World's largest collection of moss species

Date:
October 5, 2020
Source:
University of Freiburg
Summary:
Researchers have established the world's largest collection of
moss species for the peat industry and science.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Peatlands with their huge diversity of peat moss species store about 30
percent of the earth's soil carbon. This means they store roughly twice as
much carbon as all the world's forests combined. However, peat harvesting
and climate change are threatening these long-term carbon stores because
there is not enough founder material for cultivating peat mosses on a
large scale. In collaboration with researchers from the University of Greifswald, a team of scientists led by plant biotechnologist Professor
Ralf Reski from the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg
in Germany has established the world's largest laboratory collection of
mosses of the genus Sphagnum. With this as a foundation, peat mosses can
be grown in a sustainable and economic way. The scientists have published
their research in the scientific journal New Phytologist. Melanie Heck,
a PhD student, is the first author.


==========================================================================
For their project -- called MOOSzucht -- the scientists collected
sporophytes, the spore capsules of mosses, of 19 Sphagnum species in
Austria, Germany, Latvia, Russia, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The
world's largest collection of Sphagnum cultures is now housed in the International Moss Stock Center (IMSC), a resource center founded in 2010
at the University of Freiburg. Scientists use the spores to create pure
peat moss cultures in a laboratory environment that are not contaminated
by bacteria, fungi, algae, or suchlike. Some species grow at a rate 50
to 100 times faster in the laboratory than in a moor landscape.

The researchers measured the growth of the mosses in liquid mediums
containing nutrients, also known as suspension cultures. They also
determined how many sets of chromosomes could be found in the cell
nuclei in the cultures and compared this to the genome size of the
already established model moss Physcomitrella patens. In this way
they were able to identify haploid and diploid Sphagnum species --
in other words, species with single or double sets of chromosomes, respectively. However, they could not find a correlation between the
number of sets of chromosomes and moss growth, meaning it is still
unclear why diploid mosses exist in nature.

Peat is harvested on a large scale for growing vegetables and ornamental
plants in greenhouses and home gardens. Due to climate change and the
resulting droughts and higher temperatures, peat mosses are showing
poorer growth, deteriorating more quickly, and binding less carbon. The researchers from the University of Freiburg want to replace this dire
need for peat with renewable biomass. However, the large amount of
founder material that would be needed for this can only be produced in bioreactors. That is why Reski and his team at the IMSC are distributing
lab strains of peat mosses to various research institutes and companies
who are active in basic research, biotechnology, or in sustainable
bioeconomy.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Freiburg. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Melanie A. Heck, Volker M. Lu"th, Nico van Gessel, Matthias
Krebs, Mira
Kohl, Anja Prager, Hans Joosten, Eva L. Decker, Ralf Reski. Axenic
in‐vitro cultivation of nineteen peat‐moss ( Sphagnum
L.) species as a resource for basic biology, biotechnology and
paludiculture.

New Phytologist, 2020; DOI: 10.1111/nph.16922 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112135.htm

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