electricity consumption in 2007 and 28% of total carbon dioxide emissions; using half of it as raw material to convert ethanol, roughly equivalent to China 2010 Annual consumption of gasoline.
Li Jianqiang, chief researcher of the Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany at Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, concluded that the development of Miscanthus as a second-generation energy crop can achieve three major functions:
The first is food security. Miscanthus can replace grain and economic crops as a new generation of energy crops to ease the food crisis.
The second is energy independence. China has a large area of ​​marginal land that cannot be cultivated by drought or semi-arid. If this part of land can be used as a place of bio-energy production, it will change the pattern of energy-dependent imports.
The third is ecological protection. The strong environmental adaptability of Miscanthus can improve the vegetation of arid and semi-arid non-cultivated land, while maintaining soil and water and preventing desertification.
“In deserted arid and semi-arid regions, if you plant Miscanthus, imagine that you are excited. Green and bright, the people can also make a fortune.†Sang Tao, Director of the Key Laboratory of Plant R&D of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences Holding great hope.
Into the artificial domestication stage
To make all of the above come true, there is still a long way to go for the study of Miscanthus. Sang Tao said that the current research results have proved that Miscanthus is the best second-generation energy crop in China, and the next breakthrough is artificial domestication.
The so-called artificial domestication is the transformation of wild crop seeds into artificially grown and planted crops through artificial breeding and crossing. "The completion of the conversion of Miscanthus from wild plants to crops is the goal of artificial domestication," said Sang Tao.
In fact, people are no strangers to artificial domestication. Sang Tao told reporters that the rice and wheat we eat were obtained through artificial domestication. The domestication of food crops that began about 10,000 years ago laid the foundation for human civilization. For example, rice is the long process of transplanting, breeding and breeding of wild rice.
It is understood that according to the arrangement of the research team, the next step is to improve the construction of Miscanthus genomics platform. Next year, the high-yield Miscanthus strains on droughty, barren, degraded lands and saline-alkaline lands will be screened for hybridization experiments. From 2013 to 2014, quantitative genetic analysis was performed on the resistance and yield traits of Miscanthus; the production potential of Miscanthus energy plants in China and the environmental effects of large-scale planting were evaluated through simulation analysis.
As an expert in the field of plant domestication, Sang Tao said that based on the existing genetic technology, the basic domestication of Miscanthus can only take a few years. According to him, the research team conducted a trial this year in the saline-alkali land in Dongying, Shandong Province and in the more arid area of ​​Huan County, Gansu Province. 300,000 individual individuals were selected and the drought-resistant, cold-tolerant, and saline-alkali-resistant germplasm resources were selected for artificial use. Hybridize and breed, then do genetic genetic analysis.
“This process will not be long, and this matter has not been done in the world at present, because Europe and the United States are not Manglade grassland producing areas, and they do not have germplasm resources. In addition, there are many cultivated lands in Europe and the United States, and there is no need for domestication to grow on dry and barren land. Energy crops, but they eventually also need genetically diverse crops, and this is likely to depend on our domestication and breeding.†Sang Tao said.
Funding and policy support should be even more "powerful"
At present, China is vigorously developing bio-energy, but due to the bottleneck of biological resources, research on second-generation energy crops started relatively late, and some institutional constraints have also been encountered in energy crop research. Scientists and researchers recommended that the state increase the importance of second-generation energy crop research, increase investment, remove some obstacles in scientific research mechanism and production, research, and research, and accelerate the development of Miscanthus from research to production.
The Miscanthus research team of the Institute of Botany, the Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences, and the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that energy-saving and emission-reduction are the internal pressures for the transformation of China's economic development mode, and scientific development has become the internal driving force for the development of bio-energy. In recent years, the development of China's bio-energy has made remarkable achievements. By the end of 2010, the nation’s biomass direct-fired power generation capacity had reached 2 million kilowatts, and the production of bio-fuel ethanol using grain as raw material reached 1.8 million tons.
In 2007, the country formulated the Medium- and Long-Term Development Plan for Renewable Energy, which proposes a biomass power generation target of 30 million kilowatts in 2020 and a target of 10 million tons for biofuel ethanol. However, the industry believes that there are objective difficulties in achieving this goal. The main reason is that companies have launched bio-power generation projects, but they have encountered the problem of shortage of biological resources. This is caused by the contradiction between the seasonality and dispersion of biomass resources and the continuity and concentration of biomass power generation.
Experts believe that the development of Miscanthus as a professional energy crop in China can solve this problem. The way to realize the large-scale utilization of biomass energy is professionalization and industrialization. As the best option, Miscanthus can take this responsibility.
However, the current study of Miscanthus is also facing some difficulties.
First of all, although the country currently attaches great importance to the research and development of bio-energy, the potential and prospects of bio-energy in China have not yet been evaluated scientifically. Domestic related research is also relatively weak and scattered, and scientific research resources have not yet been integrated.
Secondly, as the research on energy crops in China is mainly undertaken by plant research institutes, energy plant research projects are mostly reviewed by experts in China's energy sector. Most of them are experts in petroleum, coal and other fossil energy research. Little is known about energy plants. In the evaluation process of scientific research projects, it is not conducive to the establishment of energy crops and funding.
Compared with the United States’ great emphasis on the energy revolution, China’s support in the energy industry, especially the new energy industry, and the advancement of the energy revolution appear to be lagging behind and inadequate.
Sang Tao told reporters that in fact, for the second generation of bio-energy research, China is more urgent than the United States and other Western countries. Every year, China imports more than 50% of its oil, while the US oil reserves are much higher than China's, and it has extensive idle arable land and fallow arable land. The first-generation bioenergy production technology is mature, and food security pressures and arable land reduction pressures are not as large as China’s. . Therefore, China should increase its research on second-generation bioenergy to the height of its energy strategy and catch up with it in order to take the lead. Because we have the advantage of germplasm resources that Western countries cannot match.
Sang Tao called for the country to increase its support for the second-generation bioenergy research policy and funding.
In addition, at present, the study of Miscanthus is in the artificial domestication stage. It is necessary to speed up the process from research to production, and it also requires multidisciplinary cooperation to conduct systematic research on the entire industrial chain.
The research team believes that Miscanthus is not only an energy crop, but also a very good material and paint crop. It is recommended that relevant departments in the country integrate scientific research resources and strengthen the emphasis and practical encouragement on the comprehensive development and utilization of Miscanthus.
In addition, the main force of China's current bio-energy research focuses on the transformation of plant energy, neglecting the research on the material basis of energy plants as a bio-energy conversion. At this stage, there is a lack of researchers for bioenergy in China, and there is still a large gap between European and American counterparts in Europe and the United States.
In view of the above issues, experts suggest that relevant national departments can increase investment in energy crop research, increase bioenergy to China's energy strategy for sustainable development in the new period, and strive to achieve artificial domestication of Miscanthus at an early date for the development of bioenergy. Provide high-quality, professional, continuous energy raw materials.
At the same time, systematic scientific research and experiments were conducted on second-generation energy crops from biological breeding, planting promotion, energy conversion, production mechanisms and models. “One-stop R&D can speed up Miscanthus to realize its comprehensive benefits in three aspects: grain, energy, and ecology. It will eventually make China the forefront of the United States and the United States, becoming the main producer of new generation energy crops and a big bioenergy country,†said Li Jianqiang.
Experts also pointed out that at present, China has plant energy conversion technology, but it is not optimized and highly efficient. It is recommended to invest in the establishment of a Miscanthus bioenergy transformation pilot plant, so as to promote China's bioenergy R&D and production capabilities as a whole.
Finally, the experts suggested that the state should focus on supporting the development of China's bio-energy-related majors, and cultivate interdisciplinary comprehensive talents in biology, environment, and energy.
Miscanthus—energy crops rookie strong debut
Fossil energy is increasingly scarce and pollution is becoming increasingly serious. The development and use of new energy has become an issue of the times faced by all countries in the world. In the search for alternative fossil energy and first-generation energy crops, Miscanthus gradually entered the field of vision of researchers, and became the hope of the second-generation energy plants.
First Generation Energy Crops and People Grab the Food
In today's world, renewable energy develops rapidly. Wind energy, solar energy, geothermal heat, tides, hydropower and biomass energy have all achieved rapid development. Biomass energy mainly refers to the organisms formed by photosynthesis of green crops. Biomass energy is the energy form of solar energy stored in biomass in the form of chemical energy, ie, biomass-based energy. At present, the common biomass energy in China's rural areas includes straw and biogas.
The first generation energy crops are mainly grain and cash crops such as corn, rice, sugar cane, soybeans, and rapeseed. Most of these plants are of an annual nature and need to be sown every year. There is a lot of irrigation and fertilization. The energy input is large, and the net energy output is very poor. In addition, they also compete with food crops for arable land, which brings a series of negative effects. For example, people cut down forests for the purpose of supplementing cultivated land. As a result, the earth's carbon storage capacity is reduced, and it is not conducive to solving the greenhouse effect.
Countries such as the United States and the United States have a large amount of idle land. Therefore, they have developed superior first-generation bioenergy conditions and have formed scale. However, for China, which has one-fifth of the world’s population, the area of ​​arable land is less than one-tenth that of the world. The use of arable land to produce the first-generation energy plants inevitably jeopardizes food security and national stability.
Miscanthus a variety of advantages in one
In order to resolve the conflicts between energy plants and food crops, countries around the world are looking for reasonable alternatives. As early as the 1980s, the giant prairie grass in Miscanthus entered the field of vision of Western scientists. Western scientists have discovered that as a second-generation energy crop, the giant prairie has many advantages.
Miscanthus can grow on barren land and won't compete with food crops; they have high photosynthetic efficiency and can convert solar energy and carbon dioxide more efficiently and efficiently; they produce large amounts of biomass and can provide more biomass for conversion into fuel. . At the same time, Miscanthus has the ability to use water efficiently, use fertilizer and photosynthesis, and sow for sustainable production for 10 to 20 years a year, with low input and considerable net energy output. It is because Miscanthus has many advantages, such as not competing with the grain for arable land, high yield, strong carbon reduction ability, and large net energy, and it has quickly become a new star in energy crop research.
Like cereal grain crops, Miscanthus belongs to the family of angiosperms in taxonomy. There are about 14 wild species in the world, most of which are distributed in Asia. A few are produced in Africa and belong to the C4 plant. They have high light saturation point, high photosynthetic rate and high photosynthetic production efficiency and physiological characteristics. They consume less water and photosynthetic than C 3 plants. efficient.
The most widely studied in the world is the giant triploid hybrid that originated in Japan. Its parents are diploid awns and tetraploid pods native to East Asia (including China). In 1935, giant prairie grass was introduced into Denmark as an ornamental plant. Half a century later, it was first recognized and tested in Europe as a potential alternative to energy crops.
Miscanthus research has entered the Western New Energy Strategy
According to Sang Tao, director of the Key Laboratory of Plant R&D of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the United States has established four biomass energy research centers since 2007, mobilizing almost all relevant national laboratories and dozens of research universities for the second generation. Energy crops are studied. Among the second-generation energy plant development projects in the United States, switchgrass, miscanthus, willow, poplar have become the focus of research.
National Energy Advisor Stephen? Long is one of the more in-depth scientists on Miscanthus. Recently, the results of their research showed that the dry biomass production of the giant pampas grass reached an average of 30 tons per hectare with almost no fertilization. If the species of Miscanthus is further improved to allow it to grow in a wider area and increase its yield, it can theoretically produce 133 billion liters of ethanol from the United States with 6.2% of the arable land, which can replace the US's 2008 gasoline consumption of 20 percent. %, reducing 30% of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the United States due to the use of oil during the year.
American scholar Sam Moore upgraded the American bio-energy strategy to the Manhattan Project of the new century. When the United States responded to the financial crisis, it initiated an energy revolution. Some people think that the Obama-led energy revolution is based on a green economy that promotes a new economic revolution. This revolution has gone far beyond simple economic revitalization programs and has been widely hailed as "opening up a green revolution."
At present, the core of the economic renaissance plan promoted by the United States is the transformation and development of the energy industry. The ultimate goal is to make the United States substantially reduce its reliance on imported petroleum and rely less on fossil fuels in order to achieve reconstruction of the international order through energy transformation and transformation. , to promote the global economic restructuring. Specifically, this will create a brand-new industry that will not only create millions of jobs for the United States but will also make major breakthroughs in new energy technologies and their applications. In the future, the United States plans to invest heavily in the development of green energy.
Therefore, the United States has high hopes for the development of second-generation energy crops.
The British giant panda fuel test is ahead of other European countries. According to Reuters news, the scale of the planting of the English giant prairie grows dramatically. In the past five years, the harvest has increased by more than ten times, which will help the United Kingdom to better meet the European Union's renewable energy goals. Last year, Britain launched the giant bluegrass energy plan. Britain's largest thermal power plant, the Drax Power Plant, has started to mix coal and Miscanthus. The rise in the price of food in Britain earlier this year also failed to change the British plan.
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