Maximum Yield USA May 2018 | Page 24

max facts Qatar Development Bank Boosts Home Farming Using Hydroponics The Qatar Development Bank (QDB) will spearhead a major initiative aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in food production, especially vegetables and fruits, among the Middle Eastern country’s general population. The plan calls for the QDB to provide all needful support and training in home-farming to produce vegetables and fruits within the backyards of citizens’ homes and villas using hydroponics. “For achieving self-sufficiency in terms of food production, we now have a new programme to promote home-farming, which is going to be a major initiative towards self-sufficiency. This is in addition to our focus to support local farmers to boost their output,” says Khalid Abdulla Al Mana, executive director for business finance at QDB. —thepeninsulaquatar.com New, Previously Unknown Source of Global Nitrogen Unearthed A new study shows that nitrogen (available to plants) doesn’t just come from the atmosphere, as previously believed in scientific circles. The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) study indicates more than a quarter of that nitrogen comes from Earth’s bedrock. The study, published recently in the journal Science, found that up to 26 per cent of the nitrogen in natural ecosystems is sourced from rocks, with the remaining fraction from the atmosphere. The discovery might improve climate change projections, which rely on understanding the carbon cycle. This new nitrogen source could also feed the carbon cycle on land, allowing ecosystems to pull more emissions from the atmosphere. “Our study shows nitrogen weathering is a globally significant source of nutrition to soils and ecosystems worldwide,” says co-lead author Ben Houlton, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. “We think this nitrogen may allow forests and grasslands to sequester more fossil fuel CO 2 emissions than previously thought.” —phys.org Norwegian Doomsday Seed Vault Gets Massive Upgrade Ten years after building a concrete vault to safeguard 900,000 of the world’s seed samples, the Norwegian government is doling out $12.7 million to upgrade the facility. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built to safeguard the world’s food supply in case of war, climate change, or natural disaster. The vault is basically a thumb drive for the world’s crops. It provides a potential backup for countries whose crop supplies are down and gives them a way to rebuild what’s been lost or destroyed. The money from the Norwegian government will go towards building a concrete access tunnel as well as a service building to house emergency power and refrigeration units. Other electrical equipment will also be installed. Recent indications show even this well-built vault may not be immune to the ebbs and flows of the world’s climate, as it was built a decade ago. In October 2016, the area surrounding the seed vault was subject to temperatures so unseasonably high that the permafrost a