Search

Los hongos endófitos juegan un papel decisivo en diferentes procesos biológicos. Se consideran implicados en la resistencia de las plantas ante diferentes tipos de estrés. Además, ante la senescencia de los tejidos que habitan, parecen ejercer un papel relevante en las fases iniciales de degradación. Con el fin de progresar en el conocimiento de sus funciones ecológicas se estudió, mediante herramientas metagenómicas, la flora endófita asociada a dos especies forestales, Ulmus minor y Eucalyptus globulus, y su implicación en la defensa de la planta ante la grafiosis y en la degradación de la madera, respectivamente. En el olmo se detectaron 164 unidades taxonómicas operacionales (OTUs) y la frecuencia de dos órdenes fúngicos se correlacionó positivamente con la resistencia de su hospedante a la grafiosis. En ramillos de eucalipto en diferentes fases de degradación se detectaron 115 OTUs, los cuales parecen actuar de forma secuencial en el proceso de acuerdo a su taxonomía y capacidad de degradación de los diferentes componentes de la madera. Los resultados sitúan a los endófitos como herramientas biotecnológicas potenciales en el control de enfermedades y la industria de la celulosa.

Centro de Investigación Forestal (CIFOR), Motivated by the negative impact of fossil fuel consumption on the environment, the need arises to produce materials and energy from renewable sources. Cellulose, the main biopolymer on Earth, plays a key role in this context, serving as a platform for the development of biofuels, chemicals and novel materials. Among the latter, micro-and nanocellulose have been receiving increasing attention in the last few years. Their many attractive properties, i.e., thermal stability, high mechanical resistance, barrier properties, lightweight, optical transparency and ease of chemical modification, allow their use in a wide range of applications, such as Paper or polymer reinforcement, Packag-ing, construction, membranes, bioplastics, bioengineering, optics and electronics. In view of the increasing demand for traditional wood pulp (e.g., obtained from eucalypt, birch, pine, spruce) for micro/nanocellulose production, dedicated crops and agricultural residues can be interesting as raw materials for this purpose. This work aims at achieving microfibrillated cellulose production from fast-growing poplar and olive tree pruning using physical pretreatment (PFI refining) before the microfibrillation stage. Both raw materials yielded microfibrillated cellulose with similar properties to that obtained from a commercial industrial eucalypt pulp, producing films with high mechanical properties and low wettability. According to these properties, different applications for cellulose microfibers suspensions and films are discussed., This research was funded by Comunidad de Madrid and MCIU/AEI/FEDER, EU via Projects SUSTEC-CM S2018/EMT-4348 and RTI2018-096080-B-C22, respectively. B.W. acknowledges financial support from MINECO (Spain) and FEDER (EU) (project MAT2015-71117-R) and from MICINN (Spain) for a JIN contract (PID2019-107022RJ-I00).