Institut für Züchtungsforschung an landwirtschaftlichen Kulturen
Attempts need to be made to replace greenhouse gas emitting, finite fossil fuels with sustainable, carbonneutral resources e.g. for the chemical industry. One resource with such attributes is highly abundant agricultural waste residue from crops. The majority of agricultural residue consists of so called lignocellulosics, a composite of non-food plant material, whose sugars, once released, can be used for the production of commodity chemicals. The biggest challenge in converting lignocellulosics to chemicals is overcoming the material’s recalcitrance to degradation. Hence, there is a huge potential to breed crops with enhanced, advantageous lignocellulosic attributes to alleviate e.g. processing costs. The research project CORNWALL represents an application-oriented interdisciplinary collaborative project. The CORNWALL consortium identifies and characterizes non-transgenic, economically competitive maize mutants/varieties that upon whole plant processing result in altered yields of sugar derived from their lignocellulosic biomass. The identification of the responsible mutation in those mutants will lead to novel genetic markers that will be useful for future plant breeding. As a result the production output of improved crop material per hectare represents a significant improvement in resource efficiency and at the same time setting the stage for an improved material-industrial use of the maize plant material.
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
