Plants of greenhouse gases?

Methane (CH4) is one of the gases that plants release during wilting and rot. But there are many more factors in the rotting process that scientists have just discovered.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik (Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik) in the German city of Heidelberg have discovered that plants produce and release methane directly into the air, and this is the origin. of "greenhouse gases" that have not been noticed for a long time.

At first, scientists learned what plants released air when pushing the wilted leaves to replace them with new ones. Later, conducting a survey of growing corn and green grass, scientists have discovered that "living trees" release methane 10 to 100 times more than "dead plants". . Plants that enjoy more sunlight will release more methane.

But how plants can produce methane, is still something that scientists cannot explain. It can only be guessed that the formation of methane by plants is due to some unknown chain reaction and may open up a field of research for scientists specializing in Plant Chemistry and Biology. Learn Plants.

Equally surprising is that the formation of methane is not blocked by oxygen in the air. So far, scientists still think that microorganisms produce methane gas from oxygen. And the important sources of methane are in wet areas, rice fields, faeces of "ruminants (cows .)" and termites (weevils), at landfills. or "stinking gases" of waste water tanks, v . v. As estimated, two-thirds of these origins represent 600 million tons of methane in the world, formed every year.

Through this estimate, the rate of 10% to 30% of methane formed on the globe is due to the release of grasses, the remaining 60% is from the tropics.

The plant grass releases methane directly into the air, the newly discovered event explains, why the concentration of methane is so high in tropical forests (scientists at the University of Heidelberg have just said it said. when observing via satellite.

After "dioxyde coal" is the main cause, methane is also very important, which has contributed significantly to the change in the temperature of our earth. The accumulation of methane in the air has tripled in the past 150 years, largely due to the growing establishment of rice fields and the development of the cow industry.