Biotechnology
Biotechnology
Settlement Group of Torymus sinensis
Biostimulants and Resistance Inductors
The OECD (The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) report “The Bioeconomy to 2030: designing a policy agenda” gives the bioeconomy the ability to impress a real propulsive drive towards a new “industrial revolution”, that starting from the research on renewable raw material could allow the innovation of consolidated sectors, such as raw material and energy production, guaranteeing environmental, economic, and social sustainability of the world economic system in the long term. OECD estimates that by 2030 the global population is expected to increase by 28%, from 6.5 in 2005 to 8.3 billion in 2030, and average global annual income per capita by 57% from 5.900 $ in 2005 to 8.600 $ in 2030.
A larger and more affluent population will increase world demand of health services that improve quality and length of life and demand of essential natural resources, as food, animal feed, fibers for clouting and housing, clean water, and energy. At the same time, many of the world’s ecosystems that support human societies are already overfished and in a short time they will be not sustainable even because the climate change could exacerbate environmental issues.
Biotechnologies offer technologic solutions for most of the challenges that the world population must face in terms of health and sources.
According to OECD, to maximize the benefits provided by biotechnologies it is necessary to implement policies able to establish appropriate structural conditions, such as promotion of scientific cooperation between States, consistency between policies, and promotion of research and development applications.
In this context, to stimulate competitiveness and transfer of knowledge and innovations from science to industries is essential because the research is the essential condition that permits the continuous development of biotechnologies.
Today, in OECD States biotechnology contributes to GDP with 1% but by 2030 this contribute could increase up to approximatively 2.7% within an appropriate legislative and financial context. This hypothesis considers that by 2030 biotechnology is estimated to contribute to 30% of chemical productions, to 80% of pharmaceutical productions, and to 50% of agriculture.
It is noteworthy that this projection does not consider not existing or not monetizable applications, such as biofuel. (…) The most recent studies by the major international consulting companies, e.g. McKinsey and Frost & Sullivan, are agree in pointing out that an inversion of the trend is taking place in distribution of sectors of greater importance. Today biotechnology is more applied in health areas, but biotechnological applications are increasing also in agriculture and industry.
If economic and environmental benefits of biotechnology are proved, to support an adequate use of biotechnology it is fundamental the creation of regulatory system able to promote research and innovation and of a system based on continuous exchange of knowledge between research organism, industries, institutions, and universities.
According to conclusions of OECD report, to reach an economic system able to encourage socially and environmentally the great challenges the world must face by 2030, Institutions should work in a systematic perspective to guarantee consistency between manifold policies and to encourage this new sustainable industrial revolution.
(Source: Assobiotech, OECD)
Agri-food biotechnology
Agricultural biotechnology is aimed to refine and to make more secure the ancient processes used by farmers over the years. The technologies that operate on genetic heritage of plants can be classified in process and product technologies.
Process biotechnologies work in three application fields:
- Complementary field: to modify plant DNA for making it more tolerant to herbicides;
- Replacement field: modifications are aimed to obtain more resistance to harmful pests, virus, fungi, and bacteria specific for that species;
- Agronomic field: modifications are aimed to reach several results such as to variate the reproductive biology of plants, to control the plant form or its growth rate, to stimulate the production of no seeds fruits, to effect flower color or to make plant more resistant to environmental stress.
The benefits derived from the use of these biotechnologies are:
- Grater productivity of crops (increase in yield up to 15-20 % per hectare);
- Economic savings (less herbicides and pesticides are used, and the number of filed interventions decreases with saving on labor costs up to 40%);
- Products easier to treat with automatic machines (in the case of shape control);
- Possibility to carry out more seeding and more harvests in the same season (in the case of plant that grow up quickly);
- Possibility to cultivate filed considered inappropriate (environmental stress, not fertile and/or semiarid fields, proximity of brackish waters, etc.).
Product biotechnologies work in two applications fields:
- Product quality (to modify ripening of fruits, vegetable oils composition, increase or decrease of the percentage of starch or other polysaccharides);
- Nutritional characteristics of the food (fruit healthiness, decrease of food toxicity and allergenic power, increase of nutritive components, such as vitamins, and other specific characteristics, such as bread-making quality or predisposition to quickly frying and less oil absorption).
The first generation of crop obtained using modern biotechnologies has carried out benefits for the farmers and allowed a lower environmental impact. Tolerance to herbicides is the most spread characteristic of agricultural genetically modified products (72% of all crops), followed by auto-protection from pests (20%) and a combination of above two characteristics (8%).
Research and Development
Research and Development Center Oasis S.r.l. carries out activities on development of both process and product innovation in the agri-food field to meet the needs of environmental sustainable development within European regulatory framework and international commitments aimed to reduce CO2 emissions, to use removable and biocompatible sources, to increase energy efficiency. In the last years Oasis S.r.l. has got experiences in biotechnology field and carried out R&D activities on:
- Feed and zootechnical supplements without antibiotics, antibacterial products and nutraceuticals;
- Biostimulants and resistance inductors to control fungi;
- Microalgal harvest to product biofuel;
- Innovative management of innovative production process and development in agriculture.
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