• Energy Research

AbstractAbout 1 billion people worldwide suffer from hunger, so exploring new food sources is very tempting for achieving zero hunger in the world. Edible insects (EIs) may be one of the ways to solve human protein deficiency. Currently, more than 200 species of EIs are consumed by over 2.5 billion people, especially in tropical regions, as part of their regular diets. However, there is still a large rejection in various parts of the world. In this review, we systematically summarize the factors behind the rejection of EIs as well as ways to improve the acceptability of EIs as alternative protein, essential vitamins, and mineral sources. The main goal of this research is to spread the knowledge of the benefits of eating EIs, consumer perception of insects, and enhance its acceptability as an alternative food. Sensory attributes, health‐related concerns, and sustainability issues are identified as the key factors affecting consumer acceptability of EIs. Conventional processing methods, such as blanching, drying, roasting, and fermentation, have been used in treating EIs to improve the quality and safety of EIs. Nine strategies were proposed to enhance the acceptability of insects as food, such as promoting food safety, encouraging product development, addressing cultural norms, enhancing the culinary experience, collaborating with restaurants, and increasing public awareness through education. The information in this work will shed more light on the consumption of EIs and pave the way for more research in this area.

Recently, several studies have showed that both organic and inorganic fertilizers are effective in immobilizing heavy metals at low cost, in comparison to other remediation strategies for heavy metal-contaminated farmlands. A pot trial was conducted in this study to examine the effects of inorganic P fertilizer and organic fertilizer, in single application or in combination, on growth of maize, heavy metal availabilities, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure in metal-contaminated soils from an electronic waste recycling region. Results showed that biomass of maize shoot and root from the inorganic P fertilizer treatments were respectively 17.8 and 10.0 folds higher than the un-amended treatments (CK), while the biomass in the organic fertilizer treatments was only comparable to the CK. In addition, there were decreases of 85.0% in Cd, 74.3% in Pb, 66.3% in Cu, and 91.9% in Zn concentrations in the roots of maize grown in inorganic P fertilizer amended soil. Consistently, urease and catalase activities in the inorganic P fertilizer amended soil were 3.3 and 2.0 times higher than the CK, whereas no enhancement was observed in the organic fertilizer amended soil. Moreover, microbial community structure was improved by the application of inorganic P fertilizer, but not by organic fertilizer; the beneficial microbial groups such as Kaistobacter and Koribacter were most frequently detected in the inorganic P fertilizer amended soil. The negligible effect from the organic fertilizer might be ascribed to the decreased pH value in soils. The results suggest that the application of inorganic P fertilizer (or in combination with organic fertilizer) might be a promising strategy for the remediation of heavy metals contaminated soils in electronic waste recycling region.

This dataset reports results on seedling growth and survival for two hyphal exclusion experiments in a subtropical forest. The data include survival status, height, total biomass and the biomass of component plant parts, percentage root colonisation by mycorrhizas, for tree seedlings of ten common species including five ectomycorrhizal (ECM) and five arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) species, which were transplanted in the in-growth cores with windows covering different sizes of nylon meshes (35 vs. 0.5 µm). The dataset provides raw data on growth and survival metrics for each seedling, plus identifying codes for the dominant sites where the experiments were conducted, as well as experimental block, mesh treatment, botanical names for the tree species, and mycorrhizal type. The data were entered into Excel spreadsheets and exported as comma separated value files (csv). Study area - the Heishiding Nature Reserve (111°53’E, 23°27’N, 150-927 m a.s.l.) in Guangdong Province of south China. Mesh-walled cores were assembled from 16 cm diameter × 30 cm deep PVC piping, perforated with six 8-cm-diameter windows which were regularly distributed along the side with three of them at the depth of 4-12 cm and the other three at 16-24 cm. The cores were lined with 35 µm or 0.5 µm nylon mesh (Plastok Associates Ltd, Birkenhead, UK) to cover the bottom and the windows, which was attached using transparent superglue (Pattex(R), Henkel Adhesives Ltd., Shantou, China). Nylon mesh with a pore size of 35 µm excludes roots of neighboring plants, but allows mycorrhizal hyphae access to the transplanted seedlings; while cores with a 0.5 µm mesh exclude both fine roots and hyphae, with only free-living soil microorganisms passing through. We then covered the sides and the bottoms of all cores with 2 mm nylon mesh, to prevent soil fauna damaging the smaller size meshes.

AbstractEarlier studies indicated that plant diversity influences community resistance in biomass when ecosystems are exposed to perturbations. This relationship remains controversial, however. Here we constructed grassland communities to test the relationships between species diversity and productivity under control and experimental drought conditions. Species richness was not correlated with biomass either under constant conditions or under drought conditions. However, communities with lower biomass production were more resistant to drought stress than those that were more productive. Our results also showed that ecosystem resistance to drought is a decreasing but nonlinear function of biomass. In contrast, species diversity had little and an equivocal effect on ecosystem resistance. From the results reported here, and the results of several previous studies, we suggest that high biomass systems exhibited a greater biomass reduction in response to drought than low biomass systems did, regardless of the relationship between plant diversity and community biomass production.

AbstractBackgroundRecent studies demonstrated that warming and elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) indirectly affect the soil microbial community structure via plant root exudates. However, there is no direct evidence for how the root exudates affect soil microbes and how the compositions of root exudates respond to climate change.ResultsThe results showed that warming directly decreased biomass of soil-borne bacteria and fungi forAcacia mearnsiiDe Willd but it did not impact soil microbial community forEucalyptus urophylla S.T. Blake. In contrast, elevated CO2had strong direct effect on increasing soil microbial biomass for both plant species. However, plant roots could significantly increase the secretion of antibacterial chemicals (most probable organic acids), which inhibited the growth of bacteria and fungi in elevated CO2environment. This inhibitory effect neutralized the facilitation from increasing CO2concentration on microbial growth.ConclusionsWe concluded that climate change can directly affect microorganisms, and indirectly affect the soil microbial community structure by changes in composition and content of plant root exudates.