Boost for Aberystwyth's development of biofuel
The development of a promising biofuel crop, Miscanthus, has been given a boost today with the announcement of an additional £6.4 M in UK Government funding, over five years, for an integrated and collaborative breeding programme. The breeding programme aims to produce new commercial varieties of optimised Miscanthus to make a significant contribution to future energy security. The development of crops as sources of bioenergy is an important component in finding economically acceptable substitutes for fossil fuels. Miscanthus, a ubiquitous Asian grass with high yields and requiring low inputs, is a particularly promising plant species for bioenergy development. The new collaborative breeding programme will further link previous research on Miscanthus at IBERS (funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2004-2010 and by Ceres, Inc., an integrated energy crop seed company (from 2007 onwards), to a suite of co-ordinated research projects funded b...