One of the touchier areas of scientific research is the genetic manipulation of food plants, seaweed and algae to try to produce more food or provide better rates of conversion into biofuels.
They are a deeply controversial subject because early versions of GM food crops had to be dosed in highly toxic chemicals, and claims of higher yields and better nutrition were unproven. It some cases they caused severe environmental problems, and the European Union maintains a ban on many varieties to this day.
But in the U.S. there has been more acceptance of GMOs as a way of extracting more money from farming, and scientists are encouraged to continue to develop new crops with modified genes.
Two global staples, sugarcane and soy, are being researched by teams from the University of Illinois. One group at the university’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) has shown that sugarcane can be genetically engineered to produce oil in its leaves and stems for biodiesel production. Surprisingly, the modified sugarcane plants also produced more sugar, which can be used for producing ethanol.
To compete with traditional crops, GMOs have to show they can be more profitable, and the Illinois scientists claim that their sugarcane would produce five times the income of soy and twice as much as corn.
Perhaps more importantly, this sugarcane can be grown on marginal lands in the Gulf States: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
“Instead of fields of oil pumps, we envision fields of green plants sustainably producing biofuel in perpetuity on our nation’s soil, particularly marginal soil that is not well-suited to food production,” says researcher Stephen Long.
However, as with most genetic research, there is a long gap between promising early results and large-scale planting, leading to the production of bio-diesel and ethanol. Long acknowledges it will take 10 to 15 years for the technology to reach growers’ fields, but believes that length of time will be necessary to ensure future fuel security. Sugarcane will produce substitutes for both gasoline and diesel.
The researchers have published in the journal of the university’s Petross project a paper analyzing the first genetically modified sugarcane varieties.
Using a juicer, the researchers extracted about 90 percent of the sugar and 60 percent of the oil from the plant; the juice was fermented to produce ethanol and later treated with organic solvents to recover the oil. The team has patented the method used to separate the oil and sugar.
They recovered 0.5 and 0.8 percent oil from two of the modified sugarcane lines—67 and 167 percent more oil than unmodified sugarcane.
“The oil composition is comparable to that obtained from other feedstocks like seaweed or algae that are being engineered to produce oil,” says co-author Vijay Singh, director of the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory at Illinois.
“We expected that as oil production increased, sugar production would decrease, based on our computer models,” says Long. “However, we found that the plant can produce more oil without loss of sugar production, which means our plants may ultimately be even more productive than we originally anticipated.”
The second team, working on soy, is excited by the benefits their research may produce in helping to feed the planet’s growing population in a warming world. Soy grows in sub-tropical conditions and is present in almost all processed food on supermarket shelves across the world.
The university has been genetically modifying soy to produce a greater yield in the conditions that are expected in the future: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and much higher temperatures where soy currently grows.
Scientists expect that plants will grow better with more atmospheric carbon dioxide, since they need it for photosynthesis. This is known as the carbon dioxide fertilizer effect. However, the extra heat will also cause plants distress and probably wipe out these benefits.
The research under field conditions at an experimental station replicating future climate change subjected the genetically modified soya to the same conditions (including sun, wind, rain and clouds) as other Illinois field crops, and found that over three years they consistently yielded better.
“When we’re trying to meet our food needs for the future, this specific modification is one of the many tools that we’re going to need to rely upon,” says Carl Bernacchi, an associate professor of plant biology at the university.
Source: Climate News Network