By Eli Kintisch, April 25, 2008, sciencemag.org

New crops and improved genetics could be key to successful biofuel agriculture

Once, plant breeders dreamed of plumper tomatoes, heartier soybeans, and juicier corn kernels. These days, visions of squat poplars and earless corn stalks are dancing in their heads. They are hoping these new-fangled crops will make cost-effective biofuels. The dominant method of making biofuels today, converting sugars from crops such as corn or sugarcane to ethanol, threatens the food supply and imposes environmental costs. Ultimately, processing cellulose from the cell walls of stems and leaves, which are generally discarded, would make better use of agricultural acreage, as would increasing the oil content of oil-producing crops. In the United States, both government-supported genomicists and privately funded plant scientists are expanding plant genomics research and field studies to figure out the species with the best biofuel potential and how to wring more energy out of each acre planted.

Many researchers are looking at well-known species whose genomes have already been sequenced for clues to making other plants better energy crops: Arabidopsis, rice, poplar, and now, corn (Science, 7 March, p. 1333). Others plan to tackle sequencing projects for species few had cared about until a few years ago. These include perennials such as switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and Miscanthus, both considered good candidates for energy crops because of their high cellulose content. And some scientists are breeding a wide variety of candidate crops around the world, hoping to find optimal varieties. “The spotlight is on this underdeveloped field,” says plant biochemist Kenneth Keegstra of Michigan State University in East Lansing, part of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.

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