Seed Crops Fuel New Energy Ideas
Published Nov 20, 2008
Flaxseed has been used for everything from vegetable oil to arthritis treatment to cholesterol controller.
Researchers have big hopes for flax and other tiny seeds as potential sources for biofuel.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research is field-testing 15 varieties of flaxseed alone, using some types the university’s own breeding program developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Some of them are quite promising,” says Gaylon Morgan, associate professor and small grains researcher. “The yield potential is higher.”
Trials in the university’s fields near College Station also are investigating canola, grapeseed, rapeseed, winter-hearty safflower and camelina.
Chevron Technology Ventures and Targeted Growth International are among the private companies financing some projects; state and federal grants are coming in, too.
“In the last two years, we’ve put 30 projects on the ground,” says Bob Avant, bioenergy program director. That represents $27 million in research into dedicated energy crops such as sorghum and cane and those with multiple uses, such as flax and other oilseeds.
“We are overwhelmed in that area and that is good news,” Avant says. “It is very exciting.”
To be commercially viable as biofuel components, flax and other oilseed crops need big yields, careful processing and solid market prices, researchers say.
The AgriLife project is looking at all those aspects and more, everything from microbiology that can convert algae into biomass, to equipment to harvest, process and store the crops, to economic and policy implications.
For example, commercial farmers today could not insure dedicated energy crops, Avant says. Other challenges include how to grow the crops without causing fertilizer runoff or crowding out land needed for feed and food.
Avant’s specialty is agricultural production logistics, and this work provides plenty of challenges. The USDA, he says, anticipates that 1 billion tons of biomass could produce 30 percent of the fuel supply in the United States by 2030, and 80 percent of it would come from agricultural sources.
“It would take 118,000 trailer truckloads a day hauling that material,” he says. “It is amazing how significant the logistical challenge will be.”
Story by Pamela Coyle
Photo by Antony Boshier
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