Co-products from oilseed rape

Sustainable bio-ethanol production may be vital to reducing our dependency on petroleum-based fuels. Some estimates suggest that greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by as much as 90% by changing over to efficiently produced bio-ethanol fuel. Currently however, commercial production of bio-ethanol relies on the planting of specific biomass crops that compete with food crops for suitable land and resources, threatening food security. This could be avoided through the use of the large amounts of lignocellulosic waste in the form of oilseed rape straw that is produced as an agricultural bi-product each year in the UK. To address this, a partnership between BBSRC, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and a consortium of leading companies has established the Integrated Biorefining Research and Technology Club; IBTI.

 

As part of a 5 year IBTI funded grant, we are using a diverse collection of Brassica napus cultivars covering all the major crop types. The goal of this project is to link genetic variation to traits of interest for bio-ethanol production, eventually providing breeders with markers that can be used for Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) in the development of a dual-purpose food and bio-fuel crop. We are utilising Illumina next-generation sequencing technology and novel computational biology procedures to develop a powerful, high resolution association mapping approach, enabling us to link tens of thousands of SNP markers to a wide range of morphological, chemical and mechanical characteristics in B.napus.

 

Currently, traits of interest include morphological characteristics affecting biomass, cell wall chemical characteristics useful for maximising bio-ethanol yield, and mechanical traits of importance for both structural integrity of the plant in the field and processibility of material during bio-ethanol production. Once perfected in B.napus, this methodology may also be utilised in other crops such as bread wheat.