((Junction City, KS 19 June 2008) Edenspace Systems Corporation today announced its receipt of a two-year, Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The grant supports continued Edenspace development of enhanced switchgrass varieties with traits such as in-plant, or "endoplant," enzyme expression that reduce the cost of producing ethanol and other biofuels from plant leaves and stems. Begun in 2007, the project has a total budget of $645,000 that includes funding from the Kansas Bioscience Authority.
Switchgrass, a perennial high-biomass grass that grows throughout much of the U.S., has been proposed as a promising biomass fuel crop. Switchgrass has many of the characteristics desired in a bioenergy feedstock, showing wide adaptability to marginal soils and vigorous growth with optimum annual biomass yields of more than 10 tons per acre. The crop is often used in conservation applications such as the Conservation Reserve Program, as a riparian buffer crop, and as a cover crop for revegetating bare soil areas.
Edenspace is enhancing switchgrass as an energy crop under a 2005 Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Western Regional Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, located in Albany, California. Work under the cooperative agreement expands molecular breeding approaches to develop switchgrass varieties with improved biomass qualities for biofuels production, and explores genes, traits and mechanisms that are potentially useful for renewable energy production.
The company is developing enhanced varieties of corn, sorghum, switchgrass, and other crops to enhance their energy performance by incorporating genes that express cellulases, thereby reducing the cost of producing biofuels from plant biomass. When activated at a biorefinery, biodegradable endoplant cellulases "unzip" cellulose in plant leaves and stems into simple sugars such as glucose that can be fermented into ethanol, butanol or other biofuels. Producing enzymes in the plants themselves, rather than in microbial bioreactors, is expected to substantially reduce pre-treatment and enzyme costs. High-biomass crop varieties like switchgrass are expected to reduce costs of cultivation and transportation. Integrating high-efficiency endoplant enzyme crops with biofuel production and distribution systems is projected to double per-acre ethanol yields, reduce the cost of cellulosic ethanol by 20%, increase farm income per acre by 25%, and relax pressures on farmland availability and water use.
About Edenspace. Based in Junction City, Kansas, Edenspace is a commercial leader in developing improved crops for production of biofuels from non-food agricultural residues and dedicated energy crops. The company seeks to reduce today's high costs of capital equipment, materials, energy, and disposal required to produce cellulosic biofuels, as well as reduce CO2 emissions and pollution from fossil fuels, increase energy independence, and raise rural and farm incomes. The company has entered into key development agreements with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, USDA, Kansas State University, Michigan State University, Oklahoma State University, and the leading ethanol design/build firm, ICM, Inc. The company received the Environmental Business Journal's 2004 Technology Award and the DaimlerChrysler 1999 Environmental Excellence award. With expertise in plant biotechnology, agronomy, and environmental science, Edenspace is developing innovative, sustainable technologies to meet energy needs, improve human health, protect property values and restore the environment.
Note to Editors: Growing in the greenhouse above is healthy first-generation Energy Switchgrass™ containing an endoplant enzyme (photo courtesy Western Regional Research Center).