US to finance 10 bioenergy research projects with USD 12.6m

Jul 18, 2014 - The US government will grant a total of USD 12.6 million (EUR 9.3m) in funding to ten selected research projects that seek to speed up genetic breeding programmes targeting advances in plant feedstocks for the production of biofuels and bio-products.

The research grants were unveiled by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Thursday. They are part of a 2006 programme aimed at biomass genomics research with the purpose of harnessing non-food plant biomass for the making of ethanol and other biofuels or renewable chemical feedstocks. The projects awarded financing this year will accelerate the breeding of optimised dedicated bioenergy feedstocks by achieving a better understanding of the interactions between the plants and their environment. Thus they will allow the development of new regionally-adapted bioenergy feedstock cultivars with maximal biomass or seed oil yield.

More specifically, the DOE’s Office of Science will provide USD 10.6 million in funding to eight projects and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will finance a further two with USD 2 million. The projects are located in the states of California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Texas and Virginia.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.740)

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