Renewable Energy from Wildflowers—Perennial Wild Plant Mixtures as a Social‐Ecologically Sustainable Biomass Supply System

Abstract

Against this backdrop, industrial crop cultivation, is far more promising. [20] There exists a wide range of industrial crops, many of which with well documented and researched cultivation techniques and utilization pathways (Table 1). [19,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Second, the potential cultivation area for industrial crops reaches from the tropics to the northern Atlantic and continental zones. [19,[30][31][32][33][34] Furthermore, industrial crop cultivation can mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through bio sequestration [35] and through bioenergy to carbon capture and storage (BECCS) strategies. [1] This is because the below-ground fraction of the crop (the root system) remains in the soil and contributes to humus accumulation. [1,24,[36][37][38][39] In the long-term, humus accumulation even promises to rehabilitate degraded land and make it suitable for food crop cultivation again. [38,[40][41][42][43] For both algae cultivation and the use of residues from agriculture and wood industry, neither BECCS nor the recovery of degraded land is practicable. Consequently, biomass supply from industrial crops seems a more reasonable solution from a broader perspective-but how can industrial crop cultivation be expanded without compromising environmental and social needs?From an ethical perspective, industrial crop cultivation should generally not compete with other land uses such as food crop cultivation and natural successions, so that neither food security nor biodiversity conservation are threatened. [147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154] Both food security and biodiversity conservation are high on the agenda of the United Nations' sustainability development goals. [155,156] These can be realized through both land saving and land sharing approaches. [151,152] The utilization of favorable agricultural land for industrial crop cultivation should be restricted to social-ecologically sustainable land sharing concepts, e.g., wide crop rotations including both food crops and industrial crops. [23,[157][158][159][160][161][162] The land saving concept, i.e., cultivating industrial crops on unfavorable agricultural land-so-called "marginal agricultural land" [163] -thus saving the favorable agricultural land for food crop cultivation, is limited by biophysical constraints such as adverse rooting conditions and climatic conditions or economic challenges such as inconvenient field shapes and long field-farm distances. [19,25,88,89,[164][165][166][167] Additionally, the intensive (industrial) cultivation of common cash crops such as sugar cane, oil palm, rape seed, and maize often requires high off-farm inputs such as nitrogen (N) fertilizer herbicides, or insecticides. [1,153,[168][169][170] Intense usage of these A growing bioeconomy requires increasing amounts of biomass from residues, wastes, and industrial crops for bio-based products and bioenergy. There is much discussion about how industrial crop cultivation could promote socialecological outcomes such as environmental protection, biodiversity conservat...

Exploring the Potential of Perennial Nectar‐Producing Wild Plants for Pellet Combustion

“…[28] WPM consist of native, flowering and mostly wild plant species (WPS) with annual, biennial and perennial life cycles, which can be cultivated in polyculture cropping systems (Figure 1), aiming at both providing biomass for bioenergy purposes and supporting biodiversity conservation. [29] These WPS provide numerous ecosystem services that could support the overall agroecosystem resilience. Indeed, WPS are seen to improve landscape aesthetics, provide habitat for wildlife and support pollinator, accumulate carbon in the soil, mitigate soil erosion and improve soil fertility.…”

“…Indeed, WPS are seen to improve landscape aesthetics, provide habitat for wildlife and support pollinator, accumulate carbon in the soil, mitigate soil erosion and improve soil fertility. [23,25,[29][30][31][32] Although there are important social-ecological advantages of including the cultivation of WPS in agroecosystems, there are also concerns about their productivity in terms of providing sufficient biomass. [23,33,34] Von compared the substrate-specific methane yield and lignocellulosic composition of three perennial WPS that dominate the biomass yield performance in WPM cultivation.…”

“…[67][68][69][70] WPM cultivation has been explored as an additional renewable resource comprising many ecolog-ical benefits, [23,30,31,33,46] combining alternative or complementary biogas production with the provision of habitat for wildlife and other ecosystem services. [31,71,72] Concomitantly, WPM plantations resulted in more resilient agroecosystems through the diversification of crops [29] (Figure 2). A life cycle assessment of the perennial bioenergy crop Virginia mallow, also known as Sida hermaphrodita L. var.…”

“…[35] Four of the most prevalent WPS for biogas production in Germany are common tansy, mugwort, wild teasel, and yellow melilot (Figure 4). [29] Many wild bee species feed on these WPS. For instance, common tansy offers pollen and nectar to 21 wild bee species such as Colletes similis, Heriades truncorum, and Andrena flavipes.…”

Enhancing productivity of perennial aromatic grasses on marginal lands through plant growth promoting rhizobacteria

“…Although, the potential of perennial aromatic grasses for phytoremediation of differently degraded or polluted soils, waterbodies, and industrial areas has been well investigated (Gupta et al, 2013; Maiti & Kumar, 2016; Pandey et al, 2020). However, in order to achieve the goal of a complete biobased economy (aromatic plants significantly contribute in biopharma) the approach of growing diverse groups of perennial aromatic grasses on marginal lands is proved to be more sustainable (Allan et al, 2011; Von Cossel, 2020). But the sustainability of cultivation of perennial aromatic grasses on marginal lands may jeopardize if the use of chemical fertilizers is practiced in the lure of economic benefits (Awasthi et al, 2017).…”