THE world has a population greater than 7.2 billion people, growing at a rate of more than 50 million a year, putting an ever-increasing demand on finite resources.
With many countries already suffering shortages of good food, power and access to clean water, is it possible to keep pace with this growing demand?
There are many who answer yes, and some are at work right here, providing the solution.
To celebrate QUT turning 25 this year, this week we are showcasing 25 amazing innovations, devices and fields of research being developed in Queensland.
Each idea has the potential to change the world, in small ways and big, and always for the better.
This series, 25 ideas to change the world, presents five ideas each day, grouped in themes like medical science and digital technology. Today we look at sustainability – five areas of study aiming to meet the challenges of accommodating a growing population.
Pumped-up bananas feed the hungry
VITAMIN A deficiency is responsible for the death of an estimated 600,000 to 2.5 million children each year – behind only HIV Aids and Malaria as the largest public health crisis facing the world.
It's a devastating death toll made all the more shocking because the condition is preventable, says Distinguished Professor James Dale, director of QUT's Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities.
"The people who are often affected by it are the poorest of the poor,” Prof Dale said.
"Even though we've got fabulous strategies such as food fortification and supplements, these people don't buy food. They're subsistence farmers, so food fortification isn't particularly useful.”
Supplements are also often either too expensive or too far away to be a viable source of micronutrients.
But a third solution exists, one that is already delivering real results in other types crops. It is based on deceptively simple sounding idea: enrich the foods people already eat with the nutrients they are missing.
Prof Dale is leading the way to engineer a super banana enriched with the essential micronutrients deficient in parts of the world's population."These people tend to have one major starch food that they eat,” he said.
"In East Africa, and other parts of Africa as well, bananas are the staple food.”
These bananas are not of the Banana Split variety. Picked green and then cooked down, they are the east African equivalent of rice or potatoes.
"In Uganda, their average consumption (of bananas) is half a kilo per person, per day, and that rises to one kilo per person per day in the remote areas where bananas are their real staple," Prof Dale said.
With this knowledge, the scientist has been working to develop genetically modified specifies of banana enriched with Pro Vitamin A and Iron.
It's slow work that is beginning to show real results.
"We've already developed bananas with very high levels of Pro Vitamin A, much higher than our target.
"The best banana we've got is four times higher than our target levels … and we're starting to get good results with Iron as well.”
Second field trials are already under way in Australia and Uganda, with the aim to have the bananas released onto the market by 2020, if successful.Millions of plants would be grown from tissue culture and distributed to those farmers eager to take up the new technology.
"We expect those innovative farmers to share ... the suckers from those bananas with their neighbours,” Prof Dale said.
"What we're doing is really trying to push the level (of Vitamin A) they currently get significantly higher, another 50 per cent higher so that they're now over the threshold of not having a Vitamin A deficiency."
The presence of Beta and Alpha Carotene, which is later converted into Pro Vitamin A, in the bananas has also produced some more amusing side effects. Like carrots, Prof Dale's bananas have orange flesh.
As for how they taste? While the research team doesn't know just yet, they may soon find out.
Although their current license doesn't allow the bananas grown to be used in human or animal consumption, another license will soon see the first taste tests carried out in the US.
Learn more at www.ctcb.qut.edu.au
Powering the globe with biofuels
THE explosion of transportation across the world over the past century has been driven by the flow of petroleum products.
But it is a finite, dwindling resource and a major contributor to pollution and global warming.
The race is on to find efficient renewable alternatives, including those sourced from agricultural waste.
“If we do believe in climate change, and the impact of fuel emissions on global warming, we can have a significant effect by reducing petro-chemical fuels,” says Professor Sagadevan Mundree.QUT is working with five Indian institutions and four Australian partners on a $6 million project to develop biofuels using waste from crops including cotton, rice, fruit and, in Prof Mundree’s case, particularly sugar cane.
QUT’s Mackay Renewable Bio-commodities Pilot Plant has already produced several thousand litres of biodiesel from bagasse – the fibrous material left over after cane has been crushed to extract the sugar juice and molasses.
“It has no effect on the production of food or (animal) fodder,” says Prof Mundree. “At present, most of the waste is burned or stacked up alongside the mills. But we can turn it into a useful product.”
While many people are working on biofuel research and development, the QUT initiative is unique in taking it to a pilot scale.Prof Mundree and his colleagues are now working on how they can contribute to the United States Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” initiative.
The Americans plan to run half their warship fleet –including aircraft carriers, submarines, fighter jets and helicopters – on alternative fuels in 2016, refuelling at stops including Australia as they cruise the Pacific.
Prof Mundree says the voyage will be “a great showcase” for the potential of biofuels.
Looking ahead, he says many factors, including government policy, will influence the future growth of the biofuel industry.
“For example, if the European Union were to say any aircraft flying into the Euro Zone needs to have at least 20 percent green fuels, that would be a game-changer.”
Learn more at www.ctcb.qut.edu.au/programs/pilot.jsp
Gathering minds to solve clean water crisis
Water – it is the very essence of life.
And yet at any time, half of the hospital beds around the world are occupied by people suffering the effects of waterborne disease.
And it is one of the great ironies that while water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the planet is facing a water scarcity crisis.
Then there is the competition between sectors such as agriculture and mining and resources for access to this precious commodity.
Queensland University of Technology experts have joined forces with colleagues from the University of Queensland and Griffith University to bring some of the world’s brightest young minds to address some of the critical H2O issues.
The Global Business Challenge is a world-first event to be held during the G20 gathering of world leaders in Brisbane in November.
It brings together teams of graduate students, industry figures and researchers in a competition to develop innovative solutions to water scarcity problems – with a $US100,000 prize for the winners.
The finalists were selected last week and the presentations and judging will take place at QUT’s Gardens Point campus from November 3.
“Water issues are an impediment to health and well-being inpoverty-stricken developing nations and a constraint to economic development in developed economies,” says QUT Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake.
Learn more at www.g20gbc.org
Deciphering nature to drought-proof rice
RICE is a staple of the daily diet for up to three billion people, mostly in Asia.
But as population growth creates more hungry mouths, climate change is making it harder to feed them.
Current rice varieties depend heavily on fresh water, and increasing drought conditions and greater salinity in soils mean crops are failing more frequently.
It is estimated that a third of the world’s population could suffer from food and water shortages by 2025.
But a native Australian grass could unlock the secret to producing more resilient rice and ensuring people continue to have access to the essential source of carbohydrate.
While most plants initiate a “self-destruction” program when moisture levels fall too low, some – known as extremophiles – are able to survive months or even years without rain.
“Australia has a rich diversity of such plants which can withstand extreme drought,” says Professor Sagadevan Mundree from QUT’s Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities.One is the “five minute grass” found around Charleville’s in Queensland’s south-west – part of a family of “resurrection grasses” – so named for their ability to recover completely within 72 hours of being watered.
Prof Mundree and his colleagues have identified genes which make the plant so hardy and are studying how they work.
“If you think of all the genes present in a plant as instruments in an orchestra, the plant decides which instruments to play according to the conditions,” he says.
Two partner organisations in India will co-operate in transferring the resistant genes into rice through a breeding program.
“We hope within this three-year project to do field trials using genes from these plants.”
Prof Mundree says the aim is not to turn rice into an extremophile, but to develop varieties which are more resistant to stress from drought and salinity.
They could be used both in traditional rice-growing areas where weather and soil conditions are changing and to expand cultivation into new regions.
“I’m very excited about this. That’s why I’m in the office at 5am each day,” he says.
Learn more at www.ctcb.qut.edu.au
Clearing the road for electric vehicles
THE Earth is on a path to destruction.
That was the devastating assessment handed down by the United Nations Environmental Program's 2012 World Environmental Outlook report.
The document highlighted little to no progress had been made in reducing CO2 levels, while only some improvements had been seen in the area of reducing air pollution.
Humanity needed to change its ways, it concluded. But how?
Researcher Simon Washington believes the solution lies, at least in part, in the adoption of more fuel efficient cars.
The scientist leads QUT's AutoCRC research program and is in the early stages of a three-year study hoping to discover the factors driving the strong uptake of the cars in other countries and uncover why those patterns have not be mirrored closer to home.
"Australia is the most urbanised developed country and so, you would think from that perspective, that ... Australians would have been rapid adopters of fuel efficient cars," he said.
We haven't. In the past three years, more than 170,000 electric cars were sold in the US. Australians bought a meagre 700 by comparison.
"But there are plenty of reasons for Australia being behind, and so the real focus of the work that we're doing is to try to understand what a the most important factors, both on the supply and ... the customer sides, that are preventing the adoption or keeping the adoption slow for these kinds of vehicles," Prof Washington said.
On that front, Washington and his team are working with industry experts, governments and academics across four countries to find out supply-side barriers and opportunities. Later, they will survey 2000 consumers to find out more about the factors influencing their buying decisions.It’s still early days, but Prof Washington says there are a number of factors they can say, with a high degree of confidence, need to be addressed if Australia is to increase its adoption of fuel efficient cars.
"In cities all around the world where adoption of fuel efficient vehicle have been high, (they) have implemented fairly aggressive policies that would support customers in buying a vehicle," he said.
One such example is that of Stockholm, Sweden, which has introduced a congestion charge for those driving into the inner city. Fuel efficient cars are exempt from the charge.
Prof Washington also points to the government's home solar scheme as an example of how authorities have given consumers incentives to adopt technology.
"So that's what been lacking in Australia, compared to other similar countries where they have had wide scale adoption," he said.
Though Prof Washington is careful to emphasise the purpose of his research is not to directly encourage the greater uptake of these efficient vehicles – "As researchers, we don't really take a position that people should do something or should not do something" – he readily talks about the benefits fuel efficient cars for consumers and the environment.
"There would be air pollution reductions for certain, because these cars pollute much less. You'd have lower ambient pollution in the urban area, which is certainly a desirable thing.
"You would have lower energy use and consumption overall and of course you would have lower CO2 emissions from the vehicles."
The cars often make economic sense when compared to traditional petrol cars.
"The operating costs of ... an electric car are one fifth of the operating costs or even less – one tenth to one fifth," Prof Washington said.
He said consumers should look to the high uptake of fuel efficient cars by taxi operators as evidence of the potential saving consumers could see.
"I was visiting a taxi operator last week that has a hundred vehicles. almost every single one of those is a Toyota Prius.
"I had a very simple question for the owner of this taxi fleet .... 'Does it make economic sense for you to own these cars?' and she said it's a windfall. Her maintenance costs and maintaining this taxi fleet has gone down to about a fifth of what it was for petrol cars."
Prof Washington believes that same principle is applicable to individual owners.
Though he concedes it wouldn't make sense for everybody to invest in a fuel efficient car, he sees the failure of Australians to embrace fuel efficient cars as a missed opportunity.
But it's one that Prof Washington's research might one day allow policy makers to overcome – as long as the economics make sense.
Learn more at www.autocrc.com
Animated images are illustrative only and do not represent real designs or projects.