Sorghum Could See New Acreage As Biofuel Source
23 September 2008 According to Tim Lust, CEO, National Sorghum Producers Sorghums, all types of sorghums — grain, sweet, and forage — offer excellent potential for biofuel production. Currently, 20% of US sorghum goes into ethanol production, with “more (ethanol) plants coming online in the sorghum belt,” says Lust. “We see a lot of opportunity to expand.”
“Sorghum can fit into all renewable fuel schemes,” Lust explained recently at the International Conference on Sorghum for Biofuels in Houston, Texas, US. He suggested several possibilities for sorghum as a renewable fuel source: as a starch for ethanol, sweet sorghum as sugar to ethanol, and forage and sudangrasses as high tonnage biomass for cellulosic or ligno-cellulosic ethanol. Lust says that sorghum also leaves a small carbon and nitrogen footprint.
Strengths include drought tolerance and adaptability; the most common sorghum, sorghum bicolor, can grow in 80% of the world, says Lust, who sees the crop as “part of an international solution to renewable fuels.” As the sorghum genome has recently been sequenced, he adds: “We now have tools available (for enhanced research).”
Opportunities, says Lust, are “tons, tons, and tons. We need a lot of feedstocks for biofuels and yields will be critical. Sorghum offers an opportunity to deliver tons of biomass on a limited amount of water. Sorghum can withstand conditions with either limited water or too much.”
“New sorghums have the potential to be some of the great biofuels crops,” he said. “Sweet sorghum could double the gallons per acre when combined with cellulosic or ligno-cellulosic ethanol.” Lust also sees sorghum as part of the solution to the food-vs.-fuel debate.
“[W]e have only 35 or 40 sorghum breeders in the United States and worldwide,” Lust explains. “We need more resources to develop feedstocks. We expect significant new acreage of sorghum.”
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