The Importance Of Biomass Diversity Is Been Revised

In a new article at earthtimes.org it has been reported that the science community maybe looking again at their beliefs that a health habitat depends on there been a wide range of different plants within the ecosystem at one time.

It has been thought for decades that the productivity of a plant is dependant on the biodiversity in the area. Previous research has show a correlation between the two which reached maximum yields at an ideal level. However now this belied is been challenged with articles in the Science journal stating this was just pure "fancy". The potential impact if proven to be true could be highly significant for the biomass energy industry. For many years there have been challenges to growing a single crop such as miscanthus, that the productivity would be effected if grown in a single large area. This could potentially mean that large areas of a single crop could now be looked at. However while the effects on productivity may no longer be an issue, there are definitely still concerns over such an approach. For instance local wildlife depends on biodiversity, and such large scale plans could cause the wildlife community to fight the biomass industry. There is also the threat of disease. With a single crop grown in such large areas any disease or insect attack would decimate the whole crop very quickly. Therefore still a more diverse approach has its benefits. Growing other biomass energy crops such as willow, hemp and reed canary grass around miscanthus would be able to remove such potential issues. There is also still the argument of using land for miscanthus as it is a permanent crop and cannot be used for food. This is where hemp production has a significant advantage due to a short three month growing period and is a none permanent biomass crop.