10/11/05 U of I grant for ethanol from straw

Farm and Ranch October 11, 2005 The University of Idaho is getting just under 700-thousand dollars from the USDA and the Department of Energy for research on increasing the potential for the use of cellulose from straw for biofuel and bioproduct production. The funding is from the federal Biomass Research and Development Initiative. At a field day earlier this year, U of I wheat breeder Bob Zemetra described some of the research being conducted at the university. Zemetra: "What we are trying to do there is modify the wheat so there is less lignin in the straw, which would make it easier to get to the sugars that are in the straw so you could extract the sugars and convert it to ethanol. The trick is reducing the lignin just enough to allow for extraction while not taking away the benefits of lignin which is straw strength and potentially disease and insect resistance. And we are doing it through genetic engineering but the other wheat breeder in the state, Ed Souza, has done some mutation work on barley on a different project that also may modify the lignin in straw and we are going to try and look at that to see if that also can be used for ethanol extraction." The just over 693-thousand dollars the U of I is getting was part of 12.6 million dollars in funding announced last week for 11 biomass research, development, and demonstration projects. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.