Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

sciencedaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 173 posts

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#161

Post by robbedpeter »

8note wrote: post #144
CyanBird wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like asking if the vitamins that you give to a chicken as a chick will poison you when you eat it as adult, I am not talking of hormones or growth agents, just literal common vitamins You don't eat "the vitamins" you eat the chicken, you don't eat the fertilizer, you eat the plant

If you feed mercury to the chicken as a chixk, then eat it as an adult, do you get the mercury?

This thread reads like a Monty Python sketch.

Because... fertilizer is mercury!

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#162

Post by josephcsible »

8note wrote: post #144
CyanBird wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like asking if the vitamins that you give to a chicken as a chick will poison you when you eat it as adult, I am not talking of hormones or growth agents, just literal common vitamins You don't eat "the vitamins" you eat the chicken, you don't eat the fertilizer, you eat the plant

If you feed mercury to the chicken as a chixk, then eat it as an adult, do you get the mercury?

Life can create, modify, and break chemical bonds, but can't create, modify, or destroy elements. Vitamins can get metabolized into other compounds but mercury stays mercury.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#163

Post by labawi »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #154
simonh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As does the nitrogen, this is basic biology. Post is tosh. We’ve been farming in Europe for 10,000 years and still going strong. Soil regeneration is not rocket science.

Most plants can't take nitrogen from the air. Only nitrogen fixing legumes do that, and only with the assistance of bacteria in the soil biome.

Pretty much all organic carbon in the soil ultimately comes from the air.

Yes, atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by bacteria, but it's not just on legumes, they are simply the most known and prominent.

If your comment was true, fertile soil would never have developed in the first place. Read posts where people are gaining about an inch of topsoil per year (in good conditions). They are not trucking it in. Even on depleted soil there is a natural succession that slowly develops fertile soil (not in all conditions, but again, not trucked in, just needs moisture, wind not blowing it off etc).

> If you're not losing carbon in your soils, it's because you're bringing it in from somewhere else, and it's lost there.

Heralding imported soil as soil regeneration is flawed, but so is your premise.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#164

Post by baybal2 »

ben_w wrote: post #109
baybal2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - weak nutritional content of our food; Today we have the most nutritious foods in history. Don't make things up. Today's potatoes are 4-6 times bigger than 19th century ones. Tomatoes 3-5 times. Most fruits, got just enormous. Even "watery" leafy greens are actually getting more meatier, and starchy, and with more folates as everybody seem to be crazy about them.

“The plants are bigger” isn’t evidence either pro or con, nutrition is about what’s in the plants rather than their raw mass — they might be more nutritious, or less, or even both at the same time because the balance of proteins, sugars, fats, vitamins, and minerals shifted.

I doubt there is any difference

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#165

Post by ip26 »

Forget about yields, increased resilience to drought etc could be the big news if exploited. Deep root systems and resilience could dramatically reduce necessary irrigation & fertilization. Hardy plants need fewer inputs, deeper fertilization means less runoff, and deep irrigation means less evaporation.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#166

Post by cmrdporcupine »

labawi wrote: post #163
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most plants can't take nitrogen from the air. Only nitrogen fixing legumes do that, and only with the assistance of bacteria in the soil biome.

Pretty much all organic carbon in the soil ultimately comes from the air. Yes, atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by bacteria, but it's not just on legumes, they are simply the most known and prominent. If your comment was true, fertile soil would never have developed in the first place. Read posts where people are gaining about an inch of topsoil per year (in good conditions). They are not trucking it in. Even on deplete…

The premise is not flawed. I don't disagree it's possible to build topsoil and add carbon and use nitrogen fixers and cover crops to accumulate soil organic matter and nutrition. It's just not possible to do that and grow an annual crop of any sufficient size.

Carbon consumption happens through soil disturbance but also by natural oxidation and microbial processes in the soil. And some of the carbon in the plant matter is from the soil, as well.

The permaculturists are right that natural spaces are mostly self-regenerative systems. The problem is they don't feed people. At least not beyond hunter gatherer type densities.

Then add on top of that that most market garden type places are consuming quantities of unrenewable peat (potting mixes for transplant or nursery growing) and plastic (silage tarps and landscape fabric for occlusion, nursery pots, greenhouse poly, etc.) and fossil fuels... And large scale cash crop farms have their own rather drastic inputs as well.

Growing crops is extractive. We can fiddle with the parameters of how extractive, but farming needs inputs. So we need to think about where those inputs come from.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#168

Post by labawi »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #166
labawi wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all organic carbon in the soil ultimately comes from the air. Yes, atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by bacteria, but it's not just on legumes, they are simply the most known and prominent. If your comment was true, fertile soil would never have developed in the first place. Read posts where people are gaining about an inch of topsoil per year (in good conditions). They are not trucking it in. Even on deplete…

The premise is not flawed. I don't disagree it's possible to build topsoil and add carbon and use nitrogen fixers and cover crops to accumulate soil organic matter and nutrition. It's just not possible to do that and grow an annual crop of any sufficient size. Carbon consumption happens through soil disturbance but also by natural oxidation and microbial processes in the soil. And some of the carbon in the plant matt…

Please try to be more specific and accurate, as you're essentially making sweeping generalizations, while moving goalposts. It's hard to know what is hyperbole, and what do you actually mean and believe. One cannot finitely argue against a changing topic.

> Every bit of plant matter we ship off our farms in the form of food is carbon and nitrogen that is no longer in our soils.

Do you concede this¹ is false?

To be clear, I completely agree the vast majority of agriculture is extractive. What I think we're discussing is whether (or how much) growing crops must necessarily be extractive.

As I think I've said, I agree it's dishonest accounting to include imported plant matter in regenerative farming². Either way, it only reflects on current practices, as do comments about peat. Your experiences and failures, or those of your neighbors only speak of the inadequacies of specific methods. Comments about oil and plastic bear no sway in the topic at hand.

I specifically take issue with the claim that carbon is a soil resource that must be depleted when growing substantial amounts of food. Yes, when taking away crops, we (necessarily) remove nutrients, and some may necessarily require replenishing, but they are not carbon (or even nitrogen).

Carbon it is in fact one of few resources that comes from thin air, and plants can absorb (fix) it by themselves. Forests show that plants can fix CO₂, in substantial quantities. Conversely, forest mining shows carbon is released when you destroy the soil.

When farming, carbon is the one resource that is not industrially added to the soil³. Most of the carbon is in fact burned, either biologically or physically and cannot be returned.

As specific counter-example, in a discussion of soil regeneration, I've read claims of an inch of topsoil growth per year. Whatever they were doing or supplementing, I don't think they⁴ trucked in an inch of carbon/topsoil per year. Are you claiming it's impossible?

¹ As in, it was not present in soil, as your original claim seems to be.

² Imported matter does seem a good and legitimate way to quicken the process of soil regeneration, if it then becomes net-producing.

³ Carbon is only added in small, non-replenishing quantities, or small areas, not materially changing the carbon balance by itself.

⁴ I'm aware there are those that do repeatedly truck-in an inch of topsoil.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#169

Post by webinvest »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #110
foxyv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deeper roots tend to make for healthier soil. This is why dandelions are such a boon for someone with poor soil. Their deep roots break up poorly aerated soil allowing aerobic bacteria to produce nutrients for plants. Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. The thing that worries me the most about modern farming is the use of pet…

>Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. You sure about that? When I was ARS, sure there were 3-4 farmers I met who took SOC and and soil health seriously; individuals who wanted to think about their soil as an ecosystem and grow their soils as they did their crops. Then there were the other 96-97 farmers you would meet who could…

Soil Organic Carbon levels? Don’t most plants get most or all of their carbon (and mass) from carbon dioxide in the air during respiration?

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#170

Post by foxyv »

webinvest wrote: post #169
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. You sure about that? When I was ARS, sure there were 3-4 farmers I met who took SOC and and soil health seriously; individuals who wanted to think about their soil as an ecosystem and grow their soils as they did their crops. Then there were the other 96-97 farmers you would meet who could…

Soil Organic Carbon levels? Don’t most plants get most or all of their carbon (and mass) from carbon dioxide in the air during respiration?

They do both. Usually though, soil organic matter which contains the most SOC ensures food for bacteria and fungi which make healthy soil. Plants, much like humans, require microbiota to survive and stay healthy. You are not just feeding plants, but also the bacteria and fungi that prevent disease and help produce nutrients.

In addition, plain sand and clay is very poor at retaining nutrients and moisture. Organic matter tends to soak up nutrients like a sponge. This is why media based hydroponics uses porous material like volcanic rock and pumice.

Post reply on HN