UW-Madison Plant Breeders Contribute to Newly Awarded DOE Bioenergy Grant
The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in close partnership with Michigan State University, was recently selected by the DOE as one of three research centers for bioenergy. With an award of $125 million in funding over five years, the new GLBRC facility is part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and involves more than 50 UW-Madison researchers. The mission of the GLBRC is to explore scientifically diverse approaches for converting sunlight and various plant feedstocks-agricultural residues, wood chips, and grasses-into biofuels. In addition to its broad range of scientific research projects, the GLBRC is collaborating with agricultural researchers and producers to help develop the most economically viable and environmentally sustainable practices for bioenergy production.
GLBRC scientific research is organized into five focus areas:
1. Improving Plant Biomass
2. Improving Biomass Processing
3. Improving Biomass Conversion
4. Fostering Sustainable Bioenergy Practices
5. Creating Technologies to Enable More Advanced Bioenergy Research
As part of the GLBRC, three faculty members from the Department of Agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are working to increase maize biomass accumulation and improve digestibility for bioenergy conversion. As members of the interdepartmental Plant Breeding & Plant Genetics program, Natalia de Leon, Shawn Kaeppler and Heidi Kaeppler are expanding upon previous efforts of the UW corn research program (developed by retired professor James Coors). The UW corn research program represents the only public improvement effort for silage breeding in the U.S. and has traditionally studied the breeding and genetics of maize germplasm for ruminant nutrition. The researchers have found that similar traits may be important for improving feedstock for energy bioconversion.
The research of de Leon and Kaeppler aims to use association analysis to identify natural quantitative variation for composition and digestibility of cellulosic biomass. Complementing their traditional field breeding programs, the researchers also intend to develop rapid-flowering, small-statured maize varieties for high-throughput genetic and molecular analysis of biomass related traits. This “mini-maize” would be of particular importance for other researchers in GLBRC who do not have access to agronomic production fields. Through the creation of dominant-negative mutations for genes involved in lignin and cell wall synthesis, they will also identify loci which modify or interact with these genes, leading to a better understanding of the metabolic networks involved. This research will lead to improved maize germplasm for bioenergy conversion and develop maize as a model system for future advances in other closely related biomass crops.
More information about the GLBRC can be found at www.greatlakesbioenergy.org
Written by Chad Kramer (cckramer@wisc.edu) and Margaret Broeren (mbroeren@glbrc.wisc.edu)
