Scientists from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have worked with agricultural innovation company, Nufarm, to increase oil yield from plants. This breakthrough will help advance the production and use of biofuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel.
Oils from plants are produced by specialised seeds and fruits, and CSIRO scientists looked at extending that to the biomass of the plant, including the leaves and stem.
CSIRO’s Dr Thomas Vanhercke, has been working on the project for more than a decade, and said the technology would have the potential to create an important new global energy source.
“We were inspired to develop this technology in response to the world’s need for increased production of plant oil without impacting food security,” said Vanhercke.
“With CSIRO’s existing expertise in the area and the partnership with Nufarm on the Omega-3 canola project, we started thinking about how to extend that to the challenge of developing industrial scale feedstock oil from plants.
“We took the genetics for seed oil production and incorporated them across a range of crops with promising success.”
After developing the initial technology, the Biomass Oil Project has been announced, with Nufarm leading a new global research partnership to further develop the technology.
Nufarm CEO, Greg Hunt, said the company is now bringing together researchers from CSIRO, the University of Florida (UF), USA and the Instituto Agronomico (IAC), Brazil to take the work to the next level.
“We have assembled a consortium of world-class R&D and technical partners who bring unique experience to develop this technology,” said Hunt.
“Nufarm is also working with key strategic partners to further support the technical project development and future downstream commercialisation.”
