West Bengal turns to Jatropha farming to promote bio-diesel

The West Bengal government has taken up a programme to develop cultivation of Jatropha plant to popularise it as a major source of bio-diesel. A survey is also proposed to identify the various species of Jatropha available in the state with special emphasis on districts where the growth of the plant is rampant, Saumendra Nath Bera, chairman of the Standing Committee on Science and Technology and Bio-Technology in the state assembly, said.

The project will be taken under a Micro-Mission Project of Jatropha under the Union Bio-Technology department. Describing Jatropha oil as a "potential source of fuel," Bera said the survey would enable identification of the varieties and its required soil and climatic conditions for obtaining appropriate quality planting materials with maximum oil content.

Bera, who recently undertook a study visit along with other members of the Standing Committee to Garmandaran in Hooghly district, said field trials for large-scale cultivation of Jatropha had been undertaken at Hooghly and Bankura.

"Its cultivation is proposed to be extended to other districts depending on the total area of cultivation and total seed production," he said.

Quality planting materials to be produced by macro propagation would provide quality seeds for oil extraction, Bera said adding that in order to provide good planting material, saplings were being produced from seeds and cuttings.

The Centre's Micro-Mission Project of Jatropha was aimed at large-scale propagation of the plant for identifying species with maximum oil content and large-scale propagation of quality planting materials, Bera said. Describing both the seeds and cuttings as the source of planting materials for this demonstration project at Garmandaran, he said 15 hectares of land were covered there for three years, of which five hectares were completed in 2005-06 and the rest to be covered within the current year.

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European Commission authorises GM maize GA21

The European Commission today adopted a Decision authorising the GM maize GA21 for feed and food use and for import and processing. In fact, the placing on the market of food and feed produced from GA21 is already authorised in the EU.

Today's Decision extends the authorisation of products derived from GA21 to maize grains and thus allows imports from third countries where this GMO is cultivated. GA21 is not approved for cultivation in the EU. GA21 maize received a positive safety assessment from EFSA and underwent the full authorisation procedure set out under EU legislation. As Member States did not reach a qualified majority for or against this authorisation in the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, and then in the Council. The proposal was therefore sent back to the Commission for decision.

The authorisation is valid for 10 years, and any products produced from this GMO will be subject to the EU's strict labelling and traceability rules.

Biofuels could boost global warming, finds study

Growing and burning many biofuels may actually raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has shown.1 The findings come in the wake of a recent OECD report, which warned nations not to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food shortages and damage biodiversity.

Crutzen and colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought - wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming. The work appears in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and is currently subject to open review.

'The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuel are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto,' Keith Smith, a co-author on the paper from the University of Edinburgh, told Chemistry World. 'What we are saying is that [growing many biofuels] is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse.'

Crutzen, famous for his work on nitrogen oxides and the ozone layer, declined to comment before the paper is officially published. But the paper suggests that microbes convert much more of the nitrogen in fertiliser to N2O than previously thought - 3 to 5 per cent or twice the widely accepted figure of 2 per cent used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For rapeseed biodiesel, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the biofuel production in Europe, the relative warming due to N2O emissions is estimated at 1 to 1.7 times larger than the quasi-cooling effect due to saved fossil CO2 emissions. For corn bioethanol, dominant in the US, the figure is 0.9 to 1.5. Only cane sugar bioethanol - with a relative warming of 0.5 to 0.9 - looks like a viable alternative to conventional fuels.

Some previous estimates had suggested that biofuels could cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 per cent.2

Global picture

The IPCC's N2O conversion factor is derived using data from plant experiments. But Crutzen takes a different approach, using atmospheric measurements and ice core data to calculate the total amount of N2O in the atmosphere. He then subtracts the level of N2O in pre-industrial times - before fertilizers were available - to take account of N2O from natural processes such as leguminous plants growing in forests, lightning, and burn offs.

Assuming the rest of the N2O is attributable to newly-fixed nitrogen from fertilizer use, and knowing the amount of fertilizer applied globally, he can calculate thecontribution of fertilizers to N2O levels.

The results may well trigger a rethink by the IPCC, says Smith. 'Should we go along the road of adding up the experimental evidence for each of the processes or are we better off using the global numbers?'

Critical reception

But other experts are critical of Crutzen's approach. Simon Donner, a nitrogen researcher based at Princeton University, US, says the method is elegant but there is little evidence to show the N2O yield from fertilized plants is really as high as 3-5 per cent. Crutzen's basic assumption, that pre-industrial N2O emissions are the same as natural N2O emissions, is 'probably wrong', says Donner.

One reason he gives is that farmers plant crops in places that have nitrogen rich soils anyway. 'It is possible we are indirectly increasing the "natural" source of N2O by drawing down the soil nitrogen in the world's agricultural regions,' he explains.

Others dispute the values chosen by Crutzen to calculate his budget. Stefan Rauh, an agricultural scientist at the Instituteof Agricultural Economics and Farm Management in Munich, Germany, says some of the rates for converting crops into biofuel should be higher. 'If you use the other factors you get a little net climate cooling,' he said.

Meanwhile, a report prepared by the OECD for a recent Round Table on Sustainable Development questions the benefits of first generation biofuels and concludes that governments should scrap mandatory targets.

Richard Doornbosch, the report's author, says both the report and Crutzen's work highlights the importance of establishing correct full life-cycle assessments for biofuels. 'Without them, government policies can't distinguish between one biofuel and another - risking making problems worse,' said Doornbosch.

Zoe Corbyn via rsc.org

1 PJ Crutzen et al, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 2007, 7, 11191
2 J Hill et al, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 2006, 103, 11206 (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0604600103)

India: cheap, green, food-friendly biofuel produced with sorghum

he first commercial batch of biofuel from the stalks of a new sweet sorghum hybrid has been produced this month (13 June) at a distillery in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.

Ethanol is produced from the sweet juice in the stalk of the sweet sorghum. The researchers responsible for the hybrid say by using sorghum, resource-poor farmers will still be able to use the sorghum grain and protect food security, while earning an additional income from selling the stalks.

This first batch marks a major success for the research consortium that developed the new hybrid, says Belum V. S. Reddy, principal sorghum breeder at the India-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

Sweet sorghum is a cheap biofuel crop to grow, costing about a fifth of that of sugarcane. It also requires half the water needed to grow maize and about an eighth of that required for sugarcane.

It is also carbon neutral, according to the Latin American Thematic Network on Bioenergy — a project promoting the sustainable use of bioenergy. Sweet sorghum takes in the same of amount of carbon dioxide during its growth that it emits during growth and its later conversion to ethanol and the eventual ethanol combustion.

When sweet sorghum biofuel is blended with petrol it also emits less polluting sulphur and nitrous oxide compared to sugarcane biofuel, according to Reddy.

A major problem for ICRISAT was ensuring availability of sweet sorghum stalks throughout the year. "Different plant types produce different amounts of juice at different times of the year and it is important to have genetic stocks that can produce the same amount of juice throughout the year," says Reddy.

ICRISAT solved the problem by developing hybrids that can be planted at any time of the year.

The team intend to plant at least 4000 acres of the new crop during the next rainy season, according to G. Subba Rao, director of Aakrithi Agricultural Associates of India, a partner in the project.

Clusters of villages have been identified for the planting, and seeds distributed to the farmers. A method has also been designed to collect the stalks from the farmers, which will then be crushed at cluster centres and the syrup transported to the main distillery.

Via SciDev.Net

Growing bio-fuel demand underpinning higher agriculture prices

Increased demand for bio-fuels is causing fundamental changes to agricultural markets that could drive up world prices for many farm products, according to a new report published by the OECD and FAO.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2007-2016 says temporary factors such as droughts in wheat-growing regions and low stocks explain in large measure the recent hikes in farm commodity prices.

But when the focus turns to the longer term, structural changes are underway which could well maintain relatively high nominal prices for many agricultural products over the coming decade.

Reduced crop surpluses and a decline in export subsidies are also contributing to these long-term changes in markets. But more important is the growing use of cereals, sugar, oilseed and vegetable oils to produce fossil fuel substitutes, ethanol and bio-diesel. This is underpinning crop prices and, indirectly through higher animal feed costs, also the prices for livestock products.

In the United States, annual maize-based ethanol output is expected to double between 2006 and 2016.

In the European Union the amount of oilseeds (mainly rapeseed) used for bio-fuels is set to grow from just over 10 million tonnes to 21 million tonnes over the same period.

In Brazil, annual ethanol production is projected to reach some 44 billion litres by 2016 from around 21 billion today. Chinese ethanol output is expected to rise to an annual 3.8 billion litres, a 2 billion litres increase from current levels.

The report points out that higher commodity prices are a particular concern for net food importing countries as well as the urban poor. And while higher feedstock prices caused by increased bio-fuel production benefits feedstock producers, it means extra costs and lower incomes for farmers who need the feedstock to provide animal feed.