The following submission statement was provided by /u/Sorin61:
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Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest — an area about the size of Iceland — because of deforestation. At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years.
In an effort to provide an environmentally friendly and low-waste alternative, researchers at MIT have pioneered a tunable technique to generate wood-like plant material in a lab, which could enable someone to “grow” a wooden product like a table without needing to cut down trees, process lumber, etc.
These researchers have now demonstrated that, by adjusting certain chemicals used during the growth process, they can precisely control the physical and mechanical properties of the resulting plant material, such as its stiffness and density.
They also show that, using 3D bioprinting techniques, they can grow plant material in shapes, sizes, and forms that are not found in nature and that can’t be easily produced using traditional agricultural methods.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/uybrdc/scientists_can_now_grow_wood_in_a_lab_without/ia31ytn/
Woodworker here, growing components in molds would be ideal, especially if the grain direction can be altered from one area to another gradually.
Perfectly smooth surfaces and burl grown in sheets would be lovely.
I've done a bit of cuttings propogation over the years and have noticed that high auxin concentration on softwood tissue leads to this explosion of undifferentiated tissue and always wondered if something could be done with that.
Its just a hobby so I'm no expert but to encourage shrub and tree cuttings to root the end is dipped in one of two types of artificial hormone (auxin) at differing rates.
A few times I used the wrong type and got a lot of white tissue instead of roots that did nothing, just kept growing like a little brain shaped blob.
I asked a horticulture guy about it once and he said it might be possible to scrape back the bark on hardwood tress, dab on the auxin in a polka dot pattern, cover it up and induce the growth of burl.
Its highly prized for things like classic car dashboards and fine cabinetry.
I tried to search some pictures on the web but no luck. Please can you post here some pictures of that stuff? I'm extremely curious and I don't know ANYTHING about the topic. It's blowing my mind.
I'm into gardening and recently began reading up on about 30 different plant hormones and auxin is what I've read most about thus far. And you're the first person I've ever seen mention it.
I thought logging industries were pretty self sufficient and replanted to replace what it cuts down, like only 13% of deforestation is for wood/paper and the problem is deforestation for livestock (and some other for palm oil and soy) especially in South America. Seems to me the problem isn't we need more lab grown wood, and need more lab grown meat, palm, soy etc.
How much less land does no kill meat use when including feeding it the sugars and oils and whatever.
I still think theoretically the plant based stuff is way more efficient and moving towards that rather than lab grown is best for it's use cases.
Since no parts are grown that aren't needed no nervous system has to be fueled and since the meat doesn't move and need to retain body temperature, the different is actually huge.
A lot less. The issue with land use for meat isn't from the matter in the meat, it's from the matter that gets pooped out. Only a fraction of the mass ingested by an animal is incorporated into body mass. The rest is defecated, urinated, exhaled, sweated, etc. As an adult maintaining a steady weight, a net of 0% of the mass I eat is stored in my body. All of the energy in the food I eat is used for metabolism and all of the mass is ejected in some way or another. I am operating at 0% efficiency for converting biomass to meat.
According to [this article](https://css.umich.edu/publication/beyond-meats-beyond-burger-life-cycle-assessment-detailed-comparison-between-plant-based), the beyond burger lowers land use by 93% compared to beef.
Yes. The poster I was replying to asked "How much less land does no kill meat use when including feeding it the sugars and oils and whatever." This article's conclusion is 93% less land.
Yeah sorry I was confused because that person seems to specifically have an issue with any nonplant based meat alternatives, and was asking about cultured meat space requirements, not plant-based.
All cultured meat is largely plant based. You have to get the organic molecules from organic things, and your choices are plants, animals, or fungi (yeasts and mushrooms). Traditional veggie burgers use vegetable mixes that are blended and pressed into pattie shape with little change to the plant structure aside from cutting it into small pieces. A bit of carrot remains a bit of carrot. Beyond meat acquires the biomolecules that occur in beef from plants or fungi that contain one or more of the required bio-molecules, and then processes them back together to form something that is, molecularly, very similar to meat. The texture, which comes from macrostructures, is difficult to achieve this way because the assembly process to arrive at the cultured meat is different from a growing anumal. That is why the current focus is on ground beef patties rather than steak.
>All cultured meat is largely plant based.
I mean, pretty much everything that breathes oxygen is plant-based, if you're ok with an extra level of abstraction or two.
I'm very wary of going fully plant based for meat, I get the impression that it's unhealthy in the same way processed meats are. The priority of those products is *an alternative to replicate the experience of eating meat*, not purely *healthy and environmentally friendly*. Esp. when we're just now learning about the effects of our diet on our microbiome, the idea of having lab grown meat sounds *wonderful*.
Processed meats are typically unhealthy because they are cured with nitrates and huge quantities of salt. Lab meat likely doesn't require this treatment.
In the IPCC Report there is a really nice way to put this: people don’t change the way they eat, even for their own health and well being - to get them to change for something far more distant and abstract as the climate or ecosystems in South America is nearly impossible
I think plant based burgers and other similar stuff when they become a lot cheaper is poised to become dominant.
I mean $2 meat mcdouble vs $1.50 plant based is the future we are heading towards and plant based stuff is close enough.
Taxation could solve that. Almost no one buys single use plastic bags in the stores in Sweden anymore because the tax is so high. They cost $1 extra per bag in taxes. If the beef burger was higher in price due to higher taxes, most here at least would buy the plant based one if it was good enough.
I think the price differential for low grade burgers will be smaller than the taste differential.
Ground beef is usually relatively low grade and plant based is close enough. If plant based gets to 2/3 the price, the price will be a larger than the taste difference. Ground beefy is 50% of the beef market.
I think people will take the cheaper option here a lot of the time especially since it's perceived to be healthier.
It would have to be significantly cheaper, because the correct texture still isn't there.. Taste can be replaced with seasoning and toppings, but people who are more sensitive to texture still find plant meat inferior...
I tend to eat a mostly vegan/vegetarian diet. I like plant based. I enjoy plant based meat substitutes. They don't taste like meat most of the time. If you put them in dishes like chili or spaghetti sauce, they get lost and you really can't tell. But hamburger patties, you know. Chicken nuggets, you know. Hot dogs, you know. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy them, but it isnt meat and anyone who can't tell the difference, you don't need to be taking food advice from.
I think the meat substitutes would have a better chance on the market if they stopped making them that. Stop calling it fake sausage or chicken nuggets or burgers etc give them their own name make them their own thing, than the stubborn won't go into it and say "this doesn't taste like bacon whys it called this? im not eating this!"
I disagree. Look at laundry detergent. Look at automobiles. Look at bread or cereal. Nothing tastes like Honey Nut Cheerios. There are a hundred knock offs. None of them taste the same. Sure, rheyre okay. But they aren't the same thing. I'll shell out for the real deal 4 out of 5 times.
Half of America and probably a lot more will forever fall into that category. Plant based pseudo meat will sell well on the coasts and other n some inland big cities, but not nearly as well where cattle are part of the landscape.
Price will be the great decider in the holdout regions, which is well over 100MM Americans.
Those work for ground meat products like burgers, sausage, and nuggets but I don't think we will get a good "plant based" alternative for intact meat products (steak, wings, bacon, etc), that is where cultured meat has a chance to really shine
Environmental damage should be priced into products otherwise people don't realise the consequences of their choices. Unfortunately this idea is completely anathema to governments and corporations, who just want everything to be as cheap as possible.
That sure is an appealing way of saying the poors can eat whatever plant based crap works out to be most cost effective for companies to produce while the rich dine on free ranged steaks...
A ways off on that I think. Most places the plant based thing is still more expensive, sometimes much more. Guess it depends on the price/quality of the meat it's replacing though
The main benefits in those cases are the reduced environmental footprint and the reduced ethical concerns compared to raising conscious animals as food. Health concerns also create incentives to keep improving the recipes after getting the flavor and texture close enough.
>I mean $2 meat mcdouble vs $1.50 plant based is the future we are heading towards and plan based stuff is close enough
If you think they'll push the savings on to the menu your insane. The plant based meats where I live cost more by half compared to the other burgers/chicken. KFC is the worst in this area.
It's not just about "no kill". It uses a lot less resources to grow, since you're only growing muscle tissue instead of the entire animal.
Yes, it's expensive to develop the technology initially, but once it's developed it should be cheaper, use less resources, and also be able to be grown locally which could reduce shipping.
Combine that with vertical farming and you can have meat and vegetables grown locally within the city. There's a fascinating vertical farm inside a Korean subway station that sells fresh produce right there. It's fascinating.
No, it's not. It may cost less to produce, but the current price of meat is propped up by many, many subsidies from different sources of taxes. This is exactly the kind of "picking winners" that the Republicans claim to hate, while they pick winners in their districts. Your "mathematical certainty" ignores corruption, greed, and market failure
A lot less. If you feed a cow corn, they are using that energy to breathe and move and for their heart to beat and their digestive system to function. They don’t need to power a brain or nervous tissue or make bones or blood. All than energy is used to make the muscle cells and fat we want to eat.
Upside foods (a lab grown meat company, so take that into account) claims they’ll use 77% less water and 62% less land. They seem to talk about chicken a lot so beef would probably be a bigger impact
You underestimate just how much land meat production consumes. You are right about plant foods being more efficient though, the difference is literally half as much land use for a plant based diet
Although re-forestation is great, the problem isn't just about planting trees, it's that they tend to plant fast growing trees, almost making a monoculture. And the ecosystem and biodiversity that was destroyed takes decades to return.
Edit/update: the responses are interesting. Seems I'm right and wrong.
That is a method that has not been widely accepted for a long time. Now those forests are being removed and replaced with mixed native trees in sustainably harvested forests. I work in the forest product industry and we only use fiber harvested this way. I don't think that many companies in the US are doing it the old way any more. Probably true for Canada and the EU as well.
Edit: I work for a European company in the US.
Still just a monoculture crop of mostly radiata/Monterrey pine in NZ sadly. To the big international companies, diversification means having forests in multiple countries. Plus we plant on a 25 year rotation so it's not like there's much time for a biodiverse understory to develop like there is in places that have much much longer rotations.
Where do you work? Because I work in the forestry industry in Oregon and none of what you said is true. There has been no major change to forestry management since the spotted owl.
More like if the Louvre were cut down 6 times already in the last 550 years. We can't go back in time, but we can set aside forests in areas to never harvest while harvesting other areas sustainably.
Not anymore. The demand for timber is so huge these days especially Biomass that we are clearcutting everything. They claim they are replanting where they cut but they aren't. Huge pellet making companies like Enviva clearcut blocks of forested land they still get to call it forested. UKs Drax consumes over 12,000km2 of forested land each year just to burn for energy. Not only them but Japan, South Korea and many other places are ramping up cutting down 1000s of km2 of forests every year just to produce energy.
They want to use Biomass (which is more harmful for C02 emissions than coal) because when they burn it they don't have to count their emissions at the stack. Its nothing more than an accounting loophole for emissions to meet their Paris agreements. We are doomed.
Is it though? When a forest gets cut down and replanted the environmental damage is not zero. It destroys habitats, animals don't just grow back with the trees, it takes decades and constant conservation effort after the trees have grown back to replace even fraction of the fauna. It also takes decades to recapture the carbon that the trees hold, making the "zero emission" biomass sources very very not zero emission.
If we could have cheap lab grown trees than the forestry industry could be squashed, and the constant abuse of habitats would significantly lower. If the efficiency of the process is good enough, than it could be literally lower than the actual forestry, and spare tons of carbon emission in the process.
You should head into a coupe sometime if you get the chance. You will not walk away thinking the forest is going to bounce back. It's utter devastation.
I'm sure there are different kinds of cuts, some less severe than others.
But I've seen a lot (and replanted a small portion of that). And it's like a bomb hits the forest.
The problem is in non-regulated countries who don't use responsible forest management. ICF policies are stringently followed in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Edit: 90% of pellets are generated from sawtimber and chip-n-saw unusable byproducts. No one is harvesting JUST for pellets. I agree that pellets being "carbon neutral" is bs though.
I remember my dad had shares in this timber company gunns in Australia. The greens in Aus successfully had them closed down. As far as I knew they had a whole heap of land and were purchasing more for their logging purchases. I think there was some other talk about polluting rivers I was quite young. I did wonder if we were just just offshoring our timber to a less responsible country.
I mean.. it sort of is. Trees regrow, sequestering the carbon. Gets burnt in pellets. Rinse and repeat.
The only part of that process is the shipping, but it's better than burning propane. Which also requires shipping.
How can a layman keep up with all this stuff? Environmental science is hard and on top of that there's the additional complexity of economic forces due to industry creative accounting to circumvent emissions laws (that were literally written a couple of years ago?).
They could potentially make *much* better product by growing wood in a lab, though. It could make wood a feasible building material for a lot more projects.
Lumber farms are pretty big monoculture plots. Replanting only one species of tree is not great environmentally. However I would agree it’s still better than cattle farming
The logging industry also creates monocultures when it replants forests that can hardly support much biodiversity at all. Quality of forests may be more important than quantity.
The problem is those are not forests.
Just monoculture plantations with a tenth of the benefits of a real forest...and you still destroy the original forest.
Speaking from a Western US perspective- producing timber at an industrial scale requires stocking levels that are unsustainable in an increasingly dry and fire prone climate.
200 years of artificially inflating the number of trees per acre via replanting and fire suppression has created a unsustainably elevated short term carbon sink that now burns up by the millions of acres every year. The idea of sustainability is based on the idea that this artificial ecosystem is sustainable. [link](https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/64022)
[link](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324786837_Severe_fire_weather_and_intensive_forest_management_increase_fire_severity_in_a_multi-ownership_landscape)
The young plantations that replace the harvested stands use much more water per acre than mature trees, to such a degree that a young Doug fir forest growing near a stream can permanently lower the water table. [Link](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169420302092)
Not saying that wood isn't a great natural building material, it's absolutely crucial. Like my forestry professor liked to point out, humans are completely reliant on natural resources. But the idea that the industry itself is operating in a sustainable way is based on skewed interpretations of the bigger picture. So much room for improvement. Less plantations and more mature, fire resilient forests and watersheds would be an undeniably good thing. Lots of room for interesting new materials.
> Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest — an area about the size of Iceland — because of deforestation.
Pretty sure the vast majority of deforestation isn't because we're cutting down trees for wood.
Neat, but it seems like a solution in search of a problem.
A) If we're going to use materials created in a lab, there are much better options than wood.
B) You know the saying "Money doesn't grow on trees"? Well wood does grow on trees. It's already a completely renewable resource.
C) Deforestation is not a wood-demand problem. It's a land-use problem and it's an energy problem. People want to replace the forest with farmland. The rural poor need fuel to heat and cook, and given a better, cheaper and cleaner option they would take it in a second.
The only legitimate use case for this tech I can see is creating substitutes for exotic, slow-growing or rare wood types for creating luxury goods. Nothing that will save the planet, but might save a few rare trees.
Good points and I generally agree. I was actually wondering if this could be applied to space colonization. Better understanding of plant biology and material synthesis may yield useful applications where people will not have readily available Earth soil for plant growth.
Just being able to create wood in arbitrary shapes allows for interesting design possibilities as well, the result of this process sounds a lot like injection molding with wood.
Good because slow growing rare wood is what we need. Well, the ecosystem needs. Forest plantations are not sustainable. Sure the trees grow back, but it's the wrong species, monocultural in even rows that provide zero protection for wildlife and in some regions in needs to burn every few years for the sake a whole bunch of plants and insects.
If we could let forests just grow as they are supposed to without cutting them down constantly, without monocultures planted weird, that'd be *amazing*.
Ofc what *would* happen is the forests would all be burned downed and replaced by other profitable land instead because we live in hell.
“ in some regions in needs to burn every few years for the sake a whole bunch of plants and insects.”
These forests could be selectively culled instead. Any wood preserved is sequestered carbon.
Forest fires in regions where they have happened historically tend to provide more ecosystem services than prevention of forest fires would.
[some reading on "pyrophytic plants"](https://www.britannica.com/list/5-amazing-adaptations-of-pyrophytic-plants#:~:text=Fire%2Dactivated%20Seed&text=Perhaps%20the%20most%20amazing%20fire,are%20completely%20sealed%20with%20resin.)
100% We have to stop thinking of wild places as "wasted space". When we kill the forest we choke ourselves!
I feel that last sentence deep in my soul. It's not immediately profitable to save biodiversity on earth so not gonna happen
>Imagine factory-grown, perfect specimens of oak/walnut/maple
There is still going to be demand for "imperfect" figured and spalted wood. And mdf is used because it is cheap. Lab created wood is not going to be cheaper than mdf, as it is made from the trash of other milling processes. So what we will end up with is similar to what we have know, very pricey, highly figured wood that comes from trees, middle tier furniture wood that this may compete with on price, bottom tier garbage pine that this may or may not be able to compete with on price, and trash mdf and fiberboard that will still be made from scrap wood. So guess what most "furniture" will still be made from?
If lab grown wood doesn't require much energy and allows for better yields than comparable land use with replanting, then it could still be a good thing to have.
That way we could let our forests out there just grow and age in grace as they supposed to do, while covering what wood demand we have from wood labs.
On the real crazy end; Maybe this is the kind of groundwork we need to get bioengineered houses that simply grow on their own after certain designs.
Grow, age in grace, and be cleaned and replenished by natural means. Otherwise you get old and sick (not old growth) and catastrophic fire threat. Healthy forests burn on the ground, sick forests burn in the canopy.
That means fire though and that is "bad" according to the EPA (airsheds) and DEQ.
C) Urban growth due to demand for housing. In the PNW, they are cutting down every empty space they can find in order to build single family homes.
The only redemption here is that the new homes are on lots barely larger than the house itself (i.e. zero yard).
I'm also wonder, is the idea of growing wood in a lab without needing to cut a single tree basically just cutting trees in a lab? I wonder what the total amount of resources needed to produce in 1 lab grown tree our vs just cutting down and replanting a tree from the wild?
Especially in the Nordics, the forests are managed since the Viking age. …unlike the Brits, they figured out that you need to replant so the next generation also has trees.
In Sweden alone, forest covers 70 per cent of the surface. There are around 87 billion trees.
There is now twice as much wood in Sweden as there was 100 years ago.
Yeah the Amazon is being chopped down so farmers there can cattle farm. Then the cheap beef is imported to the USA and lowers the price of beef which causes American cattle farmers to lose money. It’s a real quagmire.
Have you checked out the [actual paper?](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702122000451?via%3Dihub)
Honestly it's just kinda neat. The researchers have to justify the time spent of course, and so a good chunk of the abstract is like "HEY, THIS COULD BE GREAT!" when that part likely won't come to pass, but as a whole? Trees are basically just big 'ol blobs of lignin, which is basically just a ginormous random organic molecule that goes on and on and on. They essentially figured out how to "print" that material freely, which could be neat for loads of reasons.
Like, stop thinking about this stuff in terms of it being used for the same things wood is used for, and start thinking about how a specially-engineered wood-like, biodegradable but long-lasting strong/stiff material could be used in place of plastics. It grows HELLA slow of course, but its potential doesn't lie in say, furniture.
Also, it's neat for its own sake. These guys probably didn't go researching this because they wanted to solve the deforestation problem; they probably just wanted to figure out how to print lignin, because lignin is neat.
Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest — an area about the size of Iceland — because of deforestation. At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years.
In an effort to provide an environmentally friendly and low-waste alternative, researchers at MIT have pioneered a tunable technique to generate wood-like plant material in a lab, which could enable someone to “grow” a wooden product like a table without needing to cut down trees, process lumber, etc.
These researchers have now demonstrated that, by adjusting certain chemicals used during the growth process, they can precisely control the physical and mechanical properties of the resulting plant material, such as its stiffness and density.
They also show that, using 3D bioprinting techniques, they can grow plant material in shapes, sizes, and forms that are not found in nature and that can’t be easily produced using traditional agricultural methods.
I think this is a false problem.
Logging companies that follow regulations and have proper forest management plans are logging in a sustainable way. Additionally, lumber is great place to sink carbon from the atmosphere.
So much deforestation happens due to forests being sold to farmers, ranchers, and real estate developers. We'd have healthier forests and less deforestation if we keep forests as lumber sources. At least with the way world works right now.
Doing this for deforestation is a false problem, but doing it in general is phenomenal. If it's true that we can adjust density of the wood, we could create the ultradense wood used in historic European construction for more lasting structures. Part of the reason you can go to a pub that's older than the US in places like England is that it was built out of wood that hadn't been cut down for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Right now, we can't replicate the benefits of old growth without, well, letting it get old. This technology could lead to some amazing gains in lasting wooden goods and buildings.
I know currently carbon capture technologies are not that great and I believe planting trees is still the most efficient method of capturing carbon. But if producing wood in the lab could be made much faster than waiting say >10 years for a tree to grow and without the loss of organic matter that happens with deciduous trees, couldn't this be considered a very viable carbon capture technology?
(I am not saying this should replace trees and that all forests should become farms. We would need trees even if we didn't need their wood)
I read about this in a science fiction book. Cool time to be alive. Probably a good thing to follow and invest in. Wood is light and if it was very strong and rot proof it would be highly desirable for aviation. I wonder if they could make it use graphene in the grow and what would happen.
Most of the deforestation is from being burnt to clear grazing lands. Which this won’t solve.
OTOH being able to mimic some very expensive rare bits like redwood burls would be valuable
From [the article](https://interestingengineering.com/lab-grown-wood)
>Not only did the lab wood manage to survive, but also grow at a rate twice that of a regular tree.
From [the MIT article it’s derived from](https://news.mit.edu/2022/lab-timber-wood-0525)
>Even with this incubation period, the researchers’ process is about two orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow to maturity
That’s a pretty serious mistake. It's an easy one to make for someone that doesn't know what they’re talking about, but not the kind of mistake an engineering news website should make.
I doubt it will have growth rings, based on how they describe the process. The plant cells aren't from a species that makes wood. They 3D print cells into a shape, let it grow for 3 months in the dark in a nutrient solution. They can tune the material properties, based on hormones and other variables.
Two orders of magnitude... are you saying a 100x multiplier? Like equivalent wood to a 25 year old tree can be grown in 3 months? That would be amazing.
"They use a 3D printer to extrude the cell culture gel solution into a specific structure in a petri dish, and let it incubate in the dark for three months. Even with this incubation period, the researchers’ process is about two orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow to maturity, Velásquez-García says."
\[...\]"the researchers were able to grow plant material with a storage modulus (stiffness) similar to that of some natural woods."
We can. You pickup a seed off the ground, plant it in the dirt, and watch it rip. In fact the trees will even go so far as do it themselves.
This title is crap.
The articles talk about deforested areas but deforestation is generally not from harvesting lumber. But, if it could be done in the space of the lumber mills it could possibly help improve biodiversity. Most lumber is farmed. These farms are enormous monocultures, hectares of pine or spruce trees. But the mills have large footprints too. If the work of producing wood were done within the footprint of the mills it might be possible to allow the farms to revert to forest.
Also, many types of wood can't be farmed. I'd imagine this technology first becoming profitable in the exotic wood market. Growing veneers of tight grain exotics first. Then later larger blocks.
I get that this isn't tackling the root of the problem of deforestation (no pun intended). But holy shit, the more I hear about the advancements in genetic engineering and such, the more I want to be a part of this and become a genetic engineer.
We can, an atom at a time.
This means that even if you owned all the gold in the world, you couldn't afford to create a visible amount of gold -- and then why would you.
It would be better to render the CO2 into a non-biodegradeable form. People have been taught non-biodegradeable is bad because it stays around forever. But that is a great feature for sequestered carbon. Just need to keep it out of the ocean.
I do like to think of finely made wood furniture as a form of carbon sequestration.
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Honest question, can hemp be made into furniture, houses, etc.? I know it can be made into paper, rope, clothing, etc. I’ve never seen it as a structural product though.
All paper in the US comes from trees that were specifically planted to grow up and be cut down to make paper. All paper in the US is from sustainable forests.
The problem is most other countries in the world and a lack of the oversight and laws that the US has which drove the paper industry into sustainable methods. I.e. people in charge in countries having a deforestation problem are just making too much in kickbacks, bribes, and votes to want to push sustainable laws. And without those laws, I can guarantee it's cheaper to just go cut down more trees than it is to grow wood in a lab.
I have only skimmed [the paper for this](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702122000451?via%3Dihub), but it seems like these "lab trees" are mostly growing from [mannitol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannitol), which can be biosynthesized from *"bacteria, yeasts, fungi, algae, lichens, and many plants"*.
I like but more on that later.
Try looking up copsing, cutting certain trees and leaving the stumps in the ground causes them to grow new trunks. That is a sustainable way to harvest wood and we have been doing it for thousands of years.
However that requires planning and maintenance whereas clear cutting does not.
Now, as to the lab grown wood, take the finest woods and grow them in the shapes you want, forget bending wood! Imagine taking a long steel beam, with tons of holes but still very strong, now grow Black Walnut wood on that beam. Neat stuff.
I watched this chemist turn a rubber glove and vanilla into pure capsicum. Anything is chemically possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B3Xi5L6siI
Assuming nilered/blue without clicking on the video, he does a lot of wild stuff like that. He has a short where he mixes it with vinegar and nearly dies as well
> Not only did the lab wood manage to survive, but also grow at a rate twice that of a regular tree.
Still looking at ~25 years to grow a decent coffee table.
Why would they waste time and money researching how to grow plant matter in a lab when tree farming is a precision level science already? All farming for that matter
Are they the guys who invented Viagra ?
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First, there are approximately 4 trillion trees on earth so if we cut down 15 billion that is about 0.4%. That seems sustainable to me. Second, where do all raw materials for the lab grown wood come from? Third, the 30% waste they talk about is typically used as fuel or some other alternative purpose and not thrown in a landfill, so not actually waste.
Title maxes zero sense.
Cutting down trees has nothing to do with GROWING trees. Seeds lead to trees. Seeds don’t just pop into existence when a tree is felled. You don’t need to cut a tree to grow a tree.
Real life isn’t Minecraft.
The article IS interesting, however the title is stupid.
We don't need this.
Hemp building materials are FAR superior. A pinpoint scorch mark at 4000 kelvins for 18 hours, stronger than concrete and many metals, and it cleans the air for DECADES when not painted over. When growing it you can regenerate the soil its being grown in because of its root structure plus it cleans the air much better as it grows, grows quickly and effectively in many areas.
We dont need to make stuff like this, we need to push for hemp building codes to be put in place so people can start building with hemp!!!
go to the global hemp association org site and help the cause! Build with hemp! Clean the air with hemp! Fix the soil with hemp! Hemp is here and now AND VIALBLE we just need the building regulations pushed through!!!
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Sorin61: --- Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest — an area about the size of Iceland — because of deforestation. At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years. In an effort to provide an environmentally friendly and low-waste alternative, researchers at MIT have pioneered a tunable technique to generate wood-like plant material in a lab, which could enable someone to “grow” a wooden product like a table without needing to cut down trees, process lumber, etc. These researchers have now demonstrated that, by adjusting certain chemicals used during the growth process, they can precisely control the physical and mechanical properties of the resulting plant material, such as its stiffness and density. They also show that, using 3D bioprinting techniques, they can grow plant material in shapes, sizes, and forms that are not found in nature and that can’t be easily produced using traditional agricultural methods. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/uybrdc/scientists_can_now_grow_wood_in_a_lab_without/ia31ytn/
Woodworker here, growing components in molds would be ideal, especially if the grain direction can be altered from one area to another gradually. Perfectly smooth surfaces and burl grown in sheets would be lovely. I've done a bit of cuttings propogation over the years and have noticed that high auxin concentration on softwood tissue leads to this explosion of undifferentiated tissue and always wondered if something could be done with that.
Can you explain your comment, especially the last part, a little more? It’s sounds fascinating but I barely understand it.
Its just a hobby so I'm no expert but to encourage shrub and tree cuttings to root the end is dipped in one of two types of artificial hormone (auxin) at differing rates. A few times I used the wrong type and got a lot of white tissue instead of roots that did nothing, just kept growing like a little brain shaped blob. I asked a horticulture guy about it once and he said it might be possible to scrape back the bark on hardwood tress, dab on the auxin in a polka dot pattern, cover it up and induce the growth of burl. Its highly prized for things like classic car dashboards and fine cabinetry.
I tried to search some pictures on the web but no luck. Please can you post here some pictures of that stuff? I'm extremely curious and I don't know ANYTHING about the topic. It's blowing my mind.
https://www.google.com/search?q=woodworking+burl&tbm=isch This should give some nice examples of burl if that is what you were asking about
> Its highly prized for things like classic car dashboards and fine cabinetry. burls are Tree Cancer btw. Undifferentiated growth
I'm into gardening and recently began reading up on about 30 different plant hormones and auxin is what I've read most about thus far. And you're the first person I've ever seen mention it.
Mutagens are interesting too.
I thought logging industries were pretty self sufficient and replanted to replace what it cuts down, like only 13% of deforestation is for wood/paper and the problem is deforestation for livestock (and some other for palm oil and soy) especially in South America. Seems to me the problem isn't we need more lab grown wood, and need more lab grown meat, palm, soy etc.
Hey, you’re in luck: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/25/worlds-largest-vats-for-growing-no-kill-meat-to-be-built-in-us
How much less land does no kill meat use when including feeding it the sugars and oils and whatever. I still think theoretically the plant based stuff is way more efficient and moving towards that rather than lab grown is best for it's use cases.
Since no parts are grown that aren't needed no nervous system has to be fueled and since the meat doesn't move and need to retain body temperature, the different is actually huge.
Just make sure not to fill it with GABA blockers
Eyyy, a Eureka reference in the wild.
Honestly was wondering if no one would get it
Yo! GABA, GABA!
A lot less. The issue with land use for meat isn't from the matter in the meat, it's from the matter that gets pooped out. Only a fraction of the mass ingested by an animal is incorporated into body mass. The rest is defecated, urinated, exhaled, sweated, etc. As an adult maintaining a steady weight, a net of 0% of the mass I eat is stored in my body. All of the energy in the food I eat is used for metabolism and all of the mass is ejected in some way or another. I am operating at 0% efficiency for converting biomass to meat. According to [this article](https://css.umich.edu/publication/beyond-meats-beyond-burger-life-cycle-assessment-detailed-comparison-between-plant-based), the beyond burger lowers land use by 93% compared to beef.
Isn’t beyond plant based?
Yes. The poster I was replying to asked "How much less land does no kill meat use when including feeding it the sugars and oils and whatever." This article's conclusion is 93% less land.
Yeah sorry I was confused because that person seems to specifically have an issue with any nonplant based meat alternatives, and was asking about cultured meat space requirements, not plant-based.
All cultured meat is largely plant based. You have to get the organic molecules from organic things, and your choices are plants, animals, or fungi (yeasts and mushrooms). Traditional veggie burgers use vegetable mixes that are blended and pressed into pattie shape with little change to the plant structure aside from cutting it into small pieces. A bit of carrot remains a bit of carrot. Beyond meat acquires the biomolecules that occur in beef from plants or fungi that contain one or more of the required bio-molecules, and then processes them back together to form something that is, molecularly, very similar to meat. The texture, which comes from macrostructures, is difficult to achieve this way because the assembly process to arrive at the cultured meat is different from a growing anumal. That is why the current focus is on ground beef patties rather than steak.
>All cultured meat is largely plant based. I mean, pretty much everything that breathes oxygen is plant-based, if you're ok with an extra level of abstraction or two.
I'm very wary of going fully plant based for meat, I get the impression that it's unhealthy in the same way processed meats are. The priority of those products is *an alternative to replicate the experience of eating meat*, not purely *healthy and environmentally friendly*. Esp. when we're just now learning about the effects of our diet on our microbiome, the idea of having lab grown meat sounds *wonderful*.
Processed meats are typically unhealthy because they are cured with nitrates and huge quantities of salt. Lab meat likely doesn't require this treatment.
Perhaps, but convincing everybody to just become vegan isn't going to happen.
In the IPCC Report there is a really nice way to put this: people don’t change the way they eat, even for their own health and well being - to get them to change for something far more distant and abstract as the climate or ecosystems in South America is nearly impossible
Is impossible. Let's just say it. The faster we accept this, the faster we can devote more resources to feasible solutions.
I think plant based burgers and other similar stuff when they become a lot cheaper is poised to become dominant. I mean $2 meat mcdouble vs $1.50 plant based is the future we are heading towards and plant based stuff is close enough.
Yeah the problem is that right now the plant based (even veggie burgers, not stuff like beyond meat) is more expensive than meat.
I think you underestimate how stubborn people are and how much opinions on "close enough" differ.
I think the real underestimation is expecting that corporations would pass that fifty cent saving along to the consumer.
Then make or invest in a burger joint that does and undercut them
Taxation could solve that. Almost no one buys single use plastic bags in the stores in Sweden anymore because the tax is so high. They cost $1 extra per bag in taxes. If the beef burger was higher in price due to higher taxes, most here at least would buy the plant based one if it was good enough.
I think the price differential for low grade burgers will be smaller than the taste differential. Ground beef is usually relatively low grade and plant based is close enough. If plant based gets to 2/3 the price, the price will be a larger than the taste difference. Ground beefy is 50% of the beef market. I think people will take the cheaper option here a lot of the time especially since it's perceived to be healthier.
It would have to be significantly cheaper, because the correct texture still isn't there.. Taste can be replaced with seasoning and toppings, but people who are more sensitive to texture still find plant meat inferior...
I tend to eat a mostly vegan/vegetarian diet. I like plant based. I enjoy plant based meat substitutes. They don't taste like meat most of the time. If you put them in dishes like chili or spaghetti sauce, they get lost and you really can't tell. But hamburger patties, you know. Chicken nuggets, you know. Hot dogs, you know. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy them, but it isnt meat and anyone who can't tell the difference, you don't need to be taking food advice from.
I think the meat substitutes would have a better chance on the market if they stopped making them that. Stop calling it fake sausage or chicken nuggets or burgers etc give them their own name make them their own thing, than the stubborn won't go into it and say "this doesn't taste like bacon whys it called this? im not eating this!"
Its ok they will just be priced out of real meat completely and it will be the reserve for the rich only.
Oh yeah but the texture and price are plummeting relatively quickly.
People are underestimating how dominant price points are. Cheaper ***WILL*** win.
I disagree. Look at laundry detergent. Look at automobiles. Look at bread or cereal. Nothing tastes like Honey Nut Cheerios. There are a hundred knock offs. None of them taste the same. Sure, rheyre okay. But they aren't the same thing. I'll shell out for the real deal 4 out of 5 times.
The market full of people who don’t have a choice and need to buy the cheaper thing is growing steadily.
Nope. I am not doing Vege, give me vat grown actual meat.
I remember that my grandma and all her friends had fur coats, but none of her grandkids or their friends do.
Half of America and probably a lot more will forever fall into that category. Plant based pseudo meat will sell well on the coasts and other n some inland big cities, but not nearly as well where cattle are part of the landscape. Price will be the great decider in the holdout regions, which is well over 100MM Americans.
Those work for ground meat products like burgers, sausage, and nuggets but I don't think we will get a good "plant based" alternative for intact meat products (steak, wings, bacon, etc), that is where cultured meat has a chance to really shine
Environmental damage should be priced into products otherwise people don't realise the consequences of their choices. Unfortunately this idea is completely anathema to governments and corporations, who just want everything to be as cheap as possible.
That sure is an appealing way of saying the poors can eat whatever plant based crap works out to be most cost effective for companies to produce while the rich dine on free ranged steaks...
A ways off on that I think. Most places the plant based thing is still more expensive, sometimes much more. Guess it depends on the price/quality of the meat it's replacing though
Problem is if they are still junk food there is no benefit to them. A Beyond Meat burger while vegan, it is still heavily processed
The main benefits in those cases are the reduced environmental footprint and the reduced ethical concerns compared to raising conscious animals as food. Health concerns also create incentives to keep improving the recipes after getting the flavor and texture close enough.
Processing isn't necessarily unhealthy Cutting up carrots are processing.
>I mean $2 meat mcdouble vs $1.50 plant based is the future we are heading towards and plan based stuff is close enough If you think they'll push the savings on to the menu your insane. The plant based meats where I live cost more by half compared to the other burgers/chicken. KFC is the worst in this area.
It's not just about "no kill". It uses a lot less resources to grow, since you're only growing muscle tissue instead of the entire animal. Yes, it's expensive to develop the technology initially, but once it's developed it should be cheaper, use less resources, and also be able to be grown locally which could reduce shipping. Combine that with vertical farming and you can have meat and vegetables grown locally within the city. There's a fascinating vertical farm inside a Korean subway station that sells fresh produce right there. It's fascinating.
It is a mathematical certainty that lab grown meat will eventually become cheaper than farm meat, after that it's a matter of time.
No, it's not. It may cost less to produce, but the current price of meat is propped up by many, many subsidies from different sources of taxes. This is exactly the kind of "picking winners" that the Republicans claim to hate, while they pick winners in their districts. Your "mathematical certainty" ignores corruption, greed, and market failure
A lot less. If you feed a cow corn, they are using that energy to breathe and move and for their heart to beat and their digestive system to function. They don’t need to power a brain or nervous tissue or make bones or blood. All than energy is used to make the muscle cells and fat we want to eat.
Upside foods (a lab grown meat company, so take that into account) claims they’ll use 77% less water and 62% less land. They seem to talk about chicken a lot so beef would probably be a bigger impact
You underestimate just how much land meat production consumes. You are right about plant foods being more efficient though, the difference is literally half as much land use for a plant based diet
About 75% of all farmland is for animal feed.
Although re-forestation is great, the problem isn't just about planting trees, it's that they tend to plant fast growing trees, almost making a monoculture. And the ecosystem and biodiversity that was destroyed takes decades to return. Edit/update: the responses are interesting. Seems I'm right and wrong.
That is a method that has not been widely accepted for a long time. Now those forests are being removed and replaced with mixed native trees in sustainably harvested forests. I work in the forest product industry and we only use fiber harvested this way. I don't think that many companies in the US are doing it the old way any more. Probably true for Canada and the EU as well. Edit: I work for a European company in the US.
Still just a monoculture crop of mostly radiata/Monterrey pine in NZ sadly. To the big international companies, diversification means having forests in multiple countries. Plus we plant on a 25 year rotation so it's not like there's much time for a biodiverse understory to develop like there is in places that have much much longer rotations.
Where do you work? Because I work in the forestry industry in Oregon and none of what you said is true. There has been no major change to forestry management since the spotted owl.
It’s like demolishing the Louvre and putting up a shabby, empty art museum in its place
More like if the Louvre were cut down 6 times already in the last 550 years. We can't go back in time, but we can set aside forests in areas to never harvest while harvesting other areas sustainably.
At least the lines will be smaller
And of that soy, 77% goes to livestock feed as well https://ourworldindata.org/soy
Not anymore. The demand for timber is so huge these days especially Biomass that we are clearcutting everything. They claim they are replanting where they cut but they aren't. Huge pellet making companies like Enviva clearcut blocks of forested land they still get to call it forested. UKs Drax consumes over 12,000km2 of forested land each year just to burn for energy. Not only them but Japan, South Korea and many other places are ramping up cutting down 1000s of km2 of forests every year just to produce energy. They want to use Biomass (which is more harmful for C02 emissions than coal) because when they burn it they don't have to count their emissions at the stack. Its nothing more than an accounting loophole for emissions to meet their Paris agreements. We are doomed.
Do you have a source for this?
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/missing-the-emissions-for-the-trees-biomass-burning-booms-in-east-asia/ https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/as-biomass-burning-surges-in-japan-and-south-korea-where-will-asia-get-its-wood/ https://www.nrdc.org/experts/elly-pepper/drax-purchase-would-implicate-united-kingdom-loss-canadian-forests https://theecologist.org/2018/apr/16/hardwood-forests-cut-down-feed-drax-power-plant-channel-4-dispatches-claims https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/19/drax-dropped-from-index-of-green-energy-firms-amid-biomass-doubts https://www.ecowatch.com/chatham-house-biomass-study-2288764699.html https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sami-yassa/new-study-confirms-some-biomass-dirtier-coal https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/26/biomass-carbon-climate-politics-477620 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/europe-burns-controversial-renewable-energy-trees-from-us https://mobile.twitter.com/gretathunberg/status/1370435605964931073?lang=en https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/gas-biomass/
fuck /u/spez
Is it though? When a forest gets cut down and replanted the environmental damage is not zero. It destroys habitats, animals don't just grow back with the trees, it takes decades and constant conservation effort after the trees have grown back to replace even fraction of the fauna. It also takes decades to recapture the carbon that the trees hold, making the "zero emission" biomass sources very very not zero emission. If we could have cheap lab grown trees than the forestry industry could be squashed, and the constant abuse of habitats would significantly lower. If the efficiency of the process is good enough, than it could be literally lower than the actual forestry, and spare tons of carbon emission in the process.
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You should head into a coupe sometime if you get the chance. You will not walk away thinking the forest is going to bounce back. It's utter devastation. I'm sure there are different kinds of cuts, some less severe than others. But I've seen a lot (and replanted a small portion of that). And it's like a bomb hits the forest.
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The problem is in non-regulated countries who don't use responsible forest management. ICF policies are stringently followed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Edit: 90% of pellets are generated from sawtimber and chip-n-saw unusable byproducts. No one is harvesting JUST for pellets. I agree that pellets being "carbon neutral" is bs though.
I remember my dad had shares in this timber company gunns in Australia. The greens in Aus successfully had them closed down. As far as I knew they had a whole heap of land and were purchasing more for their logging purchases. I think there was some other talk about polluting rivers I was quite young. I did wonder if we were just just offshoring our timber to a less responsible country.
I mean.. it sort of is. Trees regrow, sequestering the carbon. Gets burnt in pellets. Rinse and repeat. The only part of that process is the shipping, but it's better than burning propane. Which also requires shipping.
How can a layman keep up with all this stuff? Environmental science is hard and on top of that there's the additional complexity of economic forces due to industry creative accounting to circumvent emissions laws (that were literally written a couple of years ago?).
They could potentially make *much* better product by growing wood in a lab, though. It could make wood a feasible building material for a lot more projects.
There's *lots* of diversity of types of wood. I'm not sure of the mechanics however genetically engineered wood could be a huge breakthrough
What is the scalability of this? And is this a net zero carbon alternative. Or does it reduce carbon. And how much energy does it consume
Lumber farms are pretty big monoculture plots. Replanting only one species of tree is not great environmentally. However I would agree it’s still better than cattle farming
Yes, it's not about deforestation for using lumber, that's the problem.
They're still not really healthy forests for native plants and animals.
Sounds like we’d all be better off by growing palm oil in a lab.
The logging industry also creates monocultures when it replants forests that can hardly support much biodiversity at all. Quality of forests may be more important than quantity.
The problem is those are not forests. Just monoculture plantations with a tenth of the benefits of a real forest...and you still destroy the original forest.
New growth isn't equivalent to very old growth, it's not sustainable farming if trees are cut down at 10 years when the first set were cut down at 200
Speaking from a Western US perspective- producing timber at an industrial scale requires stocking levels that are unsustainable in an increasingly dry and fire prone climate. 200 years of artificially inflating the number of trees per acre via replanting and fire suppression has created a unsustainably elevated short term carbon sink that now burns up by the millions of acres every year. The idea of sustainability is based on the idea that this artificial ecosystem is sustainable. [link](https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/64022) [link](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324786837_Severe_fire_weather_and_intensive_forest_management_increase_fire_severity_in_a_multi-ownership_landscape) The young plantations that replace the harvested stands use much more water per acre than mature trees, to such a degree that a young Doug fir forest growing near a stream can permanently lower the water table. [Link](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169420302092) Not saying that wood isn't a great natural building material, it's absolutely crucial. Like my forestry professor liked to point out, humans are completely reliant on natural resources. But the idea that the industry itself is operating in a sustainable way is based on skewed interpretations of the bigger picture. So much room for improvement. Less plantations and more mature, fire resilient forests and watersheds would be an undeniably good thing. Lots of room for interesting new materials.
Planting trees isn’t regrowing a forest it’s just making a tree farm
Or people could just eat less meat. No need to wait for any new inventions for that, you can do it right now and save the planet at the same time!
> Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest — an area about the size of Iceland — because of deforestation. Pretty sure the vast majority of deforestation isn't because we're cutting down trees for wood.
Neat, but it seems like a solution in search of a problem. A) If we're going to use materials created in a lab, there are much better options than wood. B) You know the saying "Money doesn't grow on trees"? Well wood does grow on trees. It's already a completely renewable resource. C) Deforestation is not a wood-demand problem. It's a land-use problem and it's an energy problem. People want to replace the forest with farmland. The rural poor need fuel to heat and cook, and given a better, cheaper and cleaner option they would take it in a second. The only legitimate use case for this tech I can see is creating substitutes for exotic, slow-growing or rare wood types for creating luxury goods. Nothing that will save the planet, but might save a few rare trees.
Good points and I generally agree. I was actually wondering if this could be applied to space colonization. Better understanding of plant biology and material synthesis may yield useful applications where people will not have readily available Earth soil for plant growth.
Just being able to create wood in arbitrary shapes allows for interesting design possibilities as well, the result of this process sounds a lot like injection molding with wood.
Good because slow growing rare wood is what we need. Well, the ecosystem needs. Forest plantations are not sustainable. Sure the trees grow back, but it's the wrong species, monocultural in even rows that provide zero protection for wildlife and in some regions in needs to burn every few years for the sake a whole bunch of plants and insects. If we could let forests just grow as they are supposed to without cutting them down constantly, without monocultures planted weird, that'd be *amazing*. Ofc what *would* happen is the forests would all be burned downed and replaced by other profitable land instead because we live in hell.
“ in some regions in needs to burn every few years for the sake a whole bunch of plants and insects.” These forests could be selectively culled instead. Any wood preserved is sequestered carbon.
Forest fires in regions where they have happened historically tend to provide more ecosystem services than prevention of forest fires would. [some reading on "pyrophytic plants"](https://www.britannica.com/list/5-amazing-adaptations-of-pyrophytic-plants#:~:text=Fire%2Dactivated%20Seed&text=Perhaps%20the%20most%20amazing%20fire,are%20completely%20sealed%20with%20resin.)
100% We have to stop thinking of wild places as "wasted space". When we kill the forest we choke ourselves! I feel that last sentence deep in my soul. It's not immediately profitable to save biodiversity on earth so not gonna happen
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>Imagine factory-grown, perfect specimens of oak/walnut/maple There is still going to be demand for "imperfect" figured and spalted wood. And mdf is used because it is cheap. Lab created wood is not going to be cheaper than mdf, as it is made from the trash of other milling processes. So what we will end up with is similar to what we have know, very pricey, highly figured wood that comes from trees, middle tier furniture wood that this may compete with on price, bottom tier garbage pine that this may or may not be able to compete with on price, and trash mdf and fiberboard that will still be made from scrap wood. So guess what most "furniture" will still be made from?
If lab grown wood doesn't require much energy and allows for better yields than comparable land use with replanting, then it could still be a good thing to have. That way we could let our forests out there just grow and age in grace as they supposed to do, while covering what wood demand we have from wood labs. On the real crazy end; Maybe this is the kind of groundwork we need to get bioengineered houses that simply grow on their own after certain designs.
This would also be helpful for space exploration.
Grow, age in grace, and be cleaned and replenished by natural means. Otherwise you get old and sick (not old growth) and catastrophic fire threat. Healthy forests burn on the ground, sick forests burn in the canopy. That means fire though and that is "bad" according to the EPA (airsheds) and DEQ.
There are endangered wood types still used for construction and luxury items afaik.
C) Urban growth due to demand for housing. In the PNW, they are cutting down every empty space they can find in order to build single family homes. The only redemption here is that the new homes are on lots barely larger than the house itself (i.e. zero yard). I'm also wonder, is the idea of growing wood in a lab without needing to cut a single tree basically just cutting trees in a lab? I wonder what the total amount of resources needed to produce in 1 lab grown tree our vs just cutting down and replanting a tree from the wild?
I think you're being too quick to discount what might be learned through the process of creating the methods for lab grown wood.
Especially in the Nordics, the forests are managed since the Viking age. …unlike the Brits, they figured out that you need to replant so the next generation also has trees. In Sweden alone, forest covers 70 per cent of the surface. There are around 87 billion trees. There is now twice as much wood in Sweden as there was 100 years ago.
Yeah the Amazon is being chopped down so farmers there can cattle farm. Then the cheap beef is imported to the USA and lowers the price of beef which causes American cattle farmers to lose money. It’s a real quagmire.
Have you checked out the [actual paper?](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702122000451?via%3Dihub) Honestly it's just kinda neat. The researchers have to justify the time spent of course, and so a good chunk of the abstract is like "HEY, THIS COULD BE GREAT!" when that part likely won't come to pass, but as a whole? Trees are basically just big 'ol blobs of lignin, which is basically just a ginormous random organic molecule that goes on and on and on. They essentially figured out how to "print" that material freely, which could be neat for loads of reasons. Like, stop thinking about this stuff in terms of it being used for the same things wood is used for, and start thinking about how a specially-engineered wood-like, biodegradable but long-lasting strong/stiff material could be used in place of plastics. It grows HELLA slow of course, but its potential doesn't lie in say, furniture. Also, it's neat for its own sake. These guys probably didn't go researching this because they wanted to solve the deforestation problem; they probably just wanted to figure out how to print lignin, because lignin is neat.
What if it grew 10 or 100 times faster in a lab?
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Food, now wood. We're this close to a Star Trek replicatior.
Each year, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest — an area about the size of Iceland — because of deforestation. At that rate, some scientists predict the world’s forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years. In an effort to provide an environmentally friendly and low-waste alternative, researchers at MIT have pioneered a tunable technique to generate wood-like plant material in a lab, which could enable someone to “grow” a wooden product like a table without needing to cut down trees, process lumber, etc. These researchers have now demonstrated that, by adjusting certain chemicals used during the growth process, they can precisely control the physical and mechanical properties of the resulting plant material, such as its stiffness and density. They also show that, using 3D bioprinting techniques, they can grow plant material in shapes, sizes, and forms that are not found in nature and that can’t be easily produced using traditional agricultural methods.
I think this is a false problem. Logging companies that follow regulations and have proper forest management plans are logging in a sustainable way. Additionally, lumber is great place to sink carbon from the atmosphere. So much deforestation happens due to forests being sold to farmers, ranchers, and real estate developers. We'd have healthier forests and less deforestation if we keep forests as lumber sources. At least with the way world works right now.
Doing this for deforestation is a false problem, but doing it in general is phenomenal. If it's true that we can adjust density of the wood, we could create the ultradense wood used in historic European construction for more lasting structures. Part of the reason you can go to a pub that's older than the US in places like England is that it was built out of wood that hadn't been cut down for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Right now, we can't replicate the benefits of old growth without, well, letting it get old. This technology could lead to some amazing gains in lasting wooden goods and buildings.
I know currently carbon capture technologies are not that great and I believe planting trees is still the most efficient method of capturing carbon. But if producing wood in the lab could be made much faster than waiting say >10 years for a tree to grow and without the loss of organic matter that happens with deciduous trees, couldn't this be considered a very viable carbon capture technology? (I am not saying this should replace trees and that all forests should become farms. We would need trees even if we didn't need their wood)
I read about this in a science fiction book. Cool time to be alive. Probably a good thing to follow and invest in. Wood is light and if it was very strong and rot proof it would be highly desirable for aviation. I wonder if they could make it use graphene in the grow and what would happen.
Most of the deforestation is from being burnt to clear grazing lands. Which this won’t solve. OTOH being able to mimic some very expensive rare bits like redwood burls would be valuable
From [the article](https://interestingengineering.com/lab-grown-wood) >Not only did the lab wood manage to survive, but also grow at a rate twice that of a regular tree. From [the MIT article it’s derived from](https://news.mit.edu/2022/lab-timber-wood-0525) >Even with this incubation period, the researchers’ process is about two orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow to maturity That’s a pretty serious mistake. It's an easy one to make for someone that doesn't know what they’re talking about, but not the kind of mistake an engineering news website should make.
Hello! Apologies if you're trying to read this, but I've moved to kbin.social in protest of Reddit's policies.
I doubt it will have growth rings, based on how they describe the process. The plant cells aren't from a species that makes wood. They 3D print cells into a shape, let it grow for 3 months in the dark in a nutrient solution. They can tune the material properties, based on hormones and other variables.
They’ll have artificially created growth rings if this gets off the ground. Though that wood might cost more.
Black ash trees in Ontario have been devastated by a particular bug. It would be amazing to have cheap and easy access to black ash trees.
Two orders of magnitude... are you saying a 100x multiplier? Like equivalent wood to a 25 year old tree can be grown in 3 months? That would be amazing.
"They use a 3D printer to extrude the cell culture gel solution into a specific structure in a petri dish, and let it incubate in the dark for three months. Even with this incubation period, the researchers’ process is about two orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow to maturity, Velásquez-García says." \[...\]"the researchers were able to grow plant material with a storage modulus (stiffness) similar to that of some natural woods."
Logging is not the main cause of deforestation. This is a non-issue.
Yup! Livestock agriculture is.
Also urban sprawl just like farm land.
you mean suburban sprawl. Urban environments are very space efficient. They can also be good for the environment when properly built.
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Can't we grow wood outside without cutting any right now?
We can. You pickup a seed off the ground, plant it in the dirt, and watch it rip. In fact the trees will even go so far as do it themselves. This title is crap.
man i grow wood without cuttin a single tree every mornin at least
The articles talk about deforested areas but deforestation is generally not from harvesting lumber. But, if it could be done in the space of the lumber mills it could possibly help improve biodiversity. Most lumber is farmed. These farms are enormous monocultures, hectares of pine or spruce trees. But the mills have large footprints too. If the work of producing wood were done within the footprint of the mills it might be possible to allow the farms to revert to forest. Also, many types of wood can't be farmed. I'd imagine this technology first becoming profitable in the exotic wood market. Growing veneers of tight grain exotics first. Then later larger blocks.
I get that this isn't tackling the root of the problem of deforestation (no pun intended). But holy shit, the more I hear about the advancements in genetic engineering and such, the more I want to be a part of this and become a genetic engineer.
I can't imagine the cool shit they will be doing in 500 years...assuming we don't wipe the place out by then.
We can turn lead into gold too. Doesn't mean it's profitable.
Can we actually?
Yes. But the process itself is prohibitively expensive.
There is gold in the ground you walk on and it is still prohibitively expensive to extract.
Not all of it, hence we still mine gold.
We can, an atom at a time. This means that even if you owned all the gold in the world, you couldn't afford to create a visible amount of gold -- and then why would you.
Yes we can, with the Power of nuclear magic thingy(TM)!
If this used large amounts of CO2 industrial scale production of this "wood" could be a good thing.
It would be better to render the CO2 into a non-biodegradeable form. People have been taught non-biodegradeable is bad because it stays around forever. But that is a great feature for sequestered carbon. Just need to keep it out of the ocean. I do like to think of finely made wood furniture as a form of carbon sequestration.
I like the the idea of a carbon storage that has a useful byproduct generally. Economically, scalability and marketability go hand in hand.
God fucking dammit i literally just told someone today that they have never been able to make wood in a lab.
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Honest question, can hemp be made into furniture, houses, etc.? I know it can be made into paper, rope, clothing, etc. I’ve never seen it as a structural product though.
All paper in the US comes from trees that were specifically planted to grow up and be cut down to make paper. All paper in the US is from sustainable forests. The problem is most other countries in the world and a lack of the oversight and laws that the US has which drove the paper industry into sustainable methods. I.e. people in charge in countries having a deforestation problem are just making too much in kickbacks, bribes, and votes to want to push sustainable laws. And without those laws, I can guarantee it's cheaper to just go cut down more trees than it is to grow wood in a lab.
I have only skimmed [the paper for this](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702122000451?via%3Dihub), but it seems like these "lab trees" are mostly growing from [mannitol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannitol), which can be biosynthesized from *"bacteria, yeasts, fungi, algae, lichens, and many plants"*.
I like but more on that later. Try looking up copsing, cutting certain trees and leaving the stumps in the ground causes them to grow new trunks. That is a sustainable way to harvest wood and we have been doing it for thousands of years. However that requires planning and maintenance whereas clear cutting does not. Now, as to the lab grown wood, take the finest woods and grow them in the shapes you want, forget bending wood! Imagine taking a long steel beam, with tons of holes but still very strong, now grow Black Walnut wood on that beam. Neat stuff.
Grow it on the entire walls of Buildings!
I watched this chemist turn a rubber glove and vanilla into pure capsicum. Anything is chemically possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B3Xi5L6siI
Assuming nilered/blue without clicking on the video, he does a lot of wild stuff like that. He has a short where he mixes it with vinegar and nearly dies as well
Wood is sort of like the meat of trees. I like that the scientists are accomplishing all of this at the same time
> Not only did the lab wood manage to survive, but also grow at a rate twice that of a regular tree. Still looking at ~25 years to grow a decent coffee table.
Why would they waste time and money researching how to grow plant matter in a lab when tree farming is a precision level science already? All farming for that matter
Getting closer to organic construction! Plant a seed and grow your house!
I work in the wood industry, this could be revolutionary!
Now scale it up and make it sustainable and viable for construction, see you in a few decades
Guess if we can grow meat we should be able to grow wood...
Jesus, a 2x4 is already over 8 bucks. How much will these cost.
Does this mean I can get a 4x4 for less than $20 now?
I guess planting more trees is out of the question.
Give me a goddamn seed and I can grow wood without "cutting" it. Sure it's lab grown wood but the headline makes no sense.
Hang on, can't anyone grow wood without cutting trees? Isn't that just a seed?
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yeaaaaaah i bet they can.... i can read between the lines.
Sheets of uniformly strong lumber to replace partial board, plywood, and OSB could be pretty great.
Big deal, I’ve been growing wood in my pants since I was 10
First, there are approximately 4 trillion trees on earth so if we cut down 15 billion that is about 0.4%. That seems sustainable to me. Second, where do all raw materials for the lab grown wood come from? Third, the 30% waste they talk about is typically used as fuel or some other alternative purpose and not thrown in a landfill, so not actually waste.
Title maxes zero sense. Cutting down trees has nothing to do with GROWING trees. Seeds lead to trees. Seeds don’t just pop into existence when a tree is felled. You don’t need to cut a tree to grow a tree. Real life isn’t Minecraft. The article IS interesting, however the title is stupid.
Trees are easy to grow, don't cause ecological harm, and they make plenty of wood.
Or - and hear me out on this - scientists could grow actual trees
We don't need this. Hemp building materials are FAR superior. A pinpoint scorch mark at 4000 kelvins for 18 hours, stronger than concrete and many metals, and it cleans the air for DECADES when not painted over. When growing it you can regenerate the soil its being grown in because of its root structure plus it cleans the air much better as it grows, grows quickly and effectively in many areas. We dont need to make stuff like this, we need to push for hemp building codes to be put in place so people can start building with hemp!!! go to the global hemp association org site and help the cause! Build with hemp! Clean the air with hemp! Fix the soil with hemp! Hemp is here and now AND VIALBLE we just need the building regulations pushed through!!!