Bloomberg: Altered switchgrass has less lignin, makes more ethanol – plus, it’s cheaper
This week the Oak Ridge Nat’l Laboratory and a large family fortune-based ag and health fund, the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Oklahoma, jointly sent out an interesting press release announcing their researchers have bred and engineered a new kind of switchgrass. It’s also topic of a paper in PNAS. This is interesting. Not splashy front page news, but it’s good to see somebody covered it:
- Bloomberg News – Elizabeth Lopatto: Genetically Modified Prairie Grass Yields Cheaper, More Abundant Ethanol ;
Lopatto adds background info on ethanol production and the history of the great plains to what is in the press release. She quotes from the paper. The led calls switchgrass the fuel for the buffalo herds that the US westward expansion encountered. I wondered about that – really? Switchgrass just sounds so prickly and coarse. But I changed my mind after riffling through the Noble Foundation’s annual report to see who funds it (looks like self-endowed by Lloyd Noble, the philanthropic oil driller who set the foundation up 60-some years ago). I saw a reference to a test in which foundation-funded researchers counted the bites of cattle in a field of mixed forage. They liked switchgrass best.
More interesting to me, maybe worth more reporting and quite aside from the primary significance for biofuel production, is that these genetically altered crop plants are modified to change their structural nature - to have less lignin - and are not in the parade of GM crops that resist herbicides such as Roundup or contain Bt or other pesticide genes. Those latter ones are not new or remarkable or very inspired. This new one (as would be examples of food crops with better nutrients) appears from here to be more in line with what a well-regulated exploitation of genetic engineering in ag ought to be doing.
Another suggestion – would somebody ask these people at ORNL or the Noble Foundation whether their more easily digested and distilled, lower-lignin grass is, um, floppier?
Grist for the Mill:
ORNL Press Release ; Noble Foundation Press Release (same as ORNL) ; Noble Foundation homepage ; Annual Report ;
- Charlie Petit
February 15th, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Charlie can’t directly answer your question but there are GM trees with low lignin, presumably standing tall trees. Haven’t covered this for awhile but as I recall lignin plays a key role in disease resistance, so lowered levels might create disease problems (which would be a big deal).
Previous studies of ordinary switchgrass found it better in many respects than corn but still hardly used. David Biello at Sci Am as a for instance:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn
So it sure not clear why we need GM switchgrass (esp when boosting fuel efficiency of vehicles would be easier, faster and better)
February 18th, 2011 at 9:59 am
Thanks Stephen, I’d been under the impression that as lignin is essential for wood stiffness a lower level might bring less strength to any plant. But as grasses are not woody, that perhaps make no sense. Thx too for the Sci Am link.