Partners

  • CIRAD
  • International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), India
  • Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), Brazil
  • KWS SAAT AG , Germany
  • University of Bologna , Italy
  • Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (University of Milan), Italy
  • University of Nuevo Leone , Mexico
  • Agricultural Research Council-Grain Crops Institute , South Africa
  • Institut für Energie und Umweltforschung , Germany
  • WIP , Germany

Contact

Scientific contact

Serge Braconnier
Agroecological Adaptation and Varietal Innovation Research Unit (AIVA)
E-mail

Press officer

Florence Vigier
E-mail

SWEETFUEL: do you take sugar in your fuel?

19/04/2009 - Press release

A project entitled "Sweet sorghum: an alternative energy crop" is being funded by the European Commission. It was launched in January 2009, to run for five years. The aim is to boost bioethanol production from sweet sorghum by developing new varieties better suited to the target environments in both temperate and tropical zones. CIRAD is project coordinator.

No fewer than ten partners and some thirty researchers are participating in the SWEETFUEL project. As Serge Braconnier, a CIRAD ecophysiologist, points out: "ICRISAT in India and EMBRAPA in Brazil have been working for several years to produce ethanol from sweet sorghum. However, what is original about the European Union's commissioning of this project is that it targets both semi-arid tropical zones and temperate zones, with a view to adapting sorghum varieties ".

From varietal improvement to factory gate

The project, which will stop "at the factory gate ", will have to take account of fuel production processes while not forgetting its main aim: to breed more productive varieties that can adapt to tropical and temperate environments. Worthwhile genes will be identified so as to develop marker-assisted selection (MAS) programmes.

"For tropical zones, the aim is to breed double- and even triple-purpose sorghum varieties (food-fuel-feed) that produce seeds to feed people and/or animals while building up sugar in their stems to produce ethanol. We need to avoid placing food production in competition with energy production so as to reduce the risks of food insecurity in developing countries ", Serge Braconnier explains. Furthermore, the target types of planting material will be lines that the farmers themselves can reproduce, rather than hybrids.

In conjunction with its main partners, ICRISAT and EMBRAPA, CIRAD has taken up the challenge. Planting material exchanges are under way to build the broad genetic base required for breeding programmes geared, in tropical zones , towards producing sweet sorghum varieties better suited to drought and "marginal" soils (in other words to acidity, aluminium toxicity and/or phosphorus deficiencies).

Research therefore needs to be done on various sorghum characters:
- the quantity of seed produced and of sugar accumulated in the stems
- drought tolerance, although sorghum is relatively well suited to drought
- tolerance of acidity, aluminium toxicity and phosphorus deficiencies
- fibre digestibility, since the bagasse obtained after extracting the sugar can be used as an animal feed, and in order to prepare for the development of second-generation processes for making fuel from the whole plant
- the staygreen character, a character that enables plants to adapt to drought at the end of their cycle and also serves to keep the stems juicy, making it easier to extract soluble sugars
- the photosensitivity (photoperiodism) character, so as to fit the plant cycle to the rainy season.
In temperate zones (central and Mediterranean Europe), the aims are very different. In this case, the objective is to develop very centralized second-generation production methods that use plant lignocellulose as the basic raw material.
The aim is therefore to breed sorghum varieties that produce as much biomass as possible. Sugar accumulation in the stems, and seed production, are of secondary importance given the new processes to be used.
In addition to biomass production, the target characters here are:
- better adaptation to cold temperatures, to increase the number of potential cultivation zones in Europe and extend the planting period and thus the "harvesting window "
- better fibre digestibility, to facilitate the first processing stage: breaking down the cellulose fibres to produce fermentable sugars.

Once breeding work has begun, the project is also planning to conduct an integrated analysis of the impact of developing sorghum growing, on various levels (social, economic and environmental), and scales (macro-micro).