Investigadores en Universidad del estado de michigan están trabajando para hacer del colinabo, un vegetal parecido al nabo, una mejor fuente de biocombustible que otros cultivos alimentarios, informa el Associated Press. Los científicos creen que el colinabo, que almacena aceite en sus semillas como otros cultivos de biocombustible, podría modificarse genéticamente para producir más aceite y almacenarlo en toda la planta.
“If we could make it in the green tissues, like the leaves, stems or even underground tissues like storage roots, then we
think we can make a lot more,” professor Christoph Benning, part of the university’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, said.
The rutabaga is not a popular food crop, which could be an advantage in using it for biofuel. The use of corn, soybeans and other food crops for fuel instead of food has raised the specter of shortages, and some blame the biofuel boom for pushing up food prices. Benning’s research is one of many efforts nationally to get biofuel from sources other than major food crops. Benning decided to focus on the rutabaga because the root vegetable already has the “machinery” of producing oil and it grows well in northern states. It’s cold-resistant and, because of the way it flowers, he said, there’s no threat of modified rutabagas becoming invasive. Benning and his fellow researchers at Michigan State in East Lansing have inserted a gene into rutabagas to try to get them to accumulate oil instead of starch throughout the plant.
Tomó alrededor de un año cultivar la primera generación de colinabos genéticamente modificados en un invernadero universitario, dijo Benning. Los científicos analizarán plántulas de generaciones posteriores para ver cómo se ha visto afectada la producción de aceite. Incluso si todo funciona como se espera, podrían pasar 15 años antes de que el biocombustible de colinabo se convierta en una realidad, dijo.
Scott Faber, un cabildero de la Asociación de Fabricantes de Abarrotes, said it’s important when looking at biofuel crops to examine how they will affect the cost of food. Even if rutabagas aren’t widely grown in the US for people to eat, he says, rutabagas for biofuel could edge out other food crops. “If you were to dedicate hundreds of thousands of acres to produce rutabaga for the biofuel sector, in all likelihood farmers would be changing what crops are currently being cultivated on those lands,” Faber said. “That is one of the sort of hot-button issues, a central focus of the biofuel debate.”
A goal, Benning said, is to grow rutabagas two or three times as efficient at producing oil as canola, a major biofuel crop. That could make it a “game changer” in the biofuel industry, he said. Benning added that the parts of genetically modified rutabagas that aren’t harvested for oil could be used for animal feed. He doesn’t think the rutabagas would be unsuitable for human or animal consumption, but that would need to be studied, and their use would require Departamento de Agricultura de EE. UU. aprobación.