Miscanthus can meet US biofuels goal using less land than corn or switchgrass

Using the grass Miscanthus x giganteus as a feedstock for ethanol production would significantly reduce the amount of farmland needed for biofuels, said U. of I. crop sciences professor Stephen... Click here for more information.

In the largest field trial of its kind in the United States, researchers have determined that the giant perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus outperforms current biofuels sources – by a lot. Using Miscanthus as a feedstock for ethanol production in the U.S. could significantly reduce the acreage dedicated to biofuels while meeting government biofuels production goals, the researchers report.

The new findings, from researchers at the University of Illinois, appear this month in the journal Global Change Biology.

Using corn or switchgrass to produce enough ethanol to offset 20 percent of gasoline use – a current White House goal – would take 25 percent of current U.S. cropland out of food production, the researchers report. Getting the same amount of ethanol from Miscanthus would require only 9.3 percent of current agricultural acreage. (To view an audio slideshow about Miscanthus research, please go to: http://www.publicaffairs.illinois.edu/slideshows/Miscanthus_Yield/index.html.)

Corn, switchgrass and Miscanthus are grown side by side in experimental plots in Urbana, Ill. These fields, shown in 2006, were in their second year of growth. Click here for more information.

"What we've found with Miscanthus is that the amount of biomass generated each year would allow us to produce about 2 1/2 times the amount of ethanol we can produce per acre of corn," said crop sciences professor Stephen P. Long, who led the study. Long is the deputy director of the BP-sponsored Energy Biosciences Institute, a multi-year, multi-institutional initiative aimed at finding low-carbon or carbon-neutral alternatives to petroleum-based fuels. Long is an affiliate of the U. of I.'s Institute for Genomic Biology. He also is the editor of Global Change Biology.