Mission

Our research mission is to enhance crop plant biomass for improved and more sustainable crop production. Biomass product targets include increased yield and quality of starch or lignocellulose combined with sustainable process development and agronomic performance.  Enhanced biomass products will improve the crop-to-fuel process and reduce the overall environmental impact of biofuel production. Improvements in profitability will be achieved through added-value coproducts.

 

Our program uses conventional plant breeding, combined with state-of-the-art applications of genetics, new-technologies and biotechnology tools. We will make innovations in cereal grain and stover, by focusing on the major metabolic storage end-products such as starch, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, protein, oil, coproducts and photosynthetic function. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enhanced biomass products will improve the production of biofuels & produce added-value bioproducts. Bioenergy enhancement is focused primarily on process improvements in liquid fuel production from starch and lignocellulosic biomass.  Bioproducts are focused on added-value co-products from processing biomass from crops. With its focus primarily on maize, We will supply new traits and services that will produce enhanced feedstocks in the form of grain and crop residues. We believe that it’s know how in maize will also have potential applications in other crops (eg Wheat, Sorghum, Switchgrass, Miscanthus).