University of Nebraska-Lincoln leading $13.5M effort to improve sorghum for biofuel
30 September 2015
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln will lead a $13.5-million, multi-institutional research effort to improve sorghum as a sustainable source for biofuel production.
Funded by the US Department of Energy, this five-year grant takes a comprehensive approach to better understand how plants and microbes interact, and to learn which sorghum germplasm grows better with less water and nitrogen. This research requires a range of expertise, and UNL is teaming with scientists at Danforth Plant Science Center, Washington State University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Boyce Thompson Institute, Clemson University, Iowa State University, Colorado State University and the DOE-Joint Genome Institute.
Most US biofuels currently are made from corn, but sorghum varieties create more biomass for cellulosic ethanol. That makes it a top contender to replace corn and relieve pressure on an important global food source, said project leader Daniel Schachtman, professor of agronomy and horticulture and director of UNL’s Center for Biotechnology, who will lead this project.
It’s becoming more recognized that we need to move biofuel production to more marginal lands, so they don’t compete with food crops. You also don’t want to use a ton of water or fertilizer to keep the system productive.
—Daniel Schachtman
To improve sorghum’s productivity under resource-limited conditions, the team is taking a systems approach. Researchers will investigate sorghum genetics as well as the soil microbes that interact with plants. The research should lead to strategies to increase plant biomass as well as more water use- and nutrient-efficient sorghum crop systems.
The work takes advantage of advances in marker-assisted breeding, metagenomics and computational genomic analysis. Geneticists will search for and study sorghum varieties that use water and nitrogen more efficiently under limited water or nitrogen conditions. At the same time, microbiologists will identify and characterize soil microbes that interact with and benefit sorghum, such as by enhancing nutrient uptake, water-use efficiency and disease protection.
Bringing both approaches together, the team will experiment to find the genetic and microbial combinations with the greatest productivity benefits.
The team also will create an extensive catalogue and repository of sorghum-related soil microbes and their genetic sequences as a resource for the scientific community.
Looking for microbial solutions to improve plant productivity is not well studied, so the project will advance scientific understanding in a potentially significant direction for other crops as well, Schachtman said.
The project’s strength is the interdisciplinary depth and expertise of the team, he added, because it allows the researchers to tackle sorghum production as a whole system. Working together, researchers expect to accomplish far more than is possible at any single institution.
UNL’s Ismail Dweikat, sorghum breeder and professor of agronomy and horticulture, and Arthur Zygielbaum, remote sensing expert and associate research professor of natural resources, are teaming with Schachtman on this project.
Will it grow with less or no fresh water?
Posted by: HarveyD | 30 September 2015 at 10:46 AM
There are GM versions that can grow using water too salty for conventional crops
Aemetis harvesting biomass sorghum in California
"The water supply for the biomass sorghum crop was lower-quality pump water containing salts that typically damage crops. The project was located in the western San Joaquin Valley which has received a low water allocation from state and federal sources for the past several years."
Posted by: NewtonPulsifer | 01 October 2015 at 10:41 AM
The western part of that valley has a shallow water table but is saline. Sorghum takes less water and nutrients to produce a higher yield. The sorghum makes ethanol, which makes distillers dried grain for the livestock. The stalk biomass can make even more ethanol, what is left can be gasified for bio synthetic fuels.
Posted by: SJC | 01 October 2015 at 07:33 PM
People generally forget that ethanol itself is a food used by many people for a large portion of their daily caloric intake. Processes that make ethanol from any biomass, can be replace or modified to make safer foods from such biomass. Maize can be made into hominy for example. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 04 October 2015 at 11:58 PM