Study Says CRP Mixes Don’t Live up to Biofuel Potential
by Julie Harker (Brownfield Ag News) Mixed prairie grasses that are used in Conservation Reserve Program lands did not live up to their potential as biomass crops for cellulosic biofuel production, in an eight-year study. D.K. Lee, associate crop science professor at the University of Illinois, tells Brownfield most of the CRP perennial grasses they tested did not produce more than two-tons per acre, even with nitrogen application,
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Lee says the most limiting factor to biomass production with CRP grass mixes was precipitation.
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Besides Missouri, CRP grass mixes for biomass production were studied in North Dakota, Montana, Georgia — and in Kansas and Oklahoma where he 2012 drought nearly decimated those perennial grasses, yielding less than one ton per acre. READ MORE Abstract (Global Change Biology-Bioenergy)