In Georgia, a team of researchers led by faculty at the University of Georgia have received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to find new ways of combating Johnsongrass, one of the most widespread and troublesome agricultural weeds in the world. Native to the Mediterranean region, Johnsongrass has spread across every […]
In Denmark, the BioAg Alliance, Novozymes’ and Monsanto’s collaboration to improve crop harvests through naturally-occurring microbes, recently announced results from its 2015 field trial program. Those results included a corn inoculant product, which increased yields by an average of 4 bushels per acre in U.S. field tests. The product is based on a fungus found […]
In Tennessee, a new comparative study from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory-based center finds the natural abilities of unconventional bacteria could help boost the efficiency of cellulosic biofuel production. The study is published as “Biological lignocellulose solubilization: Comparative evaluation of biocatalysts and enhancement via cotreatment” in Biotechnology for Biofuels. The analysis demonstrated that under carefully […]
In Tennessee, researchers at the Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center are looking beyond the usual suspects in the search for microbes that can efficiently break down inedible plant matter for conversion to biofuels. A new comparative study from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory-based center finds the natural abilities of unconventional bacteria could help boost […]
In Portugal, researchers at MIT Portugal have recently won the Jerónimo Martins/Green Project Award, a prize given by Quercus, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), and GCI, to reward and foster sustainable development for “Green Detergents: Biosurfactants from lignocellulosic biomass.” The mannosylerythritol lipids (MEL), which are glycolipids with biosurfactants properties, are produced biologically by gender Pseudozyma […]
In Illinois, second-generation biofuel crops like the perennial grasses Miscanthus and switchgrass can efficiently meet emission reduction goals without significantly displacing cropland used for food production, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Illinois and collaborators published their findings in the inaugural edition of the journal Nature Energy. The researchers call it […]
In Illinois, the University of Illinois farmdoc estimates the average Iowa ethanol plant saw an average of 7 cents per gallon profit in 2015, with 10 cents during the beginning of the year, 3 cents towards the later half of the year, and losses the last four weeks of the year primarily due to low […]
In Germany, UFOP advises that prices of soybean meal and rapeseed meal recovered at the end of December 2015, after downward for several months. However, pressure continues to be large. At the beginning December 2015, overabundant supply and slack demand sent oilseed meal prices on the cash market skidding to a four-year low. Rapeseed meal […]
In Texas, in a study that could point the way to biofuels processes of the future, scientists from Rice University, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Joint BioEnergy Institute at Emeryville, Calif., have discovered how two bacterial enzymes work as a team to break apart lignin. The original […]
In Colorado, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Senior Scientist Min Zhang has a special relationship with Zymomonas mobilis, a rod-shaped bacterium that has bioethanol-producing capabilities. Of her 80 peer-reviewed papers and 21 U.S. patents in the field of biochemistry and biofuels, many reference this sugar-eating ‘bug.’ Their fortuitous pairing began shortly after the Chinese-born U.S. […]
