• Energy Research
• NL close
• US close
• EU close
• Wageningen Staff Publications close

Abstract To thrive in extreme conditions, organisms have evolved a diverse arsenal of adaptations that confer resilience. These species, their traits, and the mechanisms underlying them comprise a valuable resource that can be mined for numerous conceptual insights and applied objectives. One of the most dramatic adaptations to water limitation is desiccation tolerance. Understanding the mechanisms underlying desiccation tolerance has important potential implications for medicine, biotechnology, agriculture, and conservation. However, progress has been hindered by a lack of standardization across sub-disciplines, complicating the integration of data and slowing the translation of basic discoveries into practical applications. Here, we synthesize current knowledge on desiccation tolerance across evolutionary, ecological, physiological, and cellular scales to provide a roadmap for advancing desiccation tolerance research. We also address critical gaps and technical roadblocks, highlighting the need for standardized experimental practices, improved taxonomic sampling, and the development of new tools for studying biology in a dry state. We hope that this perspective can serve as a roadmap to accelerating research breakthroughs and unlocking the potential of desiccation tolerance to address global challenges related to climate change, food security, and health.

Het gebruik van onderstammen in de vruchtgroenteteelt is sterk in opkomst en heeft geleid tot een stijging van de productie. Het gebruik van speciaal geselecteerde onderstammen biedt de mogelijkheid om bij lagere temperaturen te telen zonder productie in te leveren. Daarmee kan energie worden bespaard

In this study, the removal of IBE from aqueous solutions by gas stripping has been characterized. The effect of one or more components in the solution on the kinetics of the separation has been studied, both at 37°C and at 70°C. Gas stripping has been applied to batch, repeated batch and continuous cultures of Clostridium beijerinckii grown on a glucose/xylose mixed sugar substrate mimicking lignocellulosic hydrolysates, with the aim of finding optimal conditions for a stable IBE-producing culture with high productivity. An innovative repeated-batch process has been demonstrated in which the gas-stripping is performed at 70°C, resulting in a prolonged stable IBE culture.

AbstractCalorimetry and other on‐line techniques are used for the first time as complement to the traditional off‐line methods in order to follow the growth of the green Chlorella vulgaris microalgae. A 2‐L photo‐bio‐reactor was adapted from a commercial calorimeter used previously to study heterotrophic microbial growth. An external source of light was added to favor the photosynthesis of the autotrophic cells. Heterotrophic growth was also tested with external glucose in the broth. A third mode, mixotrophic, allowed faster autotrophic plus heterotrophic growth. Calorimetric measurements were performed considering the corresponding calibrations in order to consider only the energy involved during the microalgal growth. The three different modes of Chlorella cultures were energetically characterized. Besides calorimetry, the weight of diluted nitric acid added to maintain the pH of the culture was correlated with the cellular growth and the nitrogen composition of the algae. Additionally, the on‐line infrared spectroscopy proved to be an efficient technique to follow the composition of the broth in glucose, nitrates, and phosphates. These results were compared and complemented with some classic off‐line techniques used to track this kind of cultures. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2007;96:757–767. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Een duurzame bedrijfsvoering is wat de landbouw voor ogen staat. Het is met systeeminnovaties te bereiken. Maar hoe weet een ondernemer wanneer zijn bedrijf duurzaam is? Hoe kan hij laten zien dat zijn bedrijf voortgang boekt? Onderzoekers werken daarom aan goede indicatoren, normen en maatstaven

Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan are the three major grain producers in Central Eurasia. In the context of the current food-price crisis, these countries might be presented with a window of opportunity to reemerge as the major grain exporters if they succeed in increasing their productivity. Global grain production is highly sensitive to a combination of internal and external factors, such as institutional changes, land-use changes, climate variability, water resources, and global economic trends. Agroecological scenarios driven by climate models suggest that land suitability in this region is likely to change in future, due to impacts of climate change, such as CO2 fertilization, changes in the growing season, temperature, precipitation, frequency, and timing of droughts and frosts. Grain production in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan grew steadily between 2002 and 2010 following a 10-year long depression caused by collapse of the USSR. However, in the summer of 2010 Russia and its neighbors experienced an unprecedented heat wave, accompanied by severe wild fires. As news of this disaster became known international grain prices increased dramatically. The future of grain production in this region will be determined by the interplay of climatic variability and multiple non-climatic factors and is likely to have significant impact on both global and regional food security over the coming decades.

The emergence of palm oil as the world's most produced and consumed vegetable oil has prompted various policy initiatives to help govern the industry in a sustainable manner. These initiatives include transnational sustainable certification schemes, such as the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and national level sustainability standards, such as Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil. To date, attempts to find consensus on sustainable policy and processes has been characterised by tension and disagreement. Most notably, stakeholders participating in policy dialogue from producing countries are unsatisfied with the outcomes of transnational palm oil governance. Tension stems from observations that sustainability is understood differently in the palm oil producing countries of the Global South compared with Northern consumption markets. To understand the different framings of palm oil and potential governance solutions, we investigate media coverage of palm oil sustainability in two different countries: the Netherlands – the largest importer of palm oil in Europe – and Malaysia – the second largest exporter of palm oil in the world after Indonesia. From a sample of 397 Malaysian and Dutch newspaper articles between 2000 and 2015, we employ framing analysis to examine the similarities and differences in media representations of palm oil sustainability. Our findings reveal considerable differences in the way palm oil sustainability is framed in the two countries. Malaysian media frame palm oil as a sustainable industry yet underpinned by a distrust towards transnational sustainability governance (e.g. RSPO) and a perception of unfair treatment towards producing countries by the West. Conversely, Dutch media frame the West as proud consumers of palm oil, who are driving up sustainability standards through NGO scrutiny and participation in transnational processes. We argue that a comparative analysis of media frames offers instructive insights for understanding processes of transnational sustainability governance. In particular, we posit that reconciling policy tensions between North and South palm oil stakeholders could be achieved by highlighting the differences in sustainability framings at different points in the value chain to identify contestation and consensus.