Once considered just an ornamental bonsai plant outside of its home range of South Africa, the shrub Portulacaria afra, commonly called “spekboom,” is garnering attention for its carbon storage capabilities. Native to the arid cape region of South Africa, spekboom thickets can store 20 kilograms of carbon in every square meter of vegetation, or 200 tons of carbon per hectare. That’s equivalent to taking 37 cars off the road for a year. Since most dryland areas similar to the cape store less than 50 metric tons of carbon per hectare and deciduous forests are estimated to store 120 metric ... Read More

According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 20 percent of the world’s irrigated agricultural lands are considered “salt-affected” as salt from groundwater accumulates in soil over time. Given rising sea levels and increasing demands on agriculture, these salinized soils are expected to increase in the coming years, so the race is on to find salt-adapted crops. One such plant, Salicornia bigelovii or “dwarf glasswort” is garnering more and more attention for its potential to convert coastal and degraded agriculture areas into productive, sustainable crop ... Read More

Apparently the rubber world is at a crossroads. Natural rubber, which makes products like latex gloves, predominantly comes from the sap of Hevea brasiliensis, or rubber tree. Unfortunately, more and more people are developing allergic reactions to the proteins of latex, and rubber trees are increasingly prone to a fungal disease that has already wiped out large stands in Central and South America. On the other hand, synthetic rubber, which composes 60 to 70 percent of the world’s rubber products, is solely produced from petrochemicals and could face challenges as the price of oil ... Read More

Phytoremediation. Intimidating word, important biological process. Put simply, phytoremediation is using plants to clean up contaminants in polluted soils and stagnant water. Historically regular plants like sunflowers and hemp have been used to decontaminate lead-laced and even radioactive soils, respectively, but a series of genetically modified plants are taking phytoremediation to new heights or, ahem, depths. So, for your horticulture enlightenment, instead of selecting just one for our list, we’ve decided to lump together a few genetically modified phytoremediation plants that ... Read More

In what could be the beginning of plant-based pharmaceuticals, Canada’s SemBioSys Genetics Inc. has genetically modified safflower plants to produce pharmaceutical-grade insulin that is biologically equivalent human insulin. Today, most insulin is produced by genetically modified bacteria, but the company believes engineering safflower plants to “grow” the drug via injected enzymes could cut the price of insulin dramatically. Since the market for insulin could more than double from $7.1 billion in 2008 to $15 billion in 2012 as Western countries see more people with diabetes and ... Read More