Biotechnology In Agriculture Essay

3.0 BIOTECHNOLOGY APPLICATION IN SOLVING THE GLOBAL WARMING

Biotechnology plays an important role in conserving biodiversity as well as solving the global warming. There are lot of methods and technique which apply the concept of biotechnology. It also offers a lot of advantages which benefit both human and flora and fauna. Below is some of the example of biotechnology application for solving the global warming.

3.1 Microalgae Anthropogenic activities over the past century have Recent technology showed that microalgae have the ability to fix CO₂ while capturing solar energy with an efficiency of 10 to 50 times greater than that of terrestrial plants (Wang et al, 2008). There are a lot of advantages of using microalgae. Firstly, microalgae have higher growth rates and CO₂ fixation abilities compared to conventional forestry, agricultural, and aquatic plants. Also, it could completely recycle CO₂ because carbon dioxide is converted into chemical energy via photosynthesis, which can be converted to fuels using the existing technologies (Demirbas 2004; Wang et. al. 2008). Furthermore, microalgae can be cultivated in closed systems or

Biochar is a common mixture with relative stable chemical property and could be deemed as a kind of black carbon. Common biochar includes wood char, bamboo char, straw char and rice husk char. Biochar converted from agricultural wastes or other biomasses could not only fix stable carbon, but would also have important impact on atmospheric and soil circulation and land carbon storage. Weiming (2011) suggested “according to the estimate of Lehmann, the carbon dioxide emission in the United States would decrease by 10% per year in case the carbon dioxide fixed by biomass is converted into biochar. He optimistically predicted that biochar would absorb up to 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases every year, more than 10% of total emission of 8.5 billion tons in