Instead of heating and distilling the brine, which requires abundant surplus energy, these plants strain salt out of seawater with synthetic membranes in a process consuming half as much power.
As South Africa's predominantly coal-powered power plants strain to meet the demand, renewable energy is becoming more attractive.
The primary obstacle to the usage of perennial cereals, oilseeds, and legumes are the lack of economically viable plant strains.
Selective breeding has produced multiple plant strains with improved nutritional value, but it's not always an option.
Congress passed the Plant Patent Act in 1930 as a result of plant breeding and other agricultural efforts, making new plant strains derived from crossbreeding patentable.
So a lot of modern plant strains were created by applying chemicals or radiation to cause mutations that improved the crop.
A system of plant banks could be crucial in responding to climate crises since it could identify genetic material and plant strains better able to cope with a changed environment.
Agricultural firms display industrial-sized machinery for harvesting plants, electronics firms offer a dazzling array of grow lights, and everywhere, growers lovingly explain the virtues of dozens of plant strains such as Gorilla Glue, Silver Haze and Crystal Coma.
"Botanica" is nominally based on the unfolding of the seasons, and Mr. Pendleton and his 10 dancers try to incarnate the ideas in Maurice Maeterlinck's wonderful description of a flower that is quoted in the program: "The plant strains its whole being in one single plan: to escape above the ground from the fatality below... to enter a moving, animated world".
There are generally believed to be five common practices capable of meeting the growing demand: increasing tilled acreage, improving plant strains, introducing or expanding irrigation, controlling pests by chemical or biological methods, and initiating or increasing fertilizer usage.
