Tech Roundup: Reforesting Brumadinho

You’re reading The Brazilian Report’s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: new tech helps reforest Brumadinho after the 2019 dam tragedy, and 2021 already setting records for startup investment.

New Brazilian tech to help reforest tragedy-stricken Brumadinho

Researchers from the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) are using patented technology to help reforest portions of the Minas Gerais town of Brumadinho, partially destroyed in a 2019 dam collapse which claimed 270 lives. Using the DNA of damaged specimens, the project will use unprecedented techniques with the aim of rapidly recuperating forest areas that have shown no signs of recovery two years after the disaster. 

How it works. The idea began life as a master’s thesis, exploring how degraded forest areas could be revived by extracting DNA from trees. Soon enough, researchers were already in the field, selecting which trees could be saved and gathering specimens. The initial objective is not only to save trees that were left sick and damaged by the dam collapse in Brumadinho, but to identify those at risk of extinction. 

• Cuttings are taken from the degraded trees and sent to the university laboratory, where the specimen’s DNA is extracted and copied.
• With new seedlings in place, early flowering is induced using substances developed by the UFV researchers, promoting the tree’s rapid growth.
• “These species can take up to ten years to bloom. And with this technique, they flower within six months to a year,” says Gleison dos Santos, forest engineering professor at UFV, speaking to The Brazilian Report.

Brumadinho. In January 2019, an iron ore tailings dam administered by Brazil’s largest mining company Vale collapsed near the town of Brumadinho, killing 270 people — 11 of whom have yet to be found. The...