Two University of Guelph engineers have received substantial research funding to continue developing a simple, inexpensive sensor for quick detection of brain-wasting infections related to mad-cow disease.

Profs. Gordon Hayward and Warren Stiver, School of Engineering, will use almost $200,000 in federal funding to further develop a device intended to pinpoint cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad-cow disease in cattle, and related forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or prion diseases.

The Guelph researchers received a two-year, $178,000 grant from PrioNet Canada, a recently established national Network of Centres of Excellence for research on BSE and related diseases. The agency provided a total of $3 million over two years for 10 projects across Canada on everything from vaccine development for BSE to the impact of prion diseases on farm family community health.

“We were thrilled with the number of applications,” said Neil Cashman, PrionNet’s scientific director. “Prion diseases have devastating economic, social, environmental and health consequences.”

Scientists believe that these fatal illnesses of the central nervous system are caused by proteins called prions that convert normal proteins into an infectious form. The incurable diseases, including variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, cause sponge-like holes to develop in brain and nervous tissue.

The U of G engineers have developed an acoustic prion sensor whose quartz crystal detects the telltale misfolding of prion proteins from samples of nerve tissues, bodily fluids and environmental samples.

Working with scientists at the National Reference Laboratory of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in Ottawa, Hayward and Stiver have shown that their device can distinguish between normal samples and brain tissue of sheep infected with scrapie and deer with chronic wasting disease.

The sensor provides results in about two hours, at least as fast as conventional tests using antibodies. A convenient, rapid assay to pinpoint infected individuals could avoid the need to cull entire herds of cattle suspected to have BSE.

Referring to their earlier work funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Hayward said: “We have proven the principle. We plan to expand the evidence and answer important questions to support development of a commercial device.”

Their new funding will allow them to continue developing the device, including testing it for use on urine and blood samples. They hope to find a commercial partner to produce the sensors for wider use, likely by laboratory or veterinary diagnostics companies.

As of late August, eight cases of BSE have been detected in Canada since 2003. The initial case led the United States and other countries to close their borders to Canadian beef imports, a move that cost the Canadian economy about $6.3 billion before the U.S. ban was lifted in mid-2005.

“So, yes, the potential is for prices to move up, but still within ranges that we have seen before.” (The economists project that the price of switchgrass could reach $49 to $50 per ton in 2015 and $65 per ton by 2025 if the demand for cellulosic ethanol materializes.)

For now, scientists believe switchgrass can be grown anywhere in the United States east of the Rockies. “We think Tennessee can be one of the states where switchgrass can begin to take hold as an energy crop,” says Ugarte.

As the demand for renewable energy supplies increase, the economists foresee marked improvement in net farm income – by as much as $25 billion – and a decline in government payments – of $2.5 billion – over the next 20 years.

The changing energy mix could have a direct impact of $154.7 billion and a total impact of $560 billion on the national economy by 2025 with a net economic impact (after subtracting revenues displaced by the decreased demand for gasoline) of $129.8 billion and $465.8 billion. The economy could also see a net gain of 3.5 million jobs.

“We believe this has the potential to be a win-win-win situation for agriculture and for the U.S. economy,” says Ugarte. “But somebody has to start the process, and that’s what we’re working on now.”

© 2006 Prism Business Media Inc

The bill passed the Assembly Agricultural Committee in June and will likely be taken up by the Senate and Assembly before the session ends Aug. 31.

California growers use genetically modified seeds to grow crops that are resistant to weed-killing sprays. In the Central Valley, the technique is mostly used to grow cotton.

Opponents say biotech farming is a potential environmental and health hazard. Organic growers, meanwhile, fear that traits from genetically modified crops can spread to their crops, rendering them unmarketable as organic crops.

Until lawmakers enact statewide protections, such as labeling laws, "we think it's the right and responsibility of local governments to protect their citizens and environments," said Renata Brillinger of Californians for GE-Free Agriculture, a coalition of environmental groups and family and organic farms.

Florez said parties on both sides of the debate are trying to broker a last-minute deal more palatable to bill opponents. But he is prepared to move the bill forward if no changes are made, he said.

"We have the votes to get it off (the Assembly floor)," he said.

The bill's aim is fairness for California growers. Supporters include the California Farm Bureau Federation as well as several cities and counties in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley.

County-by-county ordinances pose "serious financial and practical problems concerning the orderly marketing and sale of agricultural commodities within the state," supporters say in the Assembly bill analysis.

There is a mixed view among counties on biotech crops. Voters in some counties have rejected proposed bans.

Some Valley governments have gone a step further, passing resolutions in support of biotechnology.

Fresno County passed its resolution in 2004 in response to a request by the Fresno County Farm Bureau.

"We are the biggest ag county in the United States, and there's been a tremendous advantage to the ag industry" from growing genetically modified crops, said Fresno County Supervisor Judy Case, who grew up on a family farm in Sanger.

About half of all cotton grown in California is genetically modified, said Fresno County Agricultural Commissioner Jerry Prieto Jr. Because the cotton is resistant to herbicides, growers don't have to use hoods or shields to protect the crop when spraying.

"It's a huge cost savings from them," Prieto said. "Farmers here in California and in the United States should have the same tools the rest of the world is using, and the rest of the world is using biotechnology."

But Brillinger, of the GE-Free coalition, said there is not enough research on biotech farming and because of that "we can't even know if there are health risks."

The California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities fear the legislation is written too broadly.

The bill prohibits local governments from regulating "any matter relating to the registration, labeling, sale, storage, transportation, distribution, notification of use, or use of seeds or nursery stock," according to the latest bill analysis.

That would prevent cities and counties from doing things such as prohibiting seed trucks from parking in residential areas, according to a letter the two government groups sent to Assembly members last week.

The provisions are "so sweeping that they would restrict the ability of cities and counties to engage in basic local government regulation," the groups said.

Copyright ContraCostaTimes

A recent World Trade Organization (WTO) interim ruling on the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), EC-Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products, will be of significant interest to companies operating in the food and agricultural sectors.

The ruling arises from a dispute initiated in 2003 by the United States, Canada and Argentina against the European Community (EC) over its treatment of GMOs and products containing GMOs. These countries claimed that the EC approval system delayed the commercialization of GMOs, and that some European countries had effectively banned certain genetically modified crops.

The long-awaited ruling may have very broad implications, and not just for the agri-food sector. It signals a WTO preference for science rather than mere concern as a tool of justification of trade-restrictive measures designed to protect health or the environment. The fact that the Panel did not consider the provisions of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in its analysis also raises far-reaching questions about the interplay between the WTO agreements and other international treaties. As the world’s third largest grower and exporter of GMO crops, Canada no doubt stands to benefit from the Panel’s decision.

Background

The case was considered controversial from the outset. At the heart of the dispute is the right of countries, in light of their international trade obligations, to control the introduction into their markets of GMOs. The United States, Canada and Argentina (the "Complaining Parties") were concerned that the EC’s regulatory system for the approval of GMOs was being used to shut out imports of various GMO crops without any scientific basis. The dispute was viewed by some as a contest between the environmentalists’ "precautionary principle" and the more traditional view that hard scientific support is needed to justify banning a product on the basis of health concerns.

The precautionary principle, manifested in the EC regulatory system for GMOs, provides that the mere possibility of harm to human health or the environment is enough to justify precautionary measures, even in the absence of scientific certainty or probability of harm.

The precautionary principle has been endorsed in several international treaties, including the recently concluded Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which specifically deals with "living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology". (The EC has ratified the Cartagena Protocol, while the United States has not signed on to the treaty, and Canada and Argentina have not ratified it.)

As the Earth approaches its carrying capacity for human activity, we must adopt more sustainable ways to generate, distribute and consume resources. Considering the magnitude of the challenges we face, we should use all tools that can contribute to our long-term sustainability.

The ability to adapt plants, animals and microbes using the traditional and new tools of biotechnology has already had an impact and will certainly play an increasing role in agriculture. Conservation of the Earth’s biodiversity and its natural resources is similarly important for the future; it is our belief that the conservation of biodiversity and the judicious use of biotechnology are not mutually exclusive.

Agriculture faces many challenges including the protection of natural resources and the food supply. Just as society is concerned about the threat of emerging diseases such as avian flu and HIV to human health, we should also be concerned about the threat of diseases and pests to the sustainability of natural resources and the food supply.

Those who live in California’s coastal areas, and have watched the damage to oak stands by sudden oak death (SOD), can understand the vulnerability of more than just public health to emerging diseases. Scientists recently sequenced the genome for the SOD pathogen, a development that promises more rapid and conclusive diagnoses. Similarly, some scientists and growers believe that the best long-term answer to the bacterium responsible for Pierce’s disease of grapevines is to develop vines that are genetically resistant to the microbe.

A number of ecological and socioeconomic crises now loom on the horizon. Global climate change may lead to changing local conditions and the need to adapt crop varieties. Changes in international and domestic farm policies, as well as world markets, pose continuing threats to many of the world’s farmers.

Just as most oil production takes place abroad, ammonia-based fertilizers — a major part of the cost of agriculture — are increasingly purchased from foreign producers. Potassium and phosphorous supplies will likely be less stable in the future as well, and the production and application of all fertilizers are energy-intensive. All of these issues beg for biotechnical solutions to help farmers adapt and conserve precious resources.

Until the dawn of the industrial era, agriculture and forests provided the food, fiber and most of the energy necessary to sustain civilization. Given today’s increasingly unsustainable consumption of energy resources, agriculture will once again be called upon to significantly contribute to civilization’s energy needs. The world’s population will likely increase by about 50% in the next 50 years, and the standard of living worldwide is increasing. These trends will result in heightened world demand for food, fiber and energy.

To meet this demand, U.S. agriculture is on the cusp of a transition equivalent to when plant breeding and synthetic fertilizers led to corn and soybeans becoming dominant crops. To meet this challenge, there will likely be a transition to genetically adapted crops with a variety of input and output traits; the new agriculture will also focus on yet-to-be-developed “energy crops” that can be used for biomass or the production of liquid fuels such as ethanol.

One of the questions that California must address is what role our agriculture will play in producing the new energy crops. Biotechnology offers appealing opportunities to develop energy crops that are markedly different from food and fiber crops. They will be drought-resistant, use nitrogen efficiently and, ideally, be harvestable during much of the year. While the cost of production in California may preclude the cultivation of crops grown more efficiently in the Midwest, biotechnology could lead to the creation of energy crops adapted specifically to regions of our state that currently struggle to be economically competitive.

Biotechnology has not yet had an impact on California’s wide array of specialty crops, but research is being conducted to learn how to manipulate the genetics of these economically important crops (see California Agriculture 58[2]; “Fruits of biotechnology struggle to emerge”). These crops are the basis of California’s competitive agricultural economy, and it is critical for UC to do the research that will keep this sector of our state’s economy competitive in global markets. The potential exists to provide consumers with specialty crops enhanced by biotechnology, and managed with scientific understanding of the risks and benefits.

We are proud of the accomplishments of the faculty, staff and students at the campuses and county offices of the UC Agricultural Experiment Station and UC Cooperative Extension. Our scientists are leaders in the development and adoption of agricultural biotechnology. Ultimate decisions about how this important technology is used by our society will involve a full airing of the societal and political implications of these new crops. It is our hope that we always have faculty at the forefront of developing technology, and providing insights into its implications.

The edition of California Agriculture addresses a number of issues surrounding the risks and benefits of agricultural biotechnology, including transgenic plants, fish and animals (pages 116­–139), and provides a glimpse of some of the important work being carried out in UC laboratories and field stations to address both.

Copyright California Agriculture

With rising costs and depleting supplies of fuel, as well as the negative environmental consequences associated with the use of fossil fuels, scientists are studying the viability of biofuels, which are sourced from agricultural products.

Two main types of biofuels are currently in use: bioethanol, sourced mainly from corn and sugarcane; and biodiesel, sourced mainly from soybean and oilseed rape.

To be viable alternatives, biofuels should provide a high net energy gain, have high environmental benefits, be economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities without reducing food supplies. In line with this, Jason Hill and colleagues of St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA, examine the “Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels.” Their work appears in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By using current data on farm yields, commodity and fuel prices, farm energy and agrichemical inputs, production plant efficiencies, co-product production, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and other environmental effects brought about by the use of corn grain ethanol and soybean biodiesel, researchers concluded that biodiesel is the more viable fuel alternative, at least in the US. In particular, they found that:

1) Bioethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93% more;

2) GHG emissions are reduced 12% by the production and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel;

3) Biodiesel releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than ethanol;

4) Biodiesel has minimal impact on human and environmental health through nitrogen, phosphorous, and pesticide release; and

5) Transportation biofuels such as synfuel hydrocarbons or cellulosic ethanol, if produced from low-input biomass grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste biomass, could provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits than food-based biofuels.

Read the complete article at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/30/11206 Copyright © 2006. CropBiotech Net

Related articles:

• Researchers identify energy gains and environmental impacts of corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel (11 Jul 2006)
  
• Ethanol use growing but far from cure-all for energy problems (11 Jul 2006)
  
• US DOE publishes research roadmap for developing biofuels (07 Jul 2006)
  
• World biofuels to grow but subsidy needed-OECD (05 Jul 2006)
  
• The Big Question: Is ethanol the answer to the world's oil problems, or a green pipe dream?  (29 Jun 2006)
  

According to Mr. Davie, "This board is eminently well-qualified to oversee our R&D and technology development activities, both from the point of view of the science and the Canadian funding environment. Our board is well-balanced in terms of researchers and technology development professionals and will be instrumental in furthering Comtek's intellectual property strategy."

Comtek Advanced Structures (www.comtekadvanced.com) specializes in advanced composites applications for the international aerospace and defense market. With facilities in Burlington, Ontario, Canada and Phoenix, Arizona, USA, the company's diversified operations include design and manufacturing contracts with customers such as General Electric, Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney, Honeywell, Goodrich and DRS, as well as the provision of repair services and proprietary spare parts for airlines worldwide.

The SmartCure system is a complementary technology to Comtek's "SmartFlow" process for resin infusion, for which Comtek applied for patent protection last year. In typical aerospace applications, SmartFlow and SmartCure are integrated by Comtek in a complete resin infusion and cure control system to produce complex composite parts and assemblies at very low cost compared to conventional processing technology. The combined system is flexible, scalable and readily adaptable to a wide variety of resin formulations.

Comtek Advanced Structures (www.comtekadvanced.com) specializes in advanced composites applications for the international aerospace and defense market. With facilities in Burlington, Ontario, Canada and Phoenix, Arizona, USA, the company's diversified operations include design and manufacturing contracts with customers such as General Electric, Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney, Honeywell, Goodrich and DRS, as well as the provision of repair services and proprietary spare parts for airlines worldwide.

"Specialists in Advanced Composites Applications for the International Aerospace and Defense Market"

BEIJING - China intends to launch a satellite aimed at developing super space-enhanced fruit, vegetables and other crops, as it seeks ways to expand the nation's food production, state press said Monday.

The Shijian-8, a recoverable satellite, will be launched aboard a Long March 2C rocket in early September, for a two-week mission that will expose 2 000 seeds to cosmic radiation and micro-gravity, the China Daily reported.

The "seed satellite" will enable scientists to try to cultivate high-yield and high-quality plants, Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration, told the paper.

"Exposed to special environment such as cosmic radiation and micro-gravity, some seeds will mutate to such an extent that they may produce much higher yields and improved quality," the paper said.

Nine categories of seeds, including grains, cash crops and forage plants will be aboard the satellite, it said.

China has been experimenting with space-bred seeds for years, with rice and wheat exposed to the universe resulting in increased yields, the paper said.

Space-bred tomato and green peppers seeds have resulted in harvests between 10 and 20 percent larger than ordinary seeds, while vegetables grown from space-bred seeds have a higher vitamin content, it added.

However the satellite to be launched in September will be the first dedicated specifically for seeds.

China's space seed experiments come as the nation seeks ways to feed its 1,3 billion people amid a rapid decline in farming land due to swift industrialsation.

The nation has pursued some forms of genetically modified crops, with GMO tomatoes, soy beans and corn already in production. China is also mulling plans to approve the production of genetically modified rice.
Copyright © 2006 Independent Online

China is no newcomer to the biotech-crop club--only four countries plant more acres of GM crops than the world’s most populous nation. Yet government leaders in Beijing are on the verge of a decision that historians eventually may interpret as a tipping point in the global debate over genetically modified food.

A “tipping point” is the dramatic moment when something unique or rare becomes utterly common. The term has academic origins, but it gained enormous popular attention a few years ago, upon the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

I’ve argued that when it comes to biotech crops, we passed the tipping point long ago. My own favorite metaphor has involved the genie and the bottle--the biotech genie is out of the bottle, and nobody will ever coax him back in. The bottom line is that with well more than a billion acres of GM crops now having been planted and harvested, this agricultural technology is here to stay.

And that fact will become irreversibly true when China approves the commercial sale of GM rice. One recent report suggests that regulators may not approve commercial sales of the rice this year, but it’s only a matter of time before they do.

Anybody who has ever eaten Chinese food knows how important rice is to the Chinese diet--it’s the most basic and popular food in the world’s biggest country. How’s that for a tipping point?

As it happens, biotech rice is already a fact of life in China. The government has researched and tested it, the way governments do before they approve a product for the marketplace. But it’s also seeping into commercial use: Earlier this month, anti-biotech activists at Greenpeace said they that had purchased several bags of rice, tested them for biotech, and received positive results.

I don’t trust much of what Greenpeace says, but in this case their finding seems plausible. It wouldn’t be the first time biotech crops have gained a foothold in a country before they were formally approved for planting. That’s what happened a few years ago in Brazil, which shares a border with Argentina, one of the world’s leading producers of biotech soybeans.

Brazilian farmers decided that they wanted to take advantage of biotechnology--higher yields, lower costs--just as their neighbors in Argentina did. So they started smuggling seeds across the border. Brazil eventually approved biotech soybeans, but its decision came in the wake of decisions that farmers already had been making for themselves.

It’s not clear exactly how biotechnology moved from field tests to commercial paddies in China, or precisely how widespread GM rice has become there. No matter what the details, it doesn’t take the wisdom of Confucius to understand the motives of Chinese farmers.

A recent study by a team of Chinese and American scientists revealed that the use of biotech rice reduced pesticide costs by 80 percent. “We estimate that if 90 percent of the farmers plant GM rice, then the annual agricultural income of China will increase by $4 billion,” said Huang Jukun, director of the Agriculture Policy Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

That’s a lot of cash, even in a country that has more than a billion mouths to feed. Government leaders, which recently have promised to improve the economic health of rural China - where a lot of rice is grown - are certain to take note.

What’s more, they have nothing to fear from biotechnology and they know it. They’ve been living with it for years, and now they’re even importing it from the United States: The first cargo of American-grown GM corn is reaching Chinese docks right now.

Around the world, GM crops are becoming more popular. No country that has allowed access to this technology has subsequently turned its back on biotech, in what we might label an “untipping point.” To be sure, a number of European nations continue to hold out against GMOs. Yet they are becoming increasingly isolated, and China’s forthcoming decision will highlight their detachment.

You certainly don’t need to crack open a fortune cookie to predict the future of rice farming in China: Farmers want it, and they will get it.

Dean Kleckner chairs Truth About Trade and Technology (www.truthabouttrade.org). He is an Iowa farmer and past president of the American Farm Bureau.

Copyright Truth About Trade & Technology

Demand for ethanol, a fuel made from corn, can turn Midwestern states back into the Corn Belt, said a University of Missouri (MU) agricultural economist. "Ethanol has major implications for corn acreage," said Pat Westhoff, with the MU Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI).

"Ethanol production has doubled in the last four years and is projected to double again over the next four years," Westhoff told an audience of 105 at the annual Breimyer Seminar on the MU campus.

Theme of the agricultural policy discussion was "BioFuels: An Agricultural Revolution?"

Ron Plain, seminar coordinator and MU Extension economist, said "Turning farm crops into automobile fuel has the potential to be the biggest change in U.S. agriculture since the introduction of the soybean."

New FAPRI projections indicate fewer acres planted to soybeans and wheat as more acres are planted to corn to meet ethanol demand.

At present, corn and soybean acreage is about evenly divided in the Corn Belt, which covers Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. For 2006, each crop takes about 36 million acres.

By 2010, end of the five-year revised FAPRI baseline, the five-state acreage for corn could reach almost 39 million. Soybeans would drop to 33 million acres.

In spite of rising corn production, FAPRI projections say corn prices also go up due to increased demand from the growing number of ethanol plants.

The average corn price is $1.98 per bushel for the 2005 marketing year just ending. The price for the crop now growing in the field is projected at $2.33. By 2010 the average price jumps to $2.69 per bushel in the outlook.

FAPRI baseline projections assume normal weather and continuation of current government policies. Both can change, Westhoff said.

Westhoff pointed out ethanol production rose due to a 51-cent tax credit and a renewable-fuel mandate that 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol, or other renewable biofuel, be used.

He added that current projected ethanol production far exceeds mandated biofuel levels.

Gary Marshall, executive director of the Missouri Corn Growers Association, said, "The renewable fuel mandate provided a floor that gave encouragement to investors in ethanol plants." Marshall said all ethanol plants in Missouri are farmer-owned.

Use of agricultural equity allows farmers and landowners to participate in economic renewal in rural areas of the state, Marshall told the audience.

The prospect of increasing returns from corn draws more available crop acreage into corn production, Westhoff said. Some attending the conference expressed concern about farmers pulling land out of the soil-saving Conservation Reserve Program and putting it into crop production.

Westhoff said land could be drawn out of CRP: The amount depends on markets and policy decisions.

Higher energy prices have driven the surge in ethanol production. "Current market conditions encourage very rapid growth in biofuels," Westhoff said. "That is not likely to slow.

"The greatest risk for biofuel investments is a downturn in petroleum prices," Westhoff said. "Rising grain prices will likely have little impact on slowing ethanol production. The price of corn would have to get very high before an ethanol plant would shut down."

In an interview after the program, Abner Womack, co-director of FAPRI said, "One scenario for lower petroleum prices would be a global economic recession that caused China and India to back off on their increasing use of gasoline."

While outlook for ethanol producers seems promising, there are risks to growers, Westhoff said. "Increased demand and lower carryover stocks could lead to greater volatility in corn prices. Risk management becomes a bigger issue."

Rising corn costs place greater pressure on beef, pork and poultry producers who feed that grain, Westhoff said.

Partially offsetting that shift in feed demand is an increasing supply of distiller's byproduct grains that can be used in livestock rations. Feed nutrients are left over after starch in grain is converted into alcohol.

"A cattle feedlot located near an ethanol plant would have an advantage," Westhoff said. "A feedlot farther away might not find it practical to use byproduct feeds and would pay more for corn."

A concern for livestock producers is "too much, too fast," Westhoff said. Livestock feeding systems will require a transition period to learn to use all of the byproduct feed coming onto the market.

"Big questions remain," Westhoff said. "What will happen in a drought year with a short corn crop? Who will bid the most to get the needed grain?"

The revised FAPRI outlook is posted on the Internet at http://www.fapri.missouri.edu.

Copyright Missouri Univ

Producing ethanol fuel from biomass is attractive for a number of reasons. At a time of soaring gas prices and worries over the long-term availability of foreign oil, the domestic supply of raw materials for making biofuels appears nearly unlimited. Meanwhile, the amount of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere annually by burning fossil fuels is projected to rise worldwide from about 24 billion metric tons in 2002 to 33 billion metric tons in 2015. Burning a gallon of ethanol, on the other hand, adds little to the total carbon in the atmosphere, since the carbon dioxide given off in the process is roughly equal to the amount absorbed by the plants used to produce the next gallon.

Using ethanol for auto fuel is hardly a new idea (see "Brazil's Bounty"). Since the energy crisis of the early 1970s, tax incentives have pushed ethanol production up; in 2005, it reached four billion gallons a year. But that still translates to only 3 percent of the fuel in American gas tanks. One reason for the limited use of ethanol is that in the United States, it's made almost exclusively from cornstarch; the process is inefficient and competes with other agricultural uses of corn. While it is relatively easy to convert the starch in corn kernels into the sugars needed to produce ethanol, the fuel yield is low compared with the amount of energy that goes into raising and harvesting the crops. Processing ethanol from cellulose -- wheat and rice straw, switchgrass, paper pulp, agricultural waste products like corn cobs and leaves -- has the potential to squeeze at least twice as much fuel from the same area of land, because so much more biomass is available per acre. Moreover, such an approach would use feedstocks that are otherwise essentially worthless.

Converting cellulose to ethanol involves two fundamental steps: breaking the long chains of cellulose molecules into glucose and other sugars, and fermenting those sugars into ethanol. In nature, these processes are performed by different organisms: fungi and bacteria that use enzymes (cellulases) to "free" the sugar in cellulose, and other microbes, primarily yeasts, that ferment sugars into alcohol.

In 2004, Iogen, a Canadian biotechnology company based in Ottawa, began selling modest amounts of cellulosic ethanol, made using common wheat straw as feedstock and a tropical fungus genetically enhanced to hyperproduce its cellulose-digesting enzymes. But Iogen estimates that its first full-scale commercial plant, for which it hopes to break ground in 2007, will cost $300 million -- five times the cost of a conventional corn-fed ethanol facility of similar size.

The more one can fiddle with the ethanol-producing microbes to reduce the number of steps in the conversion process, the lower costs will be, and the sooner cellulosic ethanol will become commercially competitive. In conventional production, for instance, ethanol has to be continually removed from fermentation reactors, because the yeasts cannot tolerate too much of it. MIT's Greg Stephanopoulos, a professor of chemical engineering, has developed a yeast that can tolerate 50 percent more ethanol. But, he says, such genetic engineering involves more than just splicing in a gene or two. "The question isn't whether we can make an organism that makes ethanol," says Stephanopoulos. "It's how we can engineer a whole network of reactions to convert different sugars into ethanol at high yields and productivities. Ethanol tolerance is a property of the system, not a single gene. If we want to increase the overall yield, we have to manipulate many genes at the same time."

The ideal organism would do it all -- break down cellulose like a bacterium, ferment sugar like a yeast, tolerate high concentrations of ethanol, and devote most of its metabolic resources to producing just ethanol. There are two strategies for creating such an all-purpose bug. One is to modify an existing microbe by adding desired genetic pathways from other organisms and "knocking out" undesirable ones; the other is to start with the clean slate of a stripped-down synthetic cell and build a custom genome almost from scratch.

Lee Lynd, an engineering professor at Dartmouth University, is betting on the first approach. He and his colleagues want to collapse the many biologically mediated steps involved in ethanol production into one. "This is a potentially game-changing breakthrough in low-cost processing of cellulosic biomass," he says. The strategy could involve either modifying an organism that naturally metabolizes cellulose so that it produces high yields of ethanol, or engineering a natural ethanol producer so that it metabolizes cellulose.

This May, Lynd and his colleagues reported advances on both fronts. A team from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa that had collaborated with Lynd announced that it had designed a yeast that can survive on cellulose alone, breaking down the complex molecules and fermenting the resultant simple sugars into ethanol. At the same time, Lynd's group reported engineering a "thermophilic" bacterium -- one that naturally lives in high-temperature environments -- whose only fermentation product is ethanol. Other organisms have been engineered to perform similar sleights of hand at normal temperatures, but Lynd's recombinant microbe does so at the high temperatures where commercial cellulases work best. "We're much closer to commercial use than people think," says Lynd, who is commercializing advanced ethanol technology at Mascoma, a startup in Cambridge, MA.

Others are pursuing a far more radical approach. Soon after the State of the Union speech, Patrinos left the DOE to become president of Synthetic Genomics, a startup in Rockville, MD, founded by Craig Venter, the iconoclastic biologist who led the private effort to decode the human genome. Synthetic Genomics is in hot pursuit of a bacterium "that will do everything," as Venter puts it. With funding from Synthetic Genomics, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute are adding and subtracting genes from natural organisms using the recombinant techniques employed by other microbial engineers. In the long run, however, Venter is counting on an approach more in keeping with his reputation as a trailblazer. Rather than modify existing organisms to produce ethanol and other potential biofuels, he wants to build new ones.

Natural selection, argues Venter, does not design life forms to efficiently perform the multitudinous functions their genes encode, much less to carry out a dedicated task like ethanol production. Consequently, a huge amount of effort and expense goes toward figuring out how to shut down complex, often redundant genetic pathways that billions of years of evolution have etched into organisms. Why not start with a genome that has only the minimal number of genes needed to sustain life and add to it what you need? "With a synthetic cell, you only have the pathways in there that you want to be in there," he says.

Synthetic Genomics' approach is based on research that Venter's Institute for Genomic Research conducted on a microörganism called Mycoplasma genitalium in the late 1990s. The microbe, which dwells in the human urinary tract, has only 517 genes. While that's the smallest genome seen in any life form known, researchers in Venter's group showed that the organism could survive even after they had knocked out almost half of its protein-coding genes (some genes code not for proteins but for other biomolecules that perform regulatory functions within the cell). Using the DNA sequence of this "minimal genome" as a guide, they are now attempting to synthesize an artificial chromosome that, inserted into a hollowed-out cell, will lead to a viable life form. Once they are over this first hurdle, they plan to build synthesized, task-specific genetic pathways into the genome, much the way one might load software onto a computer's operating system. Rather than create spreadsheets or do word processing, however, such "biologically based software" would instruct the cell to break down cellulose to produce ethanol or carry out other useful functions. "This is a totally new field on the verge of explosion," says Venter.

Among biofuels, ethanol is the established front-runner, but various types of microbes also produce hydrogen, methane, biodiesel, and even electricity -- which means they could be genetically engineered to produce more of these resources. At the University of California, Berkeley, bioengineer Jay Keasling and his colleagues are proposing to design organisms that pump out a fuel no natural microbe makes, one that offers some alluring advantages over ethanol: gasoline. Its virtues as a fuel are proven, of course, and the ability to produce it from waste wood and waste paper, which Keasling thinks is feasible, could reduce countries' dependence on foreign oil. And unlike ethanol, which is water soluble and must be transported in trucks lest it pick up water in pipes, biologically generated octane could be economically piped to consumers, just like today's gas.

"Ethanol has a place, but it's probably not the best fuel in the long term," says Keasling. "People have been using it for a long time to make wine and beer. But there's no reason we have to settle for a 5,000-year-old fuel."

In the short term, some advances in biology and engineering are needed before fuels made from biomass will be practical and competitive with fossil fuels. But in the longer term, says Venter, "we're limited mostly by our imagination, not by the limits of biology."

Jamie Shreeve's most recent book is The Genome War.

Demand for biofuels is pushing up crop prices, making it more expensive for food companies to source the raw materials used in their products.

"Rising crop prices for wheat, corn and sugar as the biofuels market develops globally could signal prolonged food industry cost pressure," Goldman analysts said, adding that they expected the biofuel industry to compete with the food industry for raw materials.

Many food companies have warned that they are experiencing higher commodity costs, but few have outlined how they will cope with the increase in costs over the long term.

Some companies have indicated they are thinking about making changes to packaging to bring down costs.

Heinz recently said that it was considering using thinner plastic packaging, as well as standardising some packaging such as the plastic caps on bottles on "top down" bottles of HP Sauce and Heinz ketchup.

Goldman estimates that more than 60 per cent of arable land in the European Union would be needed to meet the demands of the biofuel industry if the region was to replace 20 per cent of the fossil fuels used in transport with biofuels.

This would put pressure on the amount of land available to produce crops for food.

However, the bank said that changes in the energy industry would open up new opportunities for companies that process food products, including Suedzucker, Tate & Lyle, and Associated British Foods.

Copyright The Financial Times Ltd.

SemBioSys Genetics Inc. (TSX: SBS), a biotechnology company developing a broad pipeline of protein-based pharmaceuticals and non-pharmaceutical products located in Calgary, on July 18 announced that the Company has achieved its commercial target levels of human insulin (insulin) accumulation in safflower with 1.2 per cent of total seed protein.

The results from the Company's commercial plant system exceeded its target of one per cent accumulation and confirm the potential of plant-produced insulin to fundamentally transform the economics and scale of insulin production.

"These results demonstrate that we have produced an authentic insulin molecule in safflower at commercially viable levels. Achieving our goal of one per cent insulin accumulation in safflower confirms that SemBioSys has the potential to dramatically impact the economics of insulin manufacturing," said Andrew Baum, President and CEO of SemBioSys Genetics Inc. "At these levels we can produce over one kilogram of insulin per acre of safflower production, which is enough to supply 2,500 patients for one year of treatment. We believe that we could meet the world's total projected insulin demand in 2010 with less than 16,000 acres of crop production. Our plan is to continue to scale-up production for sufficient material to initiate clinical trials and file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application in the second half of 2007."

SemBioSys intends to continue its preclinical program with safflower-derived insulin and assemble the components of its IND application including toxicology, immunology profiles and demonstration of efficacy in animal models. The Company expects to be in a position to submit an IND to the US Food and Drug Administration in the second half of 2007 in preparation for a clinical trial in late 2007 or early 2008.

"Achieving our commercial insulin targets is the most significant milestone for our Company to date. The production of insulin at commercial levels in safflower significantly reduces the risk of our insulin development program and, from a broader perspective, provides us with confidence that our core technology and plant-made pharmaceuticals have a role as an enabling technology in the future of biopharmaceutical manufacturing," continued Mr. Baum.

Demand for insulin for the treatment of diabetes reached an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 kilograms in 2005 and is projected to increase to 16,000 kilograms by 2010. Demand for insulin is expected to grow due to earlier diagnosis and increased incidence based on demographic trends, as well as, consumption and behavioural habits. Significant growth in demand is also expected from new alternative delivery methods, including inhaled insulin devices that require between five and ten times the amount of insulin as injection methods. Earlier this year the first inhaled insulin delivery technology, Pfizer's Exubera(R) Inhalation Powder, received approval in the US and EU. Pfizer expects to launch the product in the US later this year.

SemBioSys believes its safflower-produced insulin can reduce capital costs compared to existing insulin manufacturing by 70% and product costs by 40%. SemBioSys believes safflower-produced insulin would require approximately 80 million dollars in capital investment for 1,000 kilograms of insulin production capacity. Alternatively, insulin currently produced using fermentation is estimated to require 250 million dollars in capital investment for 1,000 kilograms of production capacity. In addition, because of the ease in scaling-up crop acreage, plant-produced insulin offers significant improvements in the flexibility and speed of scale-up. SemBioSys has five years of experience growing transgenic safflower in Canada, the US, Mexico and Chile under permits issued by the pertinent regulatory authorities.

Insulin Production

Existing commercial insulin production methods typically rely on yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) or bacteria (E. coli) genetically engineered to produce synthetic human insulin. These organisms are grown in large, capital-intensive steel bioreactors and the insulin is then extracted and purified for final formulation.

SemBioSys uses safflower to produce human insulin. Through its proprietary technology, SemBioSys is able to accumulate recombinant proteins, like insulin, in safflower. As the plant grows and the seed develops, the insulin protein is produced in the seed. Safflower production is based on conventional farming practices that have been adapted to ensure product integrity and confinement. The harvested seed is then processed using SemBioSys' proprietary extraction process. Conventional enzymatic or chemical cleavage techniques and downstream processing methods are employed to produce purified insulin.

The selection of safflower as its commercial plant system was based on safflower's superior technical profile as well as the advantages it offers to address the strict regulatory criteria expected for plant-made pharmaceuticals. Safflower is a low acreage crop that can be easily segregated from other safflower production. This, in combination with the biology of the crop's pollination patterns facilitates containment of the crop.

Copyright © 2006 PR Newswire Europe Limited

WILMINGTON, Del. - Two DuPont research leaders provided an update on the company’s strategy to develop next generation biofuels at the third annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing.

DuPont biofuels research manager William D. Provine discussed the company’s biofuels strategy during the conference’s Friday morning plenary session. DuPont Bio-Based Technologies vice president John Pierce reviewed current global biofuels issues and the future of cellulosic ethanol as a replacement for gasoline transportation fuel.

“The biofuels market is ripe for innovation,” Provine said. “DuPont’s integration of modern biological tools into our world-renowned chemistry and engineering has allowed us to become technology leaders in the development of bio-based chemicals and now fuels. We have a three-part strategy to deliver new technologies to the growing biofuels market to help biofuels become more competitive with petroleum. It entails: (1) improving existing ethanol production through differentiated agricultural seed products and crop protection chemicals; (2) developing and supplying new technologies to allow conversion of cellulose to biofuels; and (3) developing and supplying next generation biofuels with improved performance.”

Seed & Crop Protection Solutions: With more than $300 million in revenues expected this year from seed and crop protection solutions, DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. has selected more than 135 seed hybrids marketed through its IndustrySelect® program. The program brings specialized grain traits that improve the efficiency of ethanol production. The seed and crop protection research pipeline includes yield traits in seeds and other products that will further improve ethanol production efficiency.

Integrated Corn-Based BioRefinery (Cellulosic Fuels): DuPont and the U.S. Department of Energy are jointly funding a four-year research program to develop technology to convert corn stover into ethanol. This is consistent with the company’s strategy to develop technologies that can convert energy crops such as grasses, and agricultural byproducts such as straw and corn stalks, into biofuels and biochemicals. The Integrated BioRefinery program will significantly increase the amount of ethanol per acre achievable by using corn grain and stover on the same amount of land. The technology package will be complete next year, and the company is currently developing options for the construction of a demonstration plant. Provine outlined the “first in class” fermentation process that DuPont has developed in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to allow high conversion of both C-6 glucose sugars and the difficult to ferment C-5 xylose sugars to ethanol at high yields. The BioRefinery technology uses a microorganism called Zymomonas mobilis to make these conversions. This organism is found in the tropics where it normally lives in the sugar sap of the agave plant, a plant that is commonly used to make tequila.

Biobutanol Partnership with BP and Advanced Biofuels Pipeline: DuPont’s partnership with BP to develop biobutanol is based on its strategy to bring advanced biofuels to market to expand the use of biofuels in gasoline. Biobutanol will be the first product available and offers improved performance. It enhances ethanol-gasoline blends by lowering the vapor pressure when co-blended with these fuels; it enhances fuel stability of biobutanol-gasoline blends, giving it the potential to be distributed via the existing fuel supply infrastructure; it improves blend flexibility allowing higher biofuels blends with gasoline; and it improves fuel efficiency (better miles per gallon) compared to incumbent biofuels. Biobutanol is targeted for introduction in 2007 in the United Kingdom. Additional global capacity will be introduced as market conditions dictate.

“Our strategy is simple and consistent with the mega trends we are seeing globally,” Pierce said. “We are making new chemicals, such as Bio-PDO™, and new fuels, such as biobutanol, from agricultural crops. And we are simultaneously developing new ways to convert abundant plant cellulose fibers to biofuels so that even larger volumes of these valuable materials can be produced. Our strategy is designed to deliver the science needed to begin to transform global economies so we are less reliant on oil by enabling the adoption of efficient, high-performance, bio-based technologies.”

Copyright WebWire 1995-2006

Botanists, genetic engineers and energy researchers are collaborating to develop crops better suited for the production of biofuel.

The Norwich-based John Innes Centre (JIC) has recently entered into a partnership with the US Dept of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) to conduct the research.

They will study the genome of the grass Brachypodium as part of the Joint Genome Institute’s Community Sequencing Programme. The genetic information from this project will be used as a template for analysing the much larger and more complex genomes of wheat and barley. The team hope this will improve food production and help develop sustainable production of biofuel from grass crops.

Brachypodium distachyon, commonly known as Purple False Brome, is a close relative of wheat, barley and forage grasses. Its small size, rapid growth time and small genome size make it an ideal plant model for the in-depth study of temperate grasses such as wheat and barley. The JIC scientists, led by Prof Michael Bevan and Prof John Snape, aim to generate a “map” or rough outline of the Brachypodium genome.

DOE scientists will use the map to assemble and analyse the vast amount of DNA sequence data. It can then be used to identify important genes in food and fuel crops. This work will help scientists to develop grasses into superior energy crops and to improve grain crops and forage grasses vital to food supply.

Work will start in late 2007 and the 300 mega-base genome should be completed towards the end of 2008 and the findings will be made available in the public domain.
Copyright Centaur Media PLC

China plans to become a major world power in agricultural science and technology by 2020, the country's Minister of Agriculture Du Qinglin said here Thursday.

Addressing a national conference on agricultural science and technology, Du said by 2020, science and technology will contribute 63 percent of the growth in the agricultural sector, 15 percent more than it does now.

China still has a long way to go to catch up with the United States, where technical advancements account for 81 percent of the growth in agriculture, and 85 percent of agricultural technologies are actually applied to agricultural production, he said.

To achieve this goal, the minister said China will focus its efforts on five areas.

The first is to maintain its edge in super rice, genetically-modified anti-worm cotton, and the development of new breeds.

The second is to develop core technologies in the production of safe farm products, the prevention and control of agricultural disasters, the processing of farm products and improving the ecological environment.

The third is to manufacture its own critical agricultural equipment so that the country will depend less on imports.

China will also strengthen its research in agricultural high technologies and the industrial application of such technologies, with the aim of obtaining some innovative and internationally-advanced technologies, Du said.

The country will nurture a number of agricultural research institutions and colleges, and corporate research centers that are globally competitive, he said.

Copyright by People's Daily Online