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An agricultural company in England has developed a fascinating new way of growing trees for commercial and landscape use.
The secret, apparently, is in the color of the pots.
Workers prune Bartram's nursery trees in a stretch of North Cambridgeshire on the edge of the Lola and Fens area.
The neck is to keep the trees mechanically strong so they don't become top-heavy and unstable.
As the roots develop, they thicken just like a branch does above ground, and if it starts off in a little reef knot,
at a tiny root stage, by the time the roots are that big, it castrates itself almost and restricts itself so much
that they don't set the anchorage to hold the huge mass of the tree that's on top, past ground level.
Whereas if the trees are being supported by roots that aren't spiralled and aren't conflicting with one another,
they'll get away very quickly and have the anchorage to take it through right away through to its normal life expectancy.
The shortcomings of existing methods of propagation were only too apparent
during the notorious storms of recent years.
Trees very, very prone to spiralling is pine.
You very often see pine trees blow over when they go off the stake.
They've been set as small trees in little shrub pots to a three litre pot,
and they seize up basically with all the roots spiralling that they produce,
and they blow over as soon as their support comes off.
It's a problem that bergim trees decided to try and solve,
and the company began experimenting with different types of pots or containers in which to propagate the trees more reliably.
The unique thing is the white pots that we use, no doubt about it.
It's something we built the business on, and it's something that gives a root system that takes the tree
all the way through to its maturity without any anchorage problems.
The white pot it lets a small amount of light through the side of the container,
so as the root hits the side of the container, it monitors that it's consent to light,
and it's called a phototropic reaction.
The roots go straight down the pot, not spiralling along the way,
and ends up a completely unmingled root system, ready for very quick establishment.
In a black pot they'll do the opposite, they'll go round and round around the sides of the pot
and spiral themselves into all sorts of knots.
The top parts are black to suppress weeds,
while below the container is white to let in light which the roots naturally grow away from.
We do about 430 varieties from sizes between 10 foot and 30 foot,
but I think in layman's terms London plain oak trees, pear trees, jerry trees,
they're the firm favourites of the day and probably always worthy.
Local authorities insist on planting trees to get planting permission,
thereby graining up the burrows and helping offset carbon emissions.
The problem is far bigger than planting trees, but not my specialist, I'm afraid.
A very worthwhile thing to do, but it's deferring the problem rather than curing it completely.
Having said that, again, very unbiased view, I'm sure, but I think it should be done more.
There's so many opportunities and so many bits of ground to plant up very cheaply, really.
The cost of doing these things is virtually nothing in the scheme of things,
that make a huge difference environmentally.
But the secret of commercial tree growing relies not only on the cuddle and size of the paths used to bring them on.
Trees can't just be grown from seed, special techniques are needed.
Crafting trees to create a clone that's very in tune with its particular station where it's going to be planted
has been a horticultural trick for centuries now.
Plant breeding to select the right properties of plant, ones that have a more pyramidal or upright shape
to go closer to buildings or ones that are wider and more shade-giving for parks.
They're all sort of inbuilt properties that growers look for,
and they latch on to a plant that shows those properties and propagate from it.
And over the years, you eventually develop a new clone that is worthwhile.
The idea is to develop trees with particular characteristics that growers want.
Some trees won't grow on their own root system, and uniformity is the other key, I think, that the specifier would be looking for.
If you grow everything from seed, things grow at different rates.
If you grow a 200-ash seed as a stand, if you like, there'd be some two-foot taller than the rest a year down the line.
And of course, what we're trying to produce is a tree that's absolutely uniform, that everyone looks the same.
So if we bud those ash onto a rootstock of ash, we can be guaranteed that the trees grow at the same rate
and have the same properties, if you like, for that particular scheme.
Alternatively, we grow ordinary ash that show all of the unique characteristics that see grown ash produce,
and that'd be far more in keeping with a woodland setting, for example.
So it's horses, for courses, wherever you want a tree, you would select the right clone to match the site.
Once all the problems have been mastered, healthy trees can be mass produced for customers across the UK and further afield.
Some of Barcham's buyers come from Europe as taste change for different landscapes and vegetation across the continent.
Trees are just an intrinsic part of us. People don't look at them, they don't realise that they're there, but without them,
we'd be absolutely lost and the place would look absolutely barren.
They're a huge environmental asset, of course, provide us with oxygen and shade very importantly as the years go on,
we're all coming aware of the need for shade.
And for a crazy point of view, they're incredibly ascetic and attractive to look at.
As another consignment of trees is prepared for shipment, Barcham trees continues to expand.
Last year, it added another 30,000 units to its capacity for 125,000 trees,
with more than 400 varieties to choose from.
Conservationists in Britain have launched a campaign to better protect the country's ancient trees,
which provide a habitat for rare species of fungi and insects.
They're calling for better national and pan-European protection for older trees,
which can live for over a thousand years.
We now want to raise the importance of these old trees in their own right,
not for what organisms live on them or in them, but for in their own right.
And here we go, so you start looking at it and you think about the history, the cultural history,
and we see them as parts of their living heritage, because parts of this tree here probably went into the Windsor castle.
Living reminders of the past, these ancient inhabitants of the land play host to a rich variety of insects and fungi.
Britain has 80% of Europe's crop of ancient trees.
In Windsor Great Park alone, there are more than a thousand.
But conservationists say a combination of development and neglect is putting them at risk.
They want to see pan-European protection for ancient trees.
These trees, when they're gathered together in a wood pasture system in a parkland,
like we are here in Windsor Great Park, that's a very special habitat in its own right.
And that isn't recognized in the European Union as a particular habitat at the moment.
It is in Scandinavia and they have a special designation for it.
But we haven't for this particular habitat in the rest of Europe.
The Conservation Charity, the Woodland Trust, is building up a national map of Britain's ancient trees,
and is asking the public to help input data they may have on individual trees.
For generations, trees like these have provided fuel, food, and building materials,
and the familiar backdrop to life in Britain's towns and villages.
Better protection should ensure that future generations continue to enjoy what is all too easy to take for granted.
It's been predicted that some 25% of the world's plant species could be condemned to extinction over the next 50 years.
Hence the value of the Millennium Seed Bank at Artingly in West Sussex, England.
They not only store as many of the world's seed species as possible,
but also carry out research into tree conservation, fauna, and flora protection.
This project calls together experts and representatives from 16 sub-Saharan African countries for a week-long workshop.
The aim is to cross-exchange information on seeds and trees, pinpoint key conservation actions, and organize sustainable management.
I think it's a nice meeting scientist with intelligence, and some information that I don't know.
I'm not learning or getting the information how to go about my work, where I'm lacking,
even some of the research has been done somewhere, which I haven't been able to do in my country.
So, meeting like this has really gained much.
It's actually benefit in terms of the long-term conservation of our forest genetic resources,
because currently we are faced with a problem of where the species actually get depleted,
and then this will actually come as a shot towards the conservation of these species.
What we know about seed biology is that, in essence, the whole area is under-researched,
and what we're trying to do is improve the handling and use of the seeds.
One percent of forests are disappearing every year in sub-Saharan Africa,
so much hope is pinned on this meeting of experts.
The Millennium Seed Bank stores some at special temperatures, more than 24,000 plant species,
has been conserving seeds from wild plants since 1974.
Samples from this bank will be made available to restored degraded lands,
reintroduced species into the wild, and restock depleted populations.
These plants are exciting news to scientists at Britain's Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex,
part of an international project to conserve the world's flowering plants as seeds.
They were grown from 200-year-old seeds, which have been stored in less than ideal conditions,
before being discovered among papers at the National Archives.
With precious few seeds to work with, scientists decided to simply recreate conditions
similar to those where the plants would have grown in the wild.
These species come from a Mediterranean-type environment,
so they experience hot, dry summers and cool wet winters,
and these seeds would normally germinate during that winter period,
so we tried to give these seeds a temperature that's close to those that experience
in a Cape Town winter, and we also subjected these seeds to a smoke treatment.
And we did that because in the Cape region, fires happen every few years,
and they're crucial for the natural recovery and growth of the vegetation of the plant.
The seeds 200-year journey back to life is also hazy.
They were among papers seized by the British Navy on the high seas,
from a ship carrying cargo for a Dutch merchant during the Napoleonic Wars
and at one point stored in the Tower of London,
before finding their way to the National Archives in Cuba.
Scientists put the seed survival down to them having been well-packaged,
probably by a botanist, before Jan Teerling placed them together with silk samples
in his document wallet for the voyage home from Cape Town.
This is the first time we've had anything organic.
I suppose silk is organic, but the seeds are organic.
And the idea of being able to make them grow was really very exciting,
particularly since one of the planks in a newly published vision
for the National Archives is bringing history to life,
and you can't bring history more to life than that.
Seed ecologists at the Millennium Seed Bank managed to germinate only three
of the 32 species found in Teerling's wallet,
La Peria Velosa, Luco Sperman, and Acacia.
The result may seem only to be a limited success,
but at a time of climate change, it underlines the importance of the scientist's work
at the Millennium Seed Bank.
With climate change happening at every increasing rate,
plants are under extreme pressures in the wild,
and having them conserved here in the Millennium Seed Bank under ideal conditions
hopefully gives us a safety net so that we can reintroduce plants into the wild.
However, actually being able to germinate seeds from these 200-year-old plants
gives us great confidence with the future that we'll be able to use the collections,
and there'll be a vital resource for introducing plants back into the wild
if they become threatened, endangered, or extinct.
The hope is that there'll be no need to reintroduce species,
but it's reassuring that the Millennium Seed Bank has the resources to do so.
Some say genetic modification is the answer to feeding the developing world.
Others argue that GM crops are in the long-term, damaging to the environment.
After a four-year study, the UK government has approved GMAs in Britain,
but turned down applications for GM feed and oil seed rate.
All agree, there is much more research to be done.
There is no scientific case for a blanket approval of all the uses of GM.
Safety, human health and the environment must remain at the heart of our regulatory regime,
and rigorous and robust monitoring must be maintained.
But equally, there is no scientific case for a blanket ban on the use of genetic modification.
I know of no one who argues, for instance, that the GM tool alone can solve the problems of the developing world.
But it is less than honest to pretend, especially against a background of climate change,
that GM has not the potential to contribute to some solutions.
The British Medical Association also urged caution.
The biggest changes on the environment from agriculture has been,
if you like, the industrialisation of agriculture, what, 20, 30, longer years ago.
And we need to recognise that before we start panicking about the changes that GM might have.
None of it means that you change, you stop the surveillance going on
once you've allowed some change to come into place.
We always need to continue to look, to say, has the impact been what we expected?
Has it been worse or less bad than we expected?
Are there benefits that we didn't expect?
And then to be prepared to modify practice.
The BMA agreed with the government that individual crops are assessed on an individual basis,
using extensive field trials of the type undertaken recently by the British government,
and that crops, which are more harmful to the environment than conservational varieties,
are not licensed for commercial use.
All agree there is more research and surveillance to be done.
Not least to keep consumers in both the developed and developing world,
fully knowledgeable on the safety of GM crops and food.
A long, dry English summer, with record temperatures.
Now rain and pipe water are more valuable in precious than ever
to crop growers and farmers across the country.
Researchers at the University of Warwick's Plaid Research Arm, Warwick HRI,
are working on ways to upgrade the furtigation process.
The furtigation process combines irrigation with fertilisation,
and it involves underground hoses delivering water and fertilizer to plants.
Furtigation allows crops to receive water and fertilizer in small amounts,
little and often, when and where the plant needs it.
Why is it going to become more important in the future?
It's the fact that we're becoming very aware of the environment.
There's a lot of legislation that's limiting waste of water
and limiting pollution of water courses by fertilisers, for example.
The farmer decides when and where to feed his plants,
and can keep a disciplined chart of how much liquid is being used in the process.
The research team has added moisture sensors in the soil,
which send data to a control system that is hooked up to a laptop computer
by cell phone technology.
The control system switches on the water when the soil dries below a site-specific threshold.
Site can predict when the crop needs certain nutrients,
and these too can be added to the automatic irrigation service.
We've tried to integrate it within a system that can predict crop nutrient requirements,
but measure soil water quantities,
and at the same time, integrate weather forecast data.
Because we don't want to be applying precious fertilizer,
we don't want to be putting effort into applying water.
If 20 minutes later, we receive 10 millimetres of rainfall,
which will just flush everything through the soil profile and off into water courses.
The system can also act on weather information up to five days in advance.
The high-tech method of growing crops and keeping them in fine health
will obviously be of considerable interest, not just in the UK,
but also in drier regions around the world.
Early results from these tests in the field have shown a 33% saving in fertilisers for lettuce,
and a 50% saving on fertilisers for runner beans.
Results also show a considerable drop in the amount of water used
throughout the whole irrigation process.
Until next time, keep thinking green.
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