Evogene Ltd. announced the signing of its collaboration with Insolo Agroindustrial S.A. for the selection and optimization of Evofuel's castor bean varieties in Insolo farms located in Piaui state in Brazil.

The two-year collaboration will examine the suitability of Evofuel's castor varieties as a second crop solution for Insolo farms located in the Cerrado, a fast developing agricultural region in Brazil. The two companies will evaluate the benefits of growing Evofuel's castor bean varieties in the area and develop how to integrate castor bean into Insolo's production system.

"We are very excited to add Insolo as a partner in Brazil," said Assaf Oron, general manager of Evofuel.

Evofuel develops castor bean varieties suitable for industrial use and production of oil feedstock for the biofuel market. Evofuel is focused on growing castor as a second crop solution, particularly in semi-arid regions such as northeast Brazil.

Researchers at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) are trying to produce biofuels and bioplastic from paper waste. The study began this January and will be conducted by setting up a pilot scale bioprocessing laboratory at the college's biology department.

"A major part of the municipal waste in Oman and any part of the world comprises paper. The proposed research is a unique and challenging attempt to manage the growing quantity of paper waste which is an environmental and health concern in any country. We will find out if this waste could be used to produce biofuel and bioplastic," said principal investigator and assistant professor, Dr Sivakumar Nallusamy.

Microbes will be collected from different environments and will be tested for their cellulase producing capabilities. The best performing microbes would then be used for the bioconversion of paper wastes.

The project will be funded by The Research Council till 2017. This project could open avenues for large scale production if taken up by industries.

Alternative energy source facilities will soon be established in Infanta, Quezon in the Philippines to help supply energy in rice-based communities. The bioethanol distillation facility will use sap from nipa, an indigenous plant in Infanta, as feedstock to produce biofuel for spark-ignition engines that farmers use.

"This facility basically produces hydrous bioethanol fuel to be used for small farm machines," Engr. Alexis T. Belonio, lead inventor of the technology. "[With this facility], we have an option [on what energy type to use]," added Belonio, the first Filipino to win the Rolex Award for Enterprise for his creation of the rice hull-powered stove.

"We are aware of the pressing need for alternative fuel to run farm engines. We want to manufacture machines for farming that do not depend on fossil fuel," former PhilRice Executive Director Eufemio Rasco Jr. said during the launch.

Three bioethanol facilities will be set-up in three years to discover the appropriate model suitable for farming. The project is implemented jointly by the Mariano Marcos State University, Philippine Rice Research Institute, UP Los Baños, and the local government unit.

Genome shuffling is a tool that can be used to enhance complex traits including ethanol tolerance that would increase Saccharomyces cerevisiae-mediated ethanol production. Kevin J. Verstrepen of Centre of Microbial and Plant Genetics in Belgium and his team explored robot-assisted strategies to shuffle genomes of multiple parental yeasts.

Eight of the 318 different yeasts screened served as parents for the study. Two approaches were used for genome shuffling. In the first approach, strains were subjected to multiple consecutive rounds of random genome shuffling, yielding hybrids with increased ethanol tolerance. The second approach used several rounds of robot-assisted targeted genome shuffling. In both approaches, the F1 hybrids showed higher ethanol production than F3 hybrids. Of all the hybrids strains, eight exhibited superior fermentation performance than the commercial strain Ethanol Red.

This study presents the use of several genome shuffling strategies to obtain hybrids with increased ethanol tolerance and fermentation capacity. Several hybrids outperformed the bioethanol strain Ethanol Red, making them interesting candidate strains for industrial production.

Glycerol produced from renewable fuel production is an attractive substrate for the production of value-added materials. The engineered Rhodococcus opacus strain MITXM-61 can produce triacylglycerols (TAGs) for biofuels using glucose and xylose. However, it does not produce TAGs on glycerol medium. Anthony J. Sinskey of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aimed to develop a TAG-producing R. opacus capable of production at high glycerol concentrations.

Adaptive evolution strategy was used to improve the conversion of glycerol to TAGs in MITXM-61. The evolved strain, MITGM-173, grown on glycerol medium produced TAGs at 0.144 g/g of TAG produced per glycerol consumed. MITGM-173 was able to grow on high concentrations of glycerol. The evolved strain was also cultivated in a mixed medium of glycerol, glucose, and xylose and was able to simultaneously consume the mixed substrates and yielded TAGs.

Sinskey's team generated a TAG-producing R. opacus MITGM-173 strain with improved glycerol utilization. Their results showed that the evolved R. opacus strain shows potential in developing a process to generate advanced renewable fuels from mixed sugar feedstocks supplemented with glycerol.

Waste biomass from fungal fermentation processes could be used to harvest microalgae used in biofuels production and other biotechnology applications. A*STAR researchers have successfully demonstrated this procedure with fungal mycelium, the main vegetative part of a fungus.

"The lack of an economic and effective method for harvesting microalgae is one of the bottlenecks limiting their commercial use in biotechnology," explains Mahabubur Talukder of the A*STAR Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences.

Microalgae can be cultured in a broth and existing methods for harvesting them include centrifugation or flocculation using chemical treatments. However, all current methods have drawbacks.

The researchers then investigated fungal mycelium, which they found effective and could also add value by contributing to the total biomass in the harvested material. Detailed analysis indicated that the key to the binding and immobilizing effect is a simple ionic attraction between the surface of the microalgae and the fungal mycelium.