Buying furniture is easier than ever. You can even order a new table and chairs online with-out ever leaving home. But did you ever think about how furniture is made? The process begins with trees but now researchers have found a better way: growing it in a lab instead of a forest. In- stead of cutting down trees and adding to deforestation (砍伐森林), Velásquez García said, "If you want a table, then you should just grow a table. "
The research group found a way to actually grow plant tissue wood and fiber in a lab that is similar to the way cultured meat is grown. While there is still a long way to actually grow a table, the team was able to grow structures from cells from zinnia(百日草) leaves.
Making furniture and other items from biomaterials could eliminate cutting down trees in forests. "The way we get these materials hasn't changed in centuries and is very inefficient," said Velásquez Garcia. "This is a real chance to avoid all that inefficiency (效率低). "
There are other benefits to using lab wood too. Lab grown wood can be handled to take on any shape like 3D printing－ so it may be possible to build a table without glue or screwing (用螺丝固定) parts together.
Beckwith, a mechanical engineering PhD student, was inspired by a visit to a farm to try to make land-use more efficient and environmentally sound. "That got me thinking: Can we be more strategic about what we're getting out of our process? Can we get more outputs for our in- puts?" she told MIT News. "I wanted to find a more efficient way to use land and resources so that we could let more farmlands remain wild, or to remain lower production but allow for greater bio-diversity."
Today, the two largest uses of trees are to make wood products and paper. When new bio-materials become readily available, forests will lose their economic value and will be preserved for their environmental, health and recreational value. These researchers, like Velásquez García, are speaking for the trees.
