Current state and future directions of bioeconomy in the Czech Republic

Sustainable and circular agro-environmental practices: A review of the management of agricultural waste biomass in Spain and the Czech Republic

Sustainable and circular production models, such as the circular economy and circular bioeconomy, have become key mechanisms to leave behind the traditional linear model of food production. Under this approach and considering the waste biomass potential available in Spain and the Czech Republic, the main objective of this study is to analyse the most relevant aspects of the generation, use and regulation of agricultural waste biomass (AWB) in both countries. For this purpose, a scientometric analysis and systematic review of published research in the Scopus database were carried out. A complementary analysis of AWB management policies and regulations was also part of the methodology. The results show that Spain has published almost twice as much research as the Czech Republic. Furthermore, 91% of the retrieved research prioritizes the characterization and estimation of the potential of more than 15 AWB types. Among the main ones are olive residues, horticultural residues and wheat straw, which are used for producing organic amendments, bioenergy and biofuels. The results confirm that the reduction and valorization of AWB is an issue that has become more important in the last 13 years, mainly due to the policies and strategies for circular economy and circular bioeconomy. With this in mind, this study provides relevant information for governments on the aspects that need to be improved to advance in the valorization of AWB. This study also provides guidance to farmers on the reduction and/or recovery alternatives that they can implement to move towards sustainable and circular agriculture.

Building the SynBio community in the Czech Republic from the bottom up: You get what you give

Given its highly innovative character and potential socioeconomic impact, Synthetic Biology is often ranked among prominent research areas and national research priorities in developed countries. The global evolution of this field is proceeding by leaps and bounds but its development at the level of individual states varies widely. Despite their current satisfactory economic status, the majority of 13, mostly post-communist, countries that entered the European Union family in and after 2004 (EU13) have long overlooked the blossoming of Synthetic Biology. Their prioritized lines of research have been directed elsewhere or "Synthetic Biology" did not become a widely accepted term to encompass their bioengineering and biotechnology domains. The Czech Republic is not an exception. The local SynBio mycelium already exists but is mainly built bottom-up through the activities of several academic labs, iGEM teams, and spin-off companies. In this article, we tell their individual stories and summarize the prerequisites that allowed their emergence in the Czech academic and business environment. In addition, we provide the reader with a brief overview of laboratories, research hubs, and companies that perform biotechnology and bioengineering-oriented research and that may be included in a notional "shadow SynBio community" but have not yet adopted Synthetic Biology as a unifying term for their ventures. We also map the current hindrances for a broader expansion of Synthetic Biology in the Czech Republic and suggest possible steps that should lead to the maturity of this fascinating research field in our country.

Development of Biorefineries in the Bioeconomy: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis among European Countries

This study aims to identify the configurational conditions that characterize the establishment of biorefineries in 20 European countries. After determining the conditions which support a bioeconomy transition, secondary data from national sources are used to represent their existing conditions within respective countries. Then, a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is employed to compare and contrast the effect of varying combinations of the selected conditions on the development of biorefineries. The conditions chosen include coherent bioeconomy strategies, network intensity of regional bioclusters, intellectual capital, and natural resource availability. Our results reveal that the configuration of a coherent bioeconomy strategy, sizable public spending on R&D, abundant biomass supply, and a high level of network intensity is sufficient to explain the pronounced biorefineries development among some European countries. We recommend that countries with fragmented approaches review and redesign the policy and regulatory framework to create a holistic and consistent bioeconomy strategy, taking into account the configurations of conditions as an important prerequisite. In particular, factors such as the lack of best practice examples, the low level of public spending on research and development, the economic capacities for a skilled workforce in addition to the sustainable supply of raw materials should be addressed as focal points.

Innovations in Forest Bioeconomy: A Bibliometric Analysis

Innovations are a key component of the forest bioeconomy. Many types of innovations are needed for an efficient forest bioeconomy to be deployed. This article aimed to analyze the scientific literature on the topic of innovations in the forest bioeconomy, to understand where we are and where we are likely to be in the future, considering technologies, business models, etc. First, the scientific literature, in the form of peer-reviewed articles indexed in the Web of Science, was compiled in a comprehensive dataset, on which we analyzed the most important authors, their affiliations, regions they come from, journals where papers were most commonly published, and under which categories the papers were indexed. The total number of papers matching the keywords was 161. We found that the number of papers published on the topic is increasing and that, on average, each paper was cited 18 times. A total of 504 authors dealt with the topic, presenting a rather small community. This finding was reinforced by the outcomes of the analysis of regions where the authors of the papers were affiliated—Europe being the region to which most papers were affiliated. We conducted a qualitative synthesis of the literature on forest bioeconomy innovations. We found that authors dealt with the necessary adaptation of policies, while innovations were mainly focused on biorefining, biotechnology, production of various biomaterials, as well as innovations of business models and stakeholder interactions.