PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Plant Biologists and the Development of Renewable Energy Sources

Mike Thomashow

These are exciting times for plant biology. With the development of “genomic sciences” and sophisticated new instrumentation, we can now probe the life of plants at levels that just a few years ago seemed, at best, to be wishful thinking. Indeed, given the distance that we have come since the plant sciences entered the modern “molecular genetic era,” ushered in with the advent of plant transformation systems during the 1980s, the goal of understanding plant processes at a “systems” level would not appear to be just a trendy pipedream, but a real, attainable goal within the not-too-distant future.

How will we use these powerful new approaches and the insights that we gain about basic plant biology? The answer, of course, is that they will be used in many ways and have many applications, ranging from the nutritional enhancement of food products to the production of feedstocks for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. One area that is particularly exciting is the development of renewable energy sources.

We are all well aware of the geopolitical challenges that are posed by our current dependence on nonrenewable sources of energy. In addition, we are well aware of the negative impacts that using many of these energy sources can have on the environment, such as emissions of greenhouse gasses attendant to the use of petroleum-based transportation fuels. When pondering these issues, we may find ourselves yearning for the development of clean, renewable energy sources. The thought occurs that it would be wonderful if we could replace petroleum-based transportation fuels with more environmentally friendly “biofuels” produced from renewable “energy crops.” But then the doubt arises whether this is even within the realm of possibility. Could the United States, for instance, grow and harvest enough “biomass” on an annual basis to produce enough ethanol and biodiesel to significantly decrease our dependence on petroleum-based transportation fuels without jeopardizing the production of food to feed the nation and to meet export demands?

This general issue was recently addressed in a joint study by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The results were published in a report titled “Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply” (http://www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/final_billionton_vision_report2.pdf). In particular, the committee asked whether the land resources of the United States would be capable of producing a sustainable supply of biomass sufficient to displace 30 percent or more of our current petroleum consumption, a goal that would require the production of approximately 1 billion dry tons of biomass feedstock per year. In short, the committee concluded that the answer to this question is “yes”; that annually, U.S. forest and agricultural lands have the potential to produce, respectively, more than 360 million and 990 million dry tons of biomass feedstock. Reaching these levels of biomass production, however, will require a number of developments, including changes in production practices and significant increases in crop yields. For example, cropland would likely be managed with no-till methods, and a 50 percent increase in the yields of corn, wheat, and other small grain crops would be required.

Using biomass feedstocks to provide significant levels of renewable energy is an exciting, inspiring vision for the future of America and the greater world community. President John F. Kennedy’s goal of putting a human being on the moon by the end of the 1960s served as a unifying theme that helped nucleate efforts that led to spectacular advances in science and technology and, equally importantly, helped attract young people to these areas of study. Setting national and international goals for producing renewable, environmentally friendly energy sources also has, I think, the potential to stimulate important advances in science and technology and to attract young people to these areas of study. Specifically in regard to plant scientists, such goals also provide a framework for integrating much of plant biology research. Understanding plant growth and development at a systems level feeds into increasing biomass, as does understanding basic mechanisms of abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. Understanding how cell walls are synthesized and their composition determined is not only fundamental to our knowledge of basic plant biology, but is also a central issue in biomass production and conversion. The same can be said of understanding how plants synthesize and regulate the production of lipids and oils as well as many other plant constituents and processes.

Plant scientists have a fundamental role to play in developing clean, renewable energy sources. It will be extremely interesting to see how this role develops over the coming years. Indeed, these are exciting times for plant biology!

Michael F. Thomashow
thomash6@msu.edu