In some of the most interesting use cases for artificial intelligence, the digital processes are applied to a physical supply chain.

At MIT’s Engine, an incubator and co-working space with many teams working on various inventions, Ashley Beckwith does research for a startup called Foray Bioscience, with the goal of disrupting conventional manufacturing of wood products, and pursuing targeted reforestation.

Estimating that the world has lost a half million acres of forest in the last quarter of a century, Foray is looking at the possibility of getting live cells from plants to develop synthetic products.

Beckwith is pursuing cell culture and tissue engineering: in a recent Planet Action presentation, she talked about how to envision and then tackle the problem.

“Our forests are under strain,” she said. “Forest cover and biodiversity are declining at alarming rates. One third of our tree species are on the verge of extinction, and practically, forest cover loss means less natural regeneration – with fewer seed producers and bigger open stretches in between, forests are slower to bounce back, and biodiversity loss means less resilience. Less variation within a population means greater susceptibility to pests, pathogens, disasters, and these two forces feed off of each other, with forest cover loss driving biodiversity loss, leading to poor resilience and further forest loss. And this, my friends, is what we call a downward spiral, and it’s driven by extreme climate events. But today I want to talk to you about solutions, because we can jump-start forest recovery and break out of this cycle with targeted reforestation.”

Part of this, she explained, has to do with initiatives like commitments to plant trees, but also, along with the will to do this, there’s a need for seed.

Beckwith cited a seed supply problem where U.S. Forest Services only meets about about 6% of wildfire restoration targets, where seed availability is a significant factor.

Why?

“Sourcing seed is like trying to move a pile of sand with a fork,” she said. “It’s painfully effective.”

Also, Beckwith added, just because you have a seed doesn’t mean you get a tree: 90% of seeds will die after being planted.

The solution? Beckwith is looking into how much we can make up for deforestation with new science.

“If we can’t grow it, let’s build it with biology,” she said.

That means applying AI and big data to the problem, along with doing the biological research that provides a viable scaling pathway. Beckwith outlined three steps: revamping planning capabilities, building the seed, and then establishing a framework for scaling.

She also mentioned the pace of climate change, which we all know has to be factored in.

“In 60 years, the climate in Boston is going to feel a lot like Memphis feels today, and that’s a big shift for our northeastern forests,” she said.

In responding to the rapid phenomena showing us how quickly climate change is happening, Beckwith urged the audience to aim not at the present, but at the future, citing a remark attributed to hockey player Wayne Gretzky: “to skate where the puck will be, not where it has been.”

“We’re interested in building a complex ecosystem, not a monoculture,” she added.

For reference, the MIT Technology Review piece describes Foray Bioscience efforts this way:

“Foray’s process involves extracting live cells from the leaves of plants such as the black cottonwood, a popular species for making fiber products, which is used as a model plant for testing the company’s methods. Leaves are first cultured into a kind of liquid broth until the cells reproduce. Then cells are transferred into a gel containing two plant hormones, auxin and cytokinin, allowing researchers to coax the cells to grow into wood-like structures. In this phase, the cell cultures can also be tweaked to produce secondary products such as aromatics for making perfumes and embryos to generate seeds.”

Will it Work?

There are differing opinions on the efficacy of offsetting deforestation with this kind of cell production.

In the MIT Technology Review, writer Abdullahi Tsanni covers Shawn Mansfield at University of British Columbia suggesting that it’s unlikely to have that effect…

On the other hand, as reported, Beckwith says tree cells can grow 100 times faster in the lab than they can with conventional methods.

“Reforestation is a huge job,” she said, “so let’s bring a bigger fork.”

For sure, reforestation is important. And AI has a role to play. But so do humans. Sometimes, it ends up being largely a matter of buy-in, of political will to handle a problem. Where do we go from here? It’s up to you and me.