Posted by foota 2 days ago
The process they're writing about seems to be this one: "A hybrid inorganic–biological artificial photosynthesis system for energy-efficient food production" (2022), in "Nature Food"[1] (I had no idea there was a "Nature Food" journal.) The actual conclusion there was that they could force algae growth with this approach, but when they tried lettuce, "... plant growth was largely inhibited by acetate at concentrations that would have measurably increased plant biomass, although some growth parameters such as roots showed increased growth ... Lettuce plants grown with electrolyser-produced effluent ... added to reach a final media concentration of 1.0 mM acetate did not show additional growth inhibition in plant weight or leaf number from secondary electrolysis products Plant tolerance and consumption of acetate as a heterotrophic energy source will need to be increased to fully decouple plants from biological photosynthesis."
So, to make this work, it's necessary to bioengineer new food plants that will grow usefully on acetate-enriched water. That's a big project. It's a whole new food chain.
Or you can grow algae and make various products of fermentation, and ultraprocess those into something edible. The Impossible Burger's bloody meat "heme" is a product of fermentation of a genetically engineered organism. That's just a flavoring. The product is mostly made from peas and soy.
I'm reminded of suggestions to point a fan at hydroponic herbs in order to enhance flavor. Just water, air, light, and dissolved nutrients isn't enough for them to be delicious. The plant needs some degree of stress or variation while growing.
For example you can satisfy your energy needs with some starchy seeds, e.g. maize or rice and with some fat source, for instance olive oil. This would represent the bulk of the dry mass of food needed daily. Such food ingredients do not have to provide anything else but energy (i.e. mostly glucose and oleic acid). If they also provide other nutrients, that is just a bonus.
The daily needs of protein could be satisfied e.g. with up to 100 grams of high-quality protein (like whey protein or egg-white protein) produced by a culture of a genetically-modified fungus (such genetically-modified strains of the Trichoderma fungus already exist). That fungus culture does not need to produce anything else but protein.
With the previous food ingredients providing the nutrients required in large quantities, the rest of the food ingredients used for cooking (e.g. various vegetables or various animal products, if one prefers those) could be chosen only for improving the taste and for providing the small amounts of essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that are needed.
The article even takes the opportunity to mention that It could be useful during "solar geo engineering events and nuclear winter". What kind of insane geo engineering event is envisioned where food crops cannot grow under natural sunlight and all food we eat is from GMO plants and mushrooms only?
Did I mention the health inspiring carbon-monoxide step in the electrolysis process to produce the food for the plants? I did now.
You could not have this more backwards.
EDIT: Unless you mean that someone would launch 1000 nukes on the belief that they could survive the impending hellscape only because of electro-ag mushrooms which is a possibility I strain to believe.
Not dystopian?
Worth noting that this same technology could let us reduce US agricultural land use by ~80-90% and rewild those same lands. Is having vast tracts of unspoiled wilderness "dystopian"?
For off-world, being able to dig a big hole, plug the leaks for atmosphere, and grow plants in it seems like it could be useful.
I don't see how we are anywhere even close to the energy requirements needed for vertical farming to be anything but a gimmick for multiple decades.
"Electronic soil boosts crop growth" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38767561#38768499 :
> Electroculture
> "Electrical currents associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal interactions" (1995) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=3517382204909176031...
Electrotropism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrotropism
Plant-made plants, like industrial chemical plant-made.
What about topsoil depletion and compost production?
I read that it was [Vitamin E] acetate in carts that was causing EVALI lung conditions?
What nutrients does it require synthetic or natural production of, and how sustainable are those processes?
Have the given organisms co-evolved with earth ecology for millions of billions of years?
Acetate > Biology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetate
An upside is vastly lower water requirements, since no transpiration.
And what's wrong with that?
It's not about using electric fields to direct plant growth; that's a different thing
https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-...
Increasing the amount of carbon dioxide by 140ppm is a 50% increase in carbon dioxide levels since pre industrial times.
Reducing the about of oxygen, currently at 209,000ppm, by 140ppm seems like it would have a negligible effect.
The far greater likely issue with natural hydrogen is that we simply don’t find any deposits of it that are both significant and economically extractable. And in the mean time we use it as an excuse to not do anything about carbon emissions.
Another possibility worth investigating is direct electricity-driven synthesis: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electr...