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S T U B B U R N

    Decomposition of crop residue us­ing ge­net­i­cally en­gi­neered bac­te­ria and its con­ver­sion into bio­plas­tic
    A burn­ing
    prob­lem
    1
    feed­ing an ex­pand­ing pop­u­la­tion
    1
    A ma­jor lim­i­ta­tion to food se­cu­rity is the food pro­duc­tion rate. Farmers adopt sev­eral meth­ods in or­der to sup­port their cul­ti­va­tion how­ever, some­times, it turns out to be more harm­ful than help­ful in the long run af­fect­ing soil health.
    The Green rev­o­lu­tion
    2
    The Green rev­o­lu­tion
    Green rev­o­lu­tion has made it pos­si­ble to feed this grow­ing pop­u­la­tion But with in­crease pro­duc­tion comes a large amount of waste
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    Wait this should­n’t be le­gal
    Wait this should­n’t be le­gal!!!
    Due to lack of al­ter­na­tives most crop residue is burnt to clear land for next crop
    Click to play
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    Click to Play
    Here is a video that one of our at­trib­u­t­ors cap­tured of crop stub­ble burn­ing around our uni­ver­sity cam­pus.

    Our Project Global Crop Production vs Stubble burn­ing:
    A side-by-side com­par­i­son

    Global Rice production
    Stubble burning

    In the Indian crop fields:
    You see stub­ble, trac­tors and … PLASTICS

    Non-biodegradable plas­tics are a men­ace.

    Global Plastic fate
    Mismanaged plastic waste
    Our Solution

    Currently, only a few al­ter­na­tives are avail­able to the farmer to stop them from burn­ing their fields.

    We are plan­ning to en­gi­neer Bacillus sub­tilis that can se­crete en­zymes and break down the stub­ble of var­i­ous crops, in­clud­ing rice, wheat, soy­beans, mil­lets, and maize. The en­gi­neered Bacillus strain can be added to the stub­ble in the fields to pro­mote de­com­po­si­tion of the stub­ble. The engineered bac­te­r­ial strain can be in­duced un­der in vitro con­di­tions to par­tially de­com­pose wheat and paddy straw to ex­tract vanillin which can fur­ther be con­verted into bio­plas­tic. Our Solution

    We are Team STUBBURN IISER Bhopal
    Team Image
    Promotional Video

    Sources

    Image Sources
    1. Source: Singh et al., 2017
    2. NORMAN BORLAUG: A LEGACY OF A BILLION LIVES
    3. https://​www.down­toearth.org

    Video Sources
    1. Stubble burn­ing near cam­pus (video) - Nirul Ranjan Patra (BS-MS IISER Bhopal)

    Map Sources
    1. Singh, G., Gupta, M.K., Chaurasiya, S. et al. Rice straw burn­ing: a re­view on its global preva­lence and the sus­tain­able al­ter­na­tives for its ef­fec­tive mit­i­ga­tion. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 32125-32155 (2021). https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s11356-021-14163-3