A new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass -- the total material in leaves, stems, roots, fruits, grains and other terrestrial plant parts -- than previously¹ thought. The study, reported in Environmental Science and Technology, recalculates the theoretical limit of terrestrial plant productivity, and finds that it is much higher than many current estimates allow.

 

"When you try to estimate something over the whole planet, you have to make some simplifying assumptions," said University of Illinois plant biology professor Evan DeLucia, who led the new analysis. "And most previous research assumes that the maximum productivity you could get out of a landscape is what the natural ecosystem² would have produced. But it turns out that in nature very few plants have evolved to maximize their growth rates."

 

DeLucia directs the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the U. of I. He also is an affiliate³（附属） of the Energy Biosciences Institute, which funded the research through the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

 

Estimates derived⁴ from satellite images of vegetation and modeling suggest that about 54 gigatons（十亿吨） of carbon is converted into terrestrial plant biomass each year, the researchers report.

 

"This value has remained stable for the past several decades, leading to the conclusion that it represents a planetary boundary -- an upper limit on global biomass production," the researchers wrote.

 

But these assumptions don't take into consideration human efforts to boost plant productivity through genetic⁵ manipulation, plant breeding and land management, DeLucia said. Such efforts have already yielded some extremely productive plants.

 

For example, in Illinois a hybrid⁶ grass, Miscanthus x giganteus, without fertilizer or irrigation produced 10 to 16 tons of above-ground biomass per acre, more than double the productivity of native prairie vegetation or corn. And genetically⁷ modified no-till corn is more than five times as productive -- in terms of total biomass generated per acre -- as restored prairie（大草原，牧场） in Wisconsin.

 

Some non-native species also outcompete native species; this is what makes many of them invasive, DeLucia said. In Iceland, for example, an introduced species, the nootka lupine, produces four times as much biomass as the native boreal dwarf⁸ birch species it displaces. And in India bamboo plantations⁹ produce about 40 percent more biomass than dry, deciduous¹⁰（落叶性的） tropical forests.

 

Some of these plants would not be desirable additions to native or managed ecosystems¹¹, DeLucia said, but they represent the untapped potential productivity of plants in general.

 

"We're saying this is what's possible," he said.

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