[HN Gopher] Artificial photosynthesis can produce food without s...
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Artificial photosynthesis can produce food without sunshine
Author : panabee
Score : 98 points
Date : 2022-07-02 07:50 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.ucr.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.ucr.edu)
| mycowerk wrote:
| Cultivation of caloric crops are one of the largest contributors
| to agricultural land use. Disruption here would have a huge
| environmental impact. Once carbon dioxide has been fixed you can
| use carbohydrates as an energy feedstock for many downstream
| organisms. Where's our lab grown starch startups at?
| icod1 wrote:
| There's food (aka good tasting food, which was exposed to the sun
| and grown in the open) and there's FoOd (aka tastes like water,
| grown under glass).
|
| 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?
| andrewl wrote:
| Can you point to an article about the two girls from India?
| EUROCARE wrote:
| Glass in between the light has absolutely no relation to taste
| or other properties. My own best veggies are grown in a
| greenhouse. It's about the soil and what you grow - commercial
| strains are not selected for taste but durability/good looks.
| If you grew the same commercial strain """naturally""" you'd
| still get bad taste.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| >"Experiments showed that a wide range of food-producing
| organisms can be grown in the dark directly on the acetate-rich
| electrolyzer output, including green algae, yeast, and fungal
| mycelium that produce mushrooms. Producing algae with this
| technology is approximately _fourfold more energy efficient_ than
| growing it photosynthetically. Yeast production is about _18-fold
| more energy efficient_ than how it is typically cultivated using
| sugar extracted from corn. "
|
| Absolutely brilliant!
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| >> grown in the dark
|
| > brilliant!
|
| Please let go of my leg.
|
| And how much of a saving is being "more energy-efficient" than
| zero-cost sunlight?
| kleton wrote:
| Animals can use acetate directly as a carbon and energy source.
| For bovines it's probably at least half of their input, with much
| of the rest being other volatile fatty acids.
| imtringued wrote:
| Why not skip the plant and go straight for artificial starch
| synthesis? Producing food without sunshine really isn't a problem
| that needs to be solved. If there were free lunches plants would
| have evolved them.
|
| https://newatlas.com/science/artificial-synthesis-starch-fro...
| Paedor wrote:
| The best tradeoffs for humans are also different from the best
| for plants. Even fully domesticated ones like wheat still have
| to put energy into completely regrowing themselves every year,
| fighting pathogens, reproduction machinery... I'd put decent
| odds on synthetic production being massively more efficient.
| nine_k wrote:
| Plants have hard time evolving parts that require large pieces
| of crystalline silicon.
|
| 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.
| mlyle wrote:
| > An not only on Mars or Moon, but here on Earth, too.
|
| 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.
| nine_k wrote:
| Most of Europe can only have one crop of many cultures per
| year. What if some of them could grow faster and fit two
| crops into the summer? This might be useful not only in
| places like Sweden, but even in places like France.
| mlyle wrote:
| Maybe. Doing it once in the lab and making it look like
| the economics _might_ kind of work for a broader area isn
| 't very convincing to me.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| This is how you grow a winter crop in a warehouse. Right
| now we are burning tons of fuel to ship fresh produce
| between northern and Southern Hemispheres depending on
| which is experiencing the growing season. This could be
| the path to local fresh produce year round. Possibly more
| environmentally friendly than the current method.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| The problem with starch is that it's empty energy for a human.
|
| 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.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You can almost get all the micro nutrients you need for the
| day from a tablespoon of dried watercress.
|
| If micronutrients are ever a problem, we are really screwed
| on macronutrients.
| hgomersall wrote:
| This sort of thinking has led to people consuming Huel as
| their sole food source. To be clear, we're a long way from
| understanding all the interactions of various foodstuffs
| and their nutrients on our health and wellbeing. That's
| even before we consider the mental health benefits that a
| varied diet brings.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> If there were free lunches plants would have evolved them._
|
| 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.
| verisimi wrote:
| Well, I'll know who to blame when all the tomato is gone! :)
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Yes, it's a bit like the problem with biofuels and internal
| combustion engines - there's a lot of waste and destruction
| [1]. Solar panels with electric cars are a lot more direct and
| efficient route for the same mobility.
|
| 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
| abandonliberty wrote:
| While I share your dream of no longer needing to eat, we still
| can't really live on Soylent. Our understanding of nutrition is
| growing, including what we consider as nutrients and how
| they're absorbed/interact.
|
| 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.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| If this scales it could be a much more sustainable way to
| grow livestock feed and biofuels
| skymer wrote:
| Pure clickbait. Solar panels turn sunlight into electricity.
| Electrolysis creates acetate. Mushrooms, yeast, algae grow in
| acetate.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| I was going to say: _Photo_ sythesis without light? You don't
| need a science degree or even read to article to know the title
| is utter rubbish.
| witrak wrote:
| Article in the second statement refers to the efficiency of
| natural plants' way of food production: "This process, however,
| is very inefficient, with only about 1% of the energy found in
| sunlight ending up in the plant." So comparing it to the
| current efficiency of photovoltaic sources of energy (up to 50%
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/photovoltaics-
| and-...) and allowing for a lot of losses of energy in the
| whole process it is still not unexpected to have a couple of
| times better effectiveness than of natural process. It's worth
| reading a bit more than the header...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Only if you start from solar panels. Yeast and green algae
| could be grown from anything that produces electricity at that
| point (geothermal, nuclear).
|
| 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?""
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Hm, I guess the efficiency part is possibly interesting on
| Earth too. Could allow for fresh produce in inaccessible
| areas with limited space and difficult shipping, even if the
| power was solar collected, given the efficiencies are so much
| higher than plant photosynthesis. South pole research
| station, small islands with infrequent shipping, nuclear
| submarines.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| From a land-use perspective, growing this way can be very
| efficient. With most industrially grown crops you are
| essentially limited to one "layer" of crops; but here you
| could stack crops in a warehouse (though similar arguments
| apply to vertical farms using artificial light).
| mlyle wrote:
| > (though similar arguments apply to vertical farms using
| artificial light).
|
| Other than this could potentially reduce the energy
| requirement by 75% or more.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why can't you just use sunlight from Mars to grow food on
| Mars?
|
| I imagined energy would not be the main bottleneck to growing
| food on a different planet.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| There's a lot less of it on Mars. Also exposing things to
| sunlight is complicated by the high levels of radiation.
| mgerdts wrote:
| > Imagine someday giant vessels growing tomato plants in the
| dark and on Mars--how much easier would that be for future
| Martians?
|
| 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.
| orionion wrote:
| That was solved long ago...
|
| 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
|
| https://bonide.com/product/tomato-blossom-set-spray-rtu/
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Previous discussion here, linked to original research report:
|
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Where is the plant getting its NPK in this system?
| diego_moita wrote:
| During space age, in the 60s, "astronaut food" was all the rage:
| lyophilized/freeze dried food, nutrient pills, ... people thought
| the future of food was tech-food.
|
| 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.
| bognition wrote:
| It's more than lack of trust, it's that naturally grown food
| just tastes better and is better for you.
|
| It turns out that high-quality food is more than just carbs,
| protein, and fat.
| ben_w wrote:
| While high quality is indeed more than just carbs, protein,
| and fat, it's equally an oversimplification to talk of
| "naturally grown" when that was last true a bit before the
| domestication of plants and agricultural animals (c. 13k BC),
| and the invention of basic irrigation and the discovery that
| crop rotation helped yields (both c. 6k BC).
| yegle wrote:
| Is organic/all nature food actually more nutritious and backed
| by science? Otherwise nothing has changed: we care more about
| how the food is produced instead of whether it's actually
| better.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| If it's actually organic it's likely pesticide free which is
| probably better for you. Pesticides are for avoiding famine,
| not ensuring your food is 100% the most healthy for you.
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