BASF Podcasts

Climatic conditions such as heat or cold and rain or drought can determine whether a harvest turns out well or badly. With the help of plant biotechnology BASF Plant Science develops for example stress tolerant crops. In a targeted manner genes from other plants that already possess the desired traits are inserted into agricultural plants such as corn, soya, canola or cotton. This enables them to better handle stress factors.

Nowadays sports surfaces are like high-tech sports equipment that has a decisive impact on an athlete's performance. The surface can make all the difference being tenths of a second faster in sprints. Those sports surfaces are not prefabricated and then laid, in fact they are poured on as a liquid right in the stadium with the help of special plastics. So one can always check and optimize the track in a stadium during the actual laying process. With this fine tuning the athletes get back part of the energy they use every time they pound the surface.

We still have got a bit to go before we will have electronic newspapers. But still, with the help of printing technology, it is already possible today to produce not only newspapers but even electronic circuits. This allows an amazingly wide range of products and applications - from heated insoles for your shoes to complex circuits and even transistors. Electrographic Ink without color pigments but with very special liquid synthetic materials, so called polymers, enables to print electronics. So theoretically you could even print out electronics elements with a normal inkjet printer.

In general, there are two special characteristics that define bioplastics: either they consist of renewable resources, or they can be harvested directly from nature. Some bioplastics even fulfill both requirements. Bioplastics are suitable for numerous applications: for example mulch film for agriculture or bags which can be used to hold your household biowaste after shopping. On compost heaps bioplastics completely decompose within a few weeks without leaving any residues behind.

Wherever people have physical contact with synthetic materials, then the material has to be extremely safe. Especially in applications such as foodstuff packaging, medical equipment and children's toys. Without chemical additives like plasticizers all PVC-(Polyvinylchloride) products that are soft and plastic would be in fact fragile and brittle like an uncooked noodle. As such plasticizers and PVC are not permanently connected by chemical means, but rather the connection is only physical. Due to manual stress or exposure to liquids the plasticizers could leave the PVC. The special plasticizer Hexamoll DINCH developed from BASF has a far more permanent connection with the PVC molecules. This makes it very well suitable for the use in sensible applications like children's toys, medical equipment and foodstuff packaging.