Unlocking the properties of plants and fungi for sustainable development

Advanced Fungal Biotechnologies in Accomplishing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): What Do We Know and What Comes Next?

The present era has witnessed an unprecedented scenario with extreme climate changes, depleting natural resources and rising global food demands and its widespread societal impact. From providing bio-based resources to fulfilling socio-economic necessities, tackling environmental challenges, and ecosystem restoration, microbes exist as integral members of the ecosystem and influence human lives. Microbes demonstrate remarkable potential to adapt and thrive in climatic variations and extreme niches and promote environmental sustainability. It is important to mention that advances in fungal biotechnologies have opened new avenues and significantly contributed to improving human lives through addressing socio-economic challenges. Microbe-based sustainable innovations would likely contribute to the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) by providing affordable energy (use of agro-industrial waste by microbial conversions), reducing economic burdens/affordable living conditions (new opportunities by the creation of bio-based industries for a sustainable living), tackling climatic changes (use of sustainable alternative fuels for reducing carbon footprints), conserving marine life (production of microbe-based bioplastics for safer marine life) and poverty reduction (microbial products), among other microbe-mediated approaches. The article highlights the emerging trends and future directions into how fungal biotechnologies can provide feasible and sustainable solutions to achieve SDGs and address global issues.

Medicinal plants meet modern biodiversity science

Plants have been an essential source of human medicine for millennia. In this review, we argue that a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the study of medicinal plants that combines methods and insights from three key disciplines - evolutionary ecology, molecular biology/biochemistry, and ethnopharmacology - is poised to facilitate new breakthroughs in science, including pharmacological discoveries and rapid advancements in human health and well-being. Such interdisciplinary research leverages data and methods spanning space, time, and species associated with medicinal plant species evolution, ecology, genomics, and metabolomic trait diversity, all of which build heavily on traditional Indigenous knowledge. Such an interdisciplinary approach contrasts sharply with most well-funded and successful medicinal plant research during the last half-century, which, despite notable advancements, has greatly oversimplified the dynamic relationships between plants and humans, kept hidden the larger human narratives about these relationships, and overlooked potentially important research and discoveries into life-saving medicines. We suggest that medicinal plants and people should be viewed as partners whose relationship involves a complicated and poorly explored set of (socio-)ecological interactions including not only domestication but also commensalisms and mutualisms. In short, medicinal plant species are not just chemical factories for extraction and exploitation. Rather, they may be symbiotic partners that have shaped modern societies, improved human health, and extended human lifespans.

Achieving zero extinction for land plants

Despite the importance of plants for humans and the threats to their future, plant conservation receives far less support compared with vertebrate conservation. Plants are much cheaper and easier to conserve than are animals, but, although there are no technical reasons why any plant species should become extinct, inadequate funding and the shortage of skilled people has created barriers to their conservation. These barriers include the incomplete inventory, the low proportion of species with conservation status assessments, partial online data accessibility, varied data quality, and insufficient investment in both in and ex situ conservation. Machine learning, citizen science (CS), and new technologies could mitigate these problems, but we need to set national and global targets of zero plant extinction to attract greater support.

Aligning to the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Assessing Contributions of UBC Botanical Garden

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development outlines 17 goals for the wellbeing of people and the planet. The purpose of this study was to understand how University of British Columbia Botanical Garden (UBCBG) contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) and to identify opportunities for future action. To address this, we worked across departments to assess our programs and activities against the UN-SDG 17 goals and 169 targets. The UN-SDG indicators were only used to identify potential metrics that could be consider for future tracking. The main activities of UBCBG include ex situ plant conservation, sustainability education and community engagement. Our results found that UBCBG contributes to 12 of the 17 goals and 24 of the 169 targets. The two UN-SDGs with more targets aligned to UBCBG’s activities were Goal 15—Life on Land and Goal 12—Responsible Consumption and Production. Through its partnerships with other botanical gardens, research institutions and the regional government, the Garden amplifies its work at a global, national and regional level. We are re-imagining the role of botanical gardens in an age of equity, decolonization, the biodiversity crisis and the climate emergency. Since the UN-SDGs address both nature and people, they are an appropriate framework to guide our work.

Isolation and characterization of wood-decomposing basidiomycetes from the Andean Forest in Boyacá, Colombia

This study explores the biotechnological potential of lignocellulolytic fungi collected in an oak forest. Fungal collections were obtained from natural reserves located in Boyacá-Colombia, ranging from 2700 to 3000 m.a.s.l. Twenty-three strains were isolated on malt agar, molecular characterization was performed, and ligninolytic and cellulolytic enzymatic activities were screened. Several white-rot fungi of biotechnological importance were identified as follows: Trametes sp., Trametes versicolor, Trametes villosa, Pycnoporus sanguineus, Bjerkandera adjusta, Lentinula boryana, Panus conchatus, Antrodia neotropica, Brunneoporus malicola, Laetiporus gilbertsonii, Stereum sp., Ganoderma sp., and Dichomitus sp. The strains T. versicolor 0554 and 0583, T. villosa 0562, and B. adusta 0556 showed the highest response in the qualitative enzymatic assays. These strains were used to determine their ability to decolorate the dyes aniline blue and Congo red, and it was found that T. villosa 0562 reached a level of decolorization close to 90% after 48 h of submerged culture. The fungal strains obtained here could offer alternatives to develop a process to accomplish sustainable development objectives.

Fortuitous Alignment: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are aimed at improving human well-being at a global scale, whilst enhancing and preserving global biodiversity. Recently, botanic gardens worldwide have become more conservation focused, and gardens are increasingly influential in scientific roles that address both biodiversity loss and human well-being—particularly in urban areas. As the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Kew) launched its new Manifesto for Change in 2021, this paper outlines how the organisation currently contributes to the SDGs and examines where the work of botanic gardens can have the biggest impact. This paper focuses on the use of policy engagement, education and outreach, and scientific research to document Kew’s contribution to the goals so far, both in the UK and elsewhere. The SDGs address high level global objectives, many of which are not directly relatable to the activities of a single organisation. Kew’s approach to this challenge is to seek out the intention of the Goals by interrogating their subsidiary Targets. We then translate the intention of any given SDG into actions that are meaningful to our specific practice. Many of RBG Kew’s existing projects and programmes address the SDGs and we are aligning our aims with them more closely still.

In Vitro Technology in Plant Conservation: Relevance to Biocultural Diversity

Plant diversity is critical to the functioning of human societies, and evidence shows that plant conservation success is driven by integrative approaches that include social and biological factors. Plants have a unique capacity to reproduce asexually, and propagation practices can yield large numbers of plantlets. These plantlets can be used in several ways to fulfil conservation goals including the repopulation of regions with declining densities of threatened species that hold cultural meaning. However, the potential of in vitro technologies in the conservation of plants that hold cultural meaning is understudied. In this paper we focus upon the roles of in vitro technologies in the conservation of plants relevant to biocultural environments and provide an overview of potential knowledge gaps at the interface of in vitro and plants used traditionally, including those meaningful to Indigenous Peoples. We conclude that in vitro technologies can be powerful tools in biocultural conservation if they are deployed in a manner respectful of the socio-cultural context in which plants play a role, but that further research is needed in this regard. We suggest several epistemological points to facilitate future research.

Climate change threatens native potential agroforestry plant species in Brazil

Climate change is one of the main drivers of species extinction in the twentyfirst-century. Here, we  (1) quantify potential changes in species' bioclimatic area of habitat (BAH) of 135 native potential agroforestry species from the Brazilian flora, using two different climate change scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) and dispersal scenarios, where species have no ability to disperse and reach new areas (non-dispersal) and where species can migrate within the estimated BAH (full dispersal) for 2041–2060 and 2061–2080. We then (2) assess the preliminary conservation status of each species based on IUCN criteria. Current and future potential habitats for species were predicted using MaxEnt, a machine-learning algorithm used to estimate species' probability distribution. Future climate is predicted to trigger a mean decline in BAH between 38.5–56.3% under the non-dispersal scenario and between 22.3–41.9% under the full dispersal scenario for 135 native potential agroforestry species. Additionally, we found that only 4.3% of the studied species could be threatened under the IUCN Red List criteria B1 and B2. However, when considering the predicted quantitative habitat loss due to climate change (A3c criterion) the percentages increased between 68.8–84.4% under the non-dispersal scenario and between 40.7–64.4% under the full dispersal scenario. To lessen such threats, we argue that encouraging the use of these species in rural and peri-urban agroecosystems are promising, complementary strategies for their long-term conservation.

Seeds as natural capital

Halting and reversing the current loss of biodiversity and habitats will be facilitated by a comprehensive valuation of all nature's contributions to people (NCPs), on which we rely. In this context, we explore the full natural capital value of seeds to reveal how this extends far beyond their economic value associated with mainstream agriculture and forestry. Seeds represent the main assets for nature-based solutions at species (i.e., unlocking neglected species properties and via seed banking) and ecosystem level (i.e., ecological restoration). Challenges remain to enhance their sustainable use in nature conservation and in supporting a sustainable development model. Such advances will depend on the comprehensive valuation of the natural capital value of seeds, which has so far been grossly underestimated.

Food systems at a watershed: Unlocking the benefits of technology and ecosystem symbioses

The current food systems require change to improve sustainability resilience. Humans need food and food requires natural resources which have been consistently reduced, destroyed, or eliminated during human development, and excessive during the last 50-70 years. Though essential, there has been less of a focus on the inter-relations and inter-dependences of our food supply with and on the world's eco-system and organisms. Integrating evidence for the importance of plants, the microbiota in plants, animals and humans and their reciprocal effects of their interactions on food systems is essential for creating more inclusive strategies for future food systems. This review examines the role of plants, microorganisms, plant-microbial, animal-microbial, and human-microbial interactions, their co-evolution on the food supply and human and eco-systems well-being. It also recognizes the contribution of indigenous knowledge for lasting protection of the land, managing resources and biodiversity and the usefulness of food processing for producing safe, tasty, and nutritious food sustainably. We demonstrate that new targets and priorities for harnessing science and technology for improving food and nutritional security and avoiding environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are urgently needed. For improved long-term sustainability, the benefits of technology and ecosystem interactions must be unlocked.

The search for anti-oxytotic/ferroptotic compounds in the plant world

Oxytosis/ferroptosis is a form of non-apoptotic regulated cell death characterized by glutathione (GSH) depletion and dysregulated production of mitochondrial ROS that results in lethal lipid peroxidation. As the significance of oxytosis/ferroptosis to age-associated human diseases is now beginning to be appreciated, the development of innovative approaches to identify novel therapeutics that target the oxytosis/ferroptosis pathway could not be more timely. Due to their sessile nature, plants are exposed to a variety of stresses that trigger physiological changes similar to those found in oxytosis/ferroptosis. As such, they have evolved a rich array of chemical strategies to deal with those challenging conditions. This review details a drug discovery approach for identifying potent inhibitors of oxytosis/ferroptosis from plants for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, thereby highlighting the tremendous potential of plant-based research for developing new medicines while simultaneously being a catalyst for sustainability.

Harnessing Crop Wild Diversity for Climate Change Adaptation

Warming and drought are reducing global crop production with a potential to substantially worsen global malnutrition. As with the green revolution in the last century, plant genetics may offer concrete opportunities to increase yield and crop adaptability. However, the rate at which the threat is happening requires powering new strategies in order to meet the global food demand. In this review, we highlight major recent 'big data' developments from both empirical and theoretical genomics that may speed up the identification, conservation, and breeding of exotic and elite crop varieties with the potential to feed humans. We first emphasize the major bottlenecks to capture and utilize novel sources of variation in abiotic stress (i.e., heat and drought) tolerance. We argue that adaptation of crop wild relatives to dry environments could be informative on how plant phenotypes may react to a drier climate because natural selection has already tested more options than humans ever will. Because isolated pockets of cryptic diversity may still persist in remote semi-arid regions, we encourage new habitat-based population-guided collections for genebanks. We continue discussing how to systematically study abiotic stress tolerance in these crop collections of wild and landraces using geo-referencing and extensive environmental data. By uncovering the genes that underlie the tolerance adaptive trait, natural variation has the potential to be introgressed into elite cultivars. However, unlocking adaptive genetic variation hidden in related wild species and early landraces remains a major challenge for complex traits that, as abiotic stress tolerance, are polygenic (i.e., regulated by many low-effect genes). Therefore, we finish prospecting modern analytical approaches that will serve to overcome this issue. Concretely, genomic prediction, machine learning, and multi-trait gene editing, all offer innovative alternatives to speed up more accurate pre- and breeding efforts toward the increase in crop adaptability and yield, while matching future global food demands in the face of increased heat and drought. In order for these 'big data' approaches to succeed, we advocate for a trans-disciplinary approach with open-source data and long-term funding. The recent developments and perspectives discussed throughout this review ultimately aim to contribute to increased crop adaptability and yield in the face of heat waves and drought events.

Fungal Protein – What Is It and What Is the Health Evidence? A Systematic Review Focusing on Mycoprotein

Mycoprotein is a protein-rich fungal-derived sustainable food source that was first discovered in the early 1960's. Since then, a sizeable body of research has investigated the health benefits of mycelium protein. Given this, the present publication aims to systematically review the effects of mycoprotein on human health. A literature search of human studies was conducted using PubMed Central, ClinicalTrials.Gov, Google Scholar and a manual search. Sixteen controlled trials, totaling 432 participants were included – of these 5 studies reported total cholesterol, 5 reported on energy intake, 7 on insulin levels, 8 on glucose levels and 4 studied protein response. Risk of bias showed that 7 studies were good quality although heterogeneity was apparent between studies. Results showed that acute mycoprotein ingestion was associated with reduced total cholesterol levels, particularly amongst those with hyperlipidemia. Evidence was less conclusive for effects on blood glucose and insulin levels. Mycoprotein also appears to be a promising bioavailable source of essential amino acids that could induce muscle protein synthesis. Overall, given growing interest in sustainable proteins and accruing health evidence for mycoprotein, firmer embedment with food-based dietary guidelines is now worthy of consideration.

Mapping Africa's Biodiversity: More of the Same Is Just Not Good Enough

Species distribution data are fundamental to the understanding of biodiversity patterns and processes. Yet, such data are strongly affected by sampling biases, mostly related to site accessibility. The understanding of these biases is therefore crucial in systematics, biogeography, and conservation. Here we present a novel approach for quantifying sampling effort and its impact on biodiversity knowledge, focusing on Africa. In contrast to previous studies assessing sampling completeness (percentage of species recorded in relation to predicted), we investigate whether the lack of knowledge of a site attracts scientists to visit these areas and collect samples of species. We then estimate the time required to sample 90% of the continent under a Weibull distributed biodiversity sampling rate and the number of sampling events required to record $ \ge $50% of the species. Using linear and spatial regression models, we show that previous sampling has been strongly influencing the resampling of areas, attracting repeated visits. This bias has existed for over two centuries, has increased in recent decades, and is most pronounced among mammals. It may take between 172 and 274 years, depending on the group, to achieve at least one sampling event per grid cell in the entire continent. Just one visit will, however, not be enough: in order to record $ \ge $50% of the current diversity, it will require at least 12 sampling events for amphibians, 13 for mammals, and 27 for birds. Our results demonstrate the importance of sampling areas that lack primary biodiversity data and the urgency with which this needs to be done. Current practice is insufficient to adequately classify and map African biodiversity; it can lead to incorrect conclusions being drawn from biogeographic analyses and can result in misleading and self-reinforcing conservation priorities. [Amphibians; birds; mammals; sampling bias; sampling gaps; Wallacean shortfall.].

Toward Unifying Global Hotspots of Wild and Domesticated Biodiversity

Global biodiversity hotspots are areas containing high levels of species richness, endemism and threat. Similarly, regions of agriculturally relevant diversity have been identified where many domesticated plants and animals originated, and co-occurred with their wild ancestors and relatives. The agro-biodiversity in these regions has, likewise, often been considered threatened. Biodiversity and agro-biodiversity hotspots partly overlap, but their geographic intricacies have rarely been investigated together. Here we review the history of these two concepts and explore their geographic relationship by analysing global distribution and human use data for all plants, and for major crops and associated wild relatives. We highlight a geographic continuum between agro-biodiversity hotspots that contain high richness in species that are intensively used and well known by humanity (i.e., major crops and most viewed species on Wikipedia) and biodiversity hotspots encompassing species that are less heavily used and documented (i.e., crop wild relatives and species lacking information on Wikipedia). Our contribution highlights the key considerations needed for further developing a unifying concept of agro-biodiversity hotspots that encompasses multiple facets of diversity (including genetic and phylogenetic) and the linkage with overall biodiversity. This integration will ultimately enhance our understanding of the geography of human-plant interactions and help guide the preservation of nature and its contributions to people.