Advances in the use of genetically modified plant biomass for biodiesel generation

Abstract

B iodiesel is a low-carbon-intensity renewable fuel with up to 99% lower greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum-based diesel. The use of oil crops for biodiesel is under critical examination. It is expensive and suffers from the food versus fuel risk/benefi t problem. Consequently, many countries (e.g. Malaysia and countries in the EU) are scaling back the use of oil crops as feedstock for biofuel production. The limitations of these traditional crops are leading the renewable fuels industry to consider innovative, sustainable, and profi table biomass-based platforms. Plant genetic engineering and other new breeding technologies are essential for developing such biomass-based platforms because they enhance plant tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses, resulting in higher feedstock yields, greater net energy gain, and the generation of high-value co-products. We review and summarize the recent improvements of oil crops through plant genetic engineering that may increase widespread and cost-effective production of biodiesel and value-added co-products for green chemistry applications.

Elucidation of Triacylglycerol Overproduction in the C4 Bioenergy Crop Sorghum bicolor by Constraint-Based Analysis

“…Lipids are energy-dense plant products, which means that replacing sucrose by TAG as the photo-assimilatory end-product comes at a higher cost in energy cofactors that must be derived from the light-dependent reactions in chloroplasts. In literature related to plant lipid biofuels it is often pointed out that, on a weight basis, oil has more than twice the energy content of carbohydrate ( Durrett et al, 2008 ; Ohlrogge and Chapman, 2011 ; Allen et al, 2015 ; Huang et al, 2016 ; Xu and Shanklin, 2016 ; Wan et al, 2017 ). Based on the fatty acid composition used in our model, sorghum leaf TAG is 2.39 as energy dense as sucrose ( Table 2 ).…”

“…While plants accumulate oils mostly as triacylglycerol (TAG) in specialized organs, there is increasing interest in developing bioenergy crops that accumulate TAG in the vegetative parts of the plant ( Durrett et al, 2008 ; Shih et al, 2016 ; Xu and Shanklin, 2016 ; Lee et al, 2017 ). While oilseeds can accumulate between 20 and 50% TAG by weight ( Ohlrogge and Chapman, 2011 ; Wan et al, 2017 ), seeds typically make up only a fraction of the plant biomass produced during a growing cycle. It has been estimated that if the bulk of above ground harvested plant biomass would contain TAG at 10% (w/dw), yields per acre could be substantially higher than achievable for any seed oil crop ( Ohlrogge and Chapman, 2011 ).…”

WRINKLED1 Is Subject to Evolutionary Conserved Negative Autoregulation

“…The potential of using WRI1 in biotechnological applications to, e.g., increase oil biosynthesis in already oil accumulating tissues or to reprogram traditional starch and sugar accumulating source tissues into oil accumulating sink tissues is well known and has been discussed in depth before (Shih et al, 2016; Kang et al, 2017; Wan et al, 2017). With the technological advances in recent years and the increased knowledge of gene regulation, we can now utilize transcriptional regulators more predictably.…”

Pyrolysis technology for Cortaderia selloana invasive species. Prospects in the biomass energy sector

“…The most effective method for controlling this problem is to cut or prune the invasive plan, something that generates large amounts of waste with no use or value [13]. Hence, Cortaderia selloana (CS), could be a biomass source for energy purposes and it could also be a temporary alternative of energy crops such as plant of the genus Miscanthus [14] or the canola (Brassica napus) [15,16]. Until now, it has been little studied in the field of waste valorization and there are only a few research related to this biomass as adsorbent material [6,[17][18][19].…”