Advances in Crop Genetics Will Help to Meet the Raw Material Quantity and Quality Demands of the Biofuels Industry.

Crop genetics will play a key part in supplying a mature biofuels industry with plentiful, high quality raw materials. The current corn grain based biofuels industry in the United States provides a good example of the types of advances that crop genetics will supply to the diversified global biofuels industry. Productivity per unit land area has been, and remains, a central focus for corn product development. Long standing measures of success like harvestable grain yield and resistance to disease and insect pests remain critical. Novel targets for crop productivity improvement like improved Nitrogen use efficiency and drought tolerance have simply been added to the genetic “to-do” list. These later two targets, in addition to contributing to productivity, will also improve environmental sustainability of corn production. All targets in crop productivity help assure that there is adequate grain supply for food, feed, and fuel. With more than a quarter of the corn crop now projected to be used in ethanol production a second measure of crop productivity, i.e. biofuel yield per unit corn grain, has also been identified. This second target does not diminish the central role of crop productivity per unit land area. It does, however, recognize that composition and functionality of the grain produced can influence the amount and/or quality of biofuel and co-product produced per unit of grain mass. All the tools of modern plant genetics, i.e. our ability to understand and harness native genetic variation, molecular markers, and transgenic approaches, will contribute to progress in both of these areas of genetic gain in crop productivity for biofuels.