BIOFUELS: Designer Crops
Making the Case for Genetic Modification
In many ways, genetically modified (GM) crops and biofuels are made for each other. The enhanced yields available from the current generation of GM crops such as corn and soybeans can help farmers meet the growing feedstock demand for biofuels while still producing sufficient quantities of food and animal feed. In the future, GM crops with even higher yields and entirely novel GM varieties of grasses and trees should make biofuels production even more efficient and inexpensive [source: Jon Evans].
More and more, farmers of corn, soybeans and cotton — all potential biofuel sources — are planting genetically modified versions of these plants [source: United States Department of Agriculture]. This isn’t the same selective breeding farmers have practiced for years; genetically modified crops are altered in the lab to better tolerate herbicides, fight off pests or produce higher yields.
The relationship between GM crops and biofuels has blossomed most fully in the United States — not surprising as it is the largest single market for both GM crops and biofuels. In particular, GM corn has been at the forefront of this burgeoning relationship, with GM varieties accounting for whopping 73 percent of all the corn planted in the US in 2007 — corn being the main feedstock for US ethanol production.
Is the Science Ready for the Demand?
Biofuels have long been studied and, like many alternative fuels, provided with subsidies by the government, but have not shown commensurate progress. That isn’t just because subsidies discourage innovation, it’s because of biology itself. Lignin which, along with cellulose, helps thicken cell walls in plants, is a tough customer. Getting the better of lignin is the key to extracting sugars — the basic ingredient used to make biofuels — from plant biomass [source: Science20].
Plant geneticists have isolated the gene regulatory networks that control cell wall thickening by the synthesis of the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. In theory, then, their genetic discovery may ‘serve as a foundation for understanding the regulation of a complex, integral plant component and as a map for how future researchers might manipulate the polymer-forming processes to improve the efficiency of biofuel production [source: Science20].
Ongoing research has identified hundreds of new regulators and, according to Sam Hazen, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a ‘highly interconnected network of more than 240 genes and more than 600 protein-DNA interactions’ that gives plants a huge number of possible combinations for responding and adapting to environmental stress such as salt or drought.
While some key details in the regulatory network could not be identified by this particular research, the work offers a framework for future study that should allow researchers to identify ways to manipulate this network and engineer energy crops for biofuel production.
Sci-Fi Farming: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Manipulating plant genetics is the future of farming in the 21st Century and beyond; sounds like an ideal way to meet the biofuel crop demand, keep prices low and sustain a high yield of corn and soybeans to feed the world, right?
Not so fast. In cases that seem straight out of the movies, genetically modified crops have developed unintended, potentially dangerous, traits.
For example, in the early 2000s, during initial tests of a modified strain of corn, researchers discovered that the crop, engineered to fight off a moth known to prey on corn, produced a pollen that could kill the larvae of the monarch butterfly. Scientists sounded the alarm and further tests confirmed that the corn’s pollen, indeed, posed a serious threat to monarchs.
By that time, the corn had already been on the market for a season. Thankfully, it didn’t sell well, so few fields were planted with it. Had it been the season’s most popular strain of corn, there might have been an ecological disaster as monarchs migrated en masse through America’s corn belt [source: Mellon and Rissler].
Inasmuch as it’s safe to use GMOs in anything, GMO organisms are ideal for biofuels crop production and carry no more risks or rewards than are associated with other crops. Most of the controversies over food safety are sidestepped since we ultimately burn the fuel rather than eat it [source: Josh Velson].
Unintended side effects are worrisome but not surprising given the relative infancy of the technology. It may be some time before we fully understand where the science leads. According to Richard Templer, director of the Porter Institute for Sustainable Bioenergy Research at Imperial College London, the land used for biofuel production is only a fraction of that used for agriculture. That being the case, how do researchers propose to confine their GMO crop experimentation to biofuel feedstock growing alongside food sources? Do we have confidence that the long-term health implications of plant genetic manipulation can be predicted?
I’m not ready to bet my soybeans on it.
Alkane thanks Matt Cunningham, writing for How Stuff Works and all those cited for contributions to this article.
Alkane Truck Company is currently raising capital on the crowdfunding platform StartEngine. Find out more here: https://www.startengine.com/startup/alkane
