Lab-grown wood could be future of furniture

American scientists are working on a plan to "grow" wood in a laboratory without sunlight or soil. Ashley Beckwith, lead author of the study, said her hope is that lab-grown wood could one day supplement traditional forestry methods. Her team is growing the wood by using a 3D-printed gel to mould plant cells into the desired shape.

The technology could be used to create wooden parts or planks, which could then be used in a piece of furniture. Speaking on BBC 5 Live's Naga Munchetty Programme, Ms Beckwith said the world was facing an "ever increasing demand for plant-based products, whether that be food, materials for infrastructure, consumer goods and even crops needed for bio-energy fuels, and we're working with a finite area of farmable land".

Explaining the differences between wood from trees and lab-grown wood, she said: "Right now the differences between these types of structures and a traditional wooden structure is that wood is highly ordered… you have the grains in the wood and they go in a specific direction because they are vessels designed to facilitate liquid to flow up a tree. Despite the research being in the early stages, the MIT PhD candidate said she hoped they could see real progress within 10 years.

Read more at BBC

Image Credit: Unsplash

-jk-