DuPont Invests in Feedstocks for Biofuels
9 January 2012 DES MOINES, Iowa, and MALIBU, Calif., United States – DuPont has entered into an agreement with NexSteppe Inc., to develop feedstocks for biofuels and other bio-based products.
Under the agreement, DuPont has made an equity investment in NexSteppe and through its Pioneer Hi-Bred business, will provide knowledge, resources and advanced technologies to help the company accelerate the breeding and commercialization of new hybrids of sweet sorghum and high-biomass sorghum hybrids as feedstock in the US and Brazil.
Nexsteppe, a California-based bioenergy company, provides scalable, reliable, cost-effective feedstock solutions for the biofuels, biopower and bio-based products industries.
“Sorghum is a crop with significant genetic diversity and great potential that has received relatively little research attention and funding,” Anna Rath, NexSteppe founder and CEO. “Combining DuPont’s world-class research and development capabilities with our industry knowledge, experienced team and singular focus, we will be able to rapidly improve the crop to produce feedstocks tailored to the needs of the biofuels, biopower and bio-based products industries.”
Sorghum is naturally drought and heat tolerant and has the ability to grow in marginal rainfall areas with high temperatures where it is difficult to grow other crops. It has a relatively short growing season and is suitable for crop rotation systems. Sorghum is increasingly grown as a source of feedstock for industrial value chains.
Sweet sorghum can be used as a complement to sugarcane in existing Brazilian sugar to ethanol mills, and as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and other bio-based products produced from sugars. High Biomass sorghum is a high-yielding crop that can be used as a feedstock for biopower and cellulosic biofuels.
Source: DuPont, edited by Stefanie A. Toth, online editor
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