Toyota Develops New Plant Species

oznigot writes "Yes, that's Toyota, the car company. In what appears to be a publicity stunt to promote their hybrid vehicle technology Toyota has developed a new species of plant. Of the Cherry Sage shrub family, the new plant absorbs nitrogen oxide and other substances from the air better than the original Cherry Sage." Update: 10/16 00:01 GMT by Z : Original link removed.

Comments

Re:Genomic Pollution

[DrEldarion]

Because now if they plant the new ones instead of the old ones, they'll still have the 30% more biomass, but 39% more air-cleaning capability?

Unless this is just an "OMG ALL GENETIC ENGINEERING IS EVIL" post, in which case you just get an eyeroll.

NOX

[dj245]

Nitrogen Oxides are created by industrial power generation plants (read: power plants) as a product of incomplete combustion. You can have scrubbers, and filters, and electrostatic precipitators, but some inevitably gets out (1-2% of stack gasses). I believe it is a greenhouse gas. 1-2% does not seem like much, but a tremendous amount of gas is created by the combustion processes. It adds up fast when you have a few LM2500 gas turbines that drain an 18-wheeler of natural gas in around 20 minutes.... at idle.

Getting the NOX out of the air is a good thing. Hopefully the plants can be used for some other purpose (shade? power production? General catalytic conversion?) but unfortunately the article is now the goatse guy.

Just nitpicking..

[nietsch]

But how has this been achieved? A new species, not just a new variety?
Evolutionary biologists will be jumping with joy as actual speciation has not been observed very often in the wild. Doing it in the lab/greenhouse is a very big feat, if this is not just a journalist with intelligence on par with their html injection security?

One definition of 'species' is that it can not reproduce with another species. If it is still able to reproduce with the parent species, it is not a separate species but a variety. Seedgrowers create new varieties (with desirable traits) but never create new species.

As for the OP's [stupid] question: Never, it will prove to be much more economic just to produce cars that pollute less. If this really true it is nothing more than a token gesture. 'Buy one of these silly plants and you can drive a SUV to get your groceries with a clear conscience'.

It would be much more environmentally friendly if the car came with a folding bike in the boot and occasionally refused to start to force the Fat American Mom to do some physical exercise. (except that healthy american moms live longer, which is actually worse for the environment. In that vein, A SUV with a pinto-quality fueltank and a boot full of 'killing you softly' cigarettes would be much more beneficial for the environment :-)