I will be chairing a daylong session on Energy Crops at the World Biofuels Market conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on March 22, 2011. The conference website describes the World Biofuels Market conference as “a 3 day “one stop shop” [that will] assemble the entire biofuels value chain and accelerate the commercialization of sustainable mobility”. The conference features three days of concurrent sessions on topics including bioethanol, military biofuels, aviation biofuels, advanced biofuels, algae, energy crops, and several sessions on the economic and business aspects of the biofuel business. There are also several keynote speeches, and the conference runs concurrently with conferences on bio-based chemicals, biopower generation, and biogas.
The Energy Crops session consists of four panels over the course of the day on Tuesday, March 22. The first session, “High Powered Energy Crops” will discuss new feedstocks such as switchgrass, miscanthus and camelina. The second session will focus solely on jatropha as an emerging energy crop, with scheduled speakers from the Jatropha Alliance, SG Biofuels, Joil, and D1 Oils. The first session of the afternoon will be on “Feedstock Systems and Cropping” and will focus on agricultural and agronomic techniques to improve yields of energy crops. The final session of the day will be devoted to “next generation plant biotech” and the role of plant science and genetics to influence energy crop development.
At this last session, I’ll be presenting a talk giving an overview of the potential uses of biotechnology to improve the plant species used as feedstocks for biofuel production. For this talk, I’d appreciate receiving information on company activities or recently published academic research involving uses of transgenic plants or other applications of biotechnology for the enhancement of biofuel feedstocks. If you have any such information, you can post it as a Comment on this blog entry, or e-mail it to me.
As I work on my talk, I hope to post occasional blog entries to preview my presentation, and of course I’ll be posting my slides after the talk, and will post a link in a blog entry shortly after the conference. I also hope to be blogging during or shortly after the conference to report on any interesting news or information that I may learn on topics relevant to the focus of this blog. As always, please feel free to comment or contact me with any questions you may have.
D. Glass Associates, Inc. is a consulting company specializing in several fields of biotechnology. David Glass, Ph.D. is a veteran of nearly thirty years in the biotech industry, with expertise in patents, technology licensing, industrial biotechnology regulatory affairs, and market and technology assessments. This blog provides back-up and expanded content to complement a presentation Dr. Glass is making at the EUEC 2010 conference on February 2, 2010 entitled “Prospects for the Use of Genetic Engineering in Biofuel Production.” The slides from that presentation, along with more information on D. Glass Associates’ regulatory affairs consulting capabilities, are available at www.slideshare.net/djglass99 or at www.dglassassociates.com.
Bio-Based Chemicals and Fuels: Business, Policy and Regulation 