Faster peat moss farming in labs could help rescue degraded peatlands
Parsons J, Decker EL, Reski R
Climate Adaptation
Peatlands lock away more carbon than all the world's forests and living matter combined, and every bog drained for peat or agriculture releases that stored carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming that is already shifting your last frost date and compressing the growing season.
Peat mosses are ancient plants that build up into deep, waterlogged bogs over thousands of years, trapping enormous amounts of carbon underground. When those bogs are drained for peat mining or farming, that stored carbon escapes as CO2. Scientists have now found ways to grow peat moss in lab bioreactors up to 50 times faster than it grows in the wild, which could make it practical to farm the moss and replant damaged peatlands at a meaningful scale.
Key Findings
Peatlands store more carbon than all living matter on Earth combined, despite covering only a small fraction of the planet's land surface.
Optimizing growth media for multiple Sphagnum species in photobioreactors achieved up to a 50-fold increase in biomass.
Axenic, monoclonal strains were established from spore capsules collected across European peatlands, with flow cytometry confirming both haploid and diploid accessions.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Peat bogs store more carbon than all living matter on Earth combined, but peat mining and agriculture are degrading them fast. Researchers have developed lab-based techniques to grow peat moss up to 50 times faster than normal, pointing toward a scalable path to restore these critical ecosystems.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Multiplication of peat moss (Sphagnum L.) species for climate action.
Mosses from the genus Sphagnum have experienced 350 million years of evolution separate from all other mosses, resulting in distinctive features such as unlimited apical growth potential which is n...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Sphagnum is a genus of approximately 380 accepted species of mosses, commonly known as sphagnum moss, also bog moss and quacker moss. Accumulations of Sphagnum can store water, since both living and dead plants can hold large quantities of water inside their cells; plants may hold 16 to 26 times ...