Artificial photosynthesis can produce food without sunshine
news.ucr.edu
news.ucr.edu
https://newatlas.com/science/artificial-synthesis-starch-fro...
There should be billions pouring into artificial food. It would solve so many problems that we have.
1: Ocean dead zones for example: https://www.vims.edu/research/topics/dead_zones/index.php
If we can boost plant production using electricity generated by solar panels next (or above) the fields or greenhouses, it could be great. An not only on Mars or Moon, but here on Earth, too.
Faster growth may mean two crops per year instead of one in some places. Acetate is easy to store, so it's a good way to apply the excess solar output during day, and excess nuclear output at night time.
I think it'll be niche on Earth, but maybe it has a role to play-- e.g. for food security for cold nations that already rely on greenhouses and could improve yields.
Zero micronutrients, only carbs.
Humans need micronutrients, fats and some protein to live.
Carbs are optional.
Since starch is pure carbs this means that a diet high in artificial starch will just fatten you up while making you nutrient deficient.
It's only use if for extreme hunger prevention.
But humans raised on that kind of a diet will be deficient.
If micronutrients are ever a problem, we are really screwed on macronutrients.
Well, chlorophyll evolved for survival, not to maximize yields for human agriculture. In the wild, plant growth is bottlenecked on the availability of water and nutrients, and they tend to get way more sunlight than they can use. This is shown by the fact that chlorophyll is green, so plants are actively reflecting away most of the energy from the sun (where green is the dominant wavelength). If wild plants benefited from absorbing all available sunlight, they would be black (or, given the specific chemistries involved, probably a deep purple). In artificial conditions, perhaps one could do better.
Which isn't to say that artificial starch poduction isn't still the way to go, but even in the grim darkness of the future where we're all eating starch capsules for every meal, people will still want a tomato once in a while.
That's actually a common misconception that even some older physics textbooks get wrong. You could argue with the same logic (and the same math, just using the frequency domain black body description) that the peak output of the sun is in the infrared. But the truth is that there is no such thing as a dominant wavelength in a continuous density distribution spectrum.
See e.g. here for more info: https://www.oceanopticsbook.info/view/light-and-radiometry/l...
One of the hypotheses for the obesity epidemic is a reduction in essential nutrients, resulting in a lack of satiety.
Understanding of prebiotics, phytonutrients, and ultratrace minerals are relatively new, and we're still learning how different forms of fat have different impacts.
In the meantime, improving existing yields could be really helpful.
I'm guessing the complexity and costs don't warrant using it on Earth, thus the suggestion of use on Mars.
Also. From the article.
"The potential for employing this technology to grow crop plants was also investigated. Cowpea, tomato, tobacco, rice, canola, and green pea were all able to utilize carbon from acetate when cultivated in the dark.
'We found that a wide range of crops could take the acetate we provided and build it into the major molecular building blocks an organism needs to grow and thrive.'"
…
"“Imagine someday giant vessels growing tomato plants in the dark and on Mars—how much easier would that be for future Martians?”"
Other than this could potentially reduce the energy requirement by 75% or more.
Tomatoes are naturally pollinated only by bees. If you don’t have pollination, you don’t have tomatoes. Artificial pollination of tomatoes requires some that vibrates like a bee. Such devices are called tomato ticklers. Efficient pollination seems like a bit of a problem to solve at scale.
Tomato & Blossom Set Spray contains a plant hormone found in nature that promotes blossom set and fruit development. Use to promote fruit to set and for larger fruits and vegetables
I imagined energy would not be the main bottleneck to growing food on a different planet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31867921
As an aside, university press releases are probably the worst source of information on new research reports, they're almost always one-sided puff pieces comparable to corporate press releases promoting some new product.
Absolutely brilliant!
> brilliant!
Please let go of my leg.
And how much of a saving is being "more energy-efficient" than zero-cost sunlight?
60 years later and the greatest market trends in food are organic, all natural, whole foods, "terroir" and origin certified foods, ...
Moral of the story: people just don't trust in techies for gastronomy.
It turns out that high-quality food is more than just carbs, protein, and fat.
Yes to both. There is plenty of literature available.
Most industrial agricolture is entirely optimized for maximum yield measured in weight, not measured in vitamin content or taste or health.
Most of the food you can buy nowadays, even on "local markets", is the latter variant. Cheaply produced without taste or value that lasts for weeks without going bad. Unhealthy food. And it's making us more stupid because we don't get enough of the nutrition we usually would.
I remember the story about 2 girls from India who moved to the UK. They would get ill and no reason could be found until someone had the idea that the food in India was actual natural food, and the food in the UK was this watered down food.
How often do you eat a tomato nowadays that tastes like a tomato and not like a watermelon without the taste?