For Daniel Rodary, everything started from an observation: some plants can do good. Much good. This French 43 ecologist works for the association Biomimicry Europa, specialized in biomimicry.
This field of research is inspired by nature to create sustainable solutions. In 2010, precisely, Greenloop, a consulting firm that studies how the living captures and stores carbon, is launching a European project, CO2SolStock, to imagine new solutions in this direction.
Among them: the so-called "oxalogenic" plants. A big word for an extraordinary property: these plants capture the atmospheric carbon and, with the help of fungi and bacteria, transform it into limestone, trapped in the ground for tens of millennia.
A waking engineer dream! By studying one of these plants, the bread-nut (Brosimum alicastrum), a tree from Latin America, Daniel Rodary realizes that it promises so much more.
Very nutritious, its nuts can be kept dry and used as potatoes, in flour, in sauces or drinks. Its leaves make an excellent fodder for livestock. B. alicastrum could also improve soil acidity and fertilize it.
A miracle tree? The ecologist wants to be clear. In 2011, he launches the program "Arbres Sauveurs", with two associations located in Haiti. Objective: to reforest eroded, arid and very isolated areas.
Farmers are trained to plant their trees, and women to cook the nuts. This new little perishable food is a prodigy. At the University of Lausanne, Eric Verrecchia, the scientist behind the discovery of oxalogenic trees, follows the experiment closely. To date, 80 000 plants have already been planted. In one to three years, they will produce their first miracles.
To know more :
> The association specializing in biomimicry: www.biomimicry.eu
> The consulting firm that studies how living things capture and store carbon: www.greenloop.eu
> The European project which aims to find solutions to store carbon: www.co2solstock.org
Céline Lison
Source: http://www.nationalgeographic.fr/11174- ... -le-monde/