(Dulles, VA, 15 September 2005) -- Edenspace Systems Corporation announced today that it has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop new crop plants for ethanol production. The Western Regional Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, located in Albany, California, will carry out USDA's activities under the CRADA.

The United States of America currently imports 55% of its petroleum, representing 45% of the total trade deficit. Decreasing petroleum imports by developing renewable energy sources will stimulate the economy, increase energy security, and reduce the quantity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. An increasingly important renewable energy source is ethanol produced from starch in corn grain. More than 4 billion gallons of fuel ethanol will be produced in 2005, with a national target of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

Two constraints limit future demand for fuel ethanol: high processing costs, and low ethanol yields per acre. Current technology based on fermentation of sugars from starch in corn grain offers limited opportunity to address these constraints. New technologies based on using the entire plant, not just grain, offer an excellent pathway to reduce processing costs as well as to increase efficient use of farmland.

Since 2003, Edenspace has been engineering crops to enhance their energy performance by incorporating genes that express cellulases, thereby reducing the cost of producing ethanol from plant biomass. Cellulases are biodegradable enzymes that 'unzip' cellulose (which like the starch in corn grain consists of a long chain of sugar molecules) into the sugars that can be fermented into ethanol. Integrating high-efficiency cellulase energy crops with fuel ethanol production and distribution systems is projected to nearly double per-acre ethanol yields, reduce the cost of fuel ethanol by 20%, increase farm income by 25%, and relax pressures on farmland availability. Other expected benefits include cleaner air and productive use of agricultural byproducts such as cotton waste and rice straw that today impose significant costs on farmers and the environment.

Switchgrass, a perennial high biomass grass that grows throughout much of the U.S., has been proposed as a promising biomass fuel crop. As switchgrass is native to the Great Plains of the U.S., has wide adaptability to marginal soils, and grows vigorously (with annual biomass yields of 10-20 tons/hectare) it is often used as a riparian buffer crop and as a vegetative cover for bare soil in environmental programs such as USDA's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).

Switchgrass selection and breeding efforts to date, notably at the University of Nebraska, have focused on improving disease resistance, forage quality and biomass yields, leading to the development of upland and lowland varieties suitable for biomass or forage production (Fig. 1). Molecular breeding approaches initiated at the University of Tennessee are currently being continued at the Western Regional Research Center.

The cooperative agreement announced today will expand molecular breeding approaches to develop switchgrass varieties with improved biomass qualities for ethanol production. Edenspace and the Center will collaborate in general on research to explore genes, traits and mechanisms that are potentially useful for renewable energy production, and in particular on research that will lead to commercial introduction of enhanced switchgrass varieties as an ethanol feedstock. The immediate goal of this research is to create switchgrass lines expressing cellulases and other enzymes that will be active during postharvest processing and decrease the costs of making fuel ethanol. To prevent unwanted flow of cellulase genes into the environment, methods of bioconfinement will be incorporated into these lines.

The Western Regional Research Center conducts mission-oriented research directed in part at protecting and enhancing the quality of the environment by developing environmentally sound systems for efficient biomass utilization in biofuels such as ethanol. Ongoing projects include several that seek to increase the energy potential of switchgrass, involving the alteration of activity in key lignin biosynthetic enzymes, cell wall biosynthesis, and techniques for bioconfinement of transgenes.

Headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, Edenspace Systems Corporation is a commercial leader in the use of live plants to improve human health, protect property values and clean the environment. Its techniques employ plants to detect, concentrate and remove lead, arsenic, radionuclides, chlorides (salts), hydrocarbons, and other minerals in water and soil, as well as to produce plants with traits that improve yields of renewable energy sources such as ethanol. With expertise in plant science, environmental and soil science, genetics and agronomy, Edenspace is developing new markets for the restoration and enrichment of our surroundings.