Non-edible plants engineered to grow on land abandoned for agricultural use
Recent legislation and funding have spurred the development of the first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol biorefineries.
These efforts have also revived interest in the development of dedicated energy crops selected for biomass productivity, and for properties that facilitate conversion of biomass to liquid fuels. While many aspects of developing these feedstocks are compatible with current agricultural activities, improving biomass productivity may provide opportunities to expand the potential for biofuel production beyond the classical research objectives associated with improving traditional food and feed crops
That is the jist of a paper recently published by Chris R. Somerville, Plant & Microbial Biology Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authored with Heather Youngs.
"Many of the concerns about the use of food crops for biofuels do not apply to the use of the inedible parts of plants that are the focus of our review," Somerville said. "New, dedicated energy crops are a particularly promising area of research."
Somerville is also director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, a public-private partnership between UC Berkeley, the University of Illinos at Urbana-Champaign, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and British Petroleum, which funds the research.
Amid the push to develop clean energy, new research suggests plant-based biofuels could meet 30% of global demand for transportation fuel and slash the greenhouse gas emissions that come from burning fossil fuels.
Recent scientific advances raise the possibility that biofuels can be made from non-edible plants engineered to grow on land abandoned for agricultural use and thus not compromise food production, according to Somerville's article, which is in F1000 Biology Reports.
Link to the article in F1000 Biology Reports