Editorial: Ecological Consequences of Biodiversity and Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry.

Martin Weih,Andrea Polle

doi:10.3389/fpls.2016.00210

Abstract

Editorial: Ecological Consequences of Biodiversity and Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry.

Highlights

With the increasing recognition of world population feeding and health, global climate change and biodiversity loss, and limited energy resources with fossil fuels calling for alternatives such as biomass crops, the relevance of agriculture, and forestry for human well-being in the future is more than evident
Important issues in using biotechnology in agriculture and forestry are for example to enhance productivity and stress resistance of crops and trees, mainly due to restricted land area and increasing environmental pressures, and to develop carbon dioxide-neutral production systems for sustainable production of fiber/biomass and biofuel with biotechnological methods (Polle et al, 2013; Polle and Chen, 2015)
The moist storage of the grain has environmental and nutritional advantages, and can be facilitated by using appropriate microorganisms with the moist stored grain. An example for this technology is reported by Borling Welin et al who exploited the microbial diversity of yeast with biotechnological methods to improve an animal production system in terms of less use of fossil fuels and enhanced nutritional quality of the feed grain

Summary

Introduction

With the increasing recognition of world population feeding and health, global climate change and biodiversity loss, and limited energy resources with fossil fuels calling for alternatives such as biomass crops, the relevance of agriculture, and forestry for human well-being in the future is more than evident. Due to the complexity of agricultural and tree production systems and the different scales involved in the biological studies with genetically modified organisms on one hand and ecological studies targeting ecosystem processes on the other hand, trans- or inter-disciplinary approaches are often needed.

Results

Conclusion