Mizzou Researchers Win $5.4 Million Biofuel Grant
by Amir Kurtovic (St. Louis Business Journal) …A team of University of Missouri researchers has won a $5.4 million grant to study alternative biofuels that do not impact the already strained food supply.
…Shibu Jose and his team of researchers in the Mizzou College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources received the $5.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study non-food biofuel crops, such as switchgrass, which can grow in land along the floodplains where food crops cannot thrive.
“In the 10 states along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, 100 million acres of marginalized agricultural land is unused or underutilized often due to frequent flooding” said Jose, who is the H.E. Garrett Endowed Professor in the School of Natural Resources and director of the MU Center for Agroforestry, in a statement announcing the grant. “If farmers can plant just 10 percent of marginal floodplain land with crops designated for use in biofuels, we can produce 6 to 8 billion gallons of liquid fuel annually. Planting this land with crops designated for biofuels would have little to no effect on the food supply.” READ MORE and MORE (University of Missouri; includes Video)
