‘Oils ain’t oils’ when Nufarm makes more of them

Crop protection and seed developer Nufarm has established a strategic R&D partnership to expand its bioenergy and sustainable oils platform technology originally sourced from CSIRO.

The company's Biomass Oil trait technology comprises a significant estate of patents and know-how that when deployed into crops boost accumulation of oil in plant tissue, increasing oil yields from potential feedstock plants used to produce biofuels.

Nufarm has established R&D partnerships with the University of Florida (UF) USA and the Instituto Agronomico (IAC) Brazil to expand its work with CSIRO to advance the technology in high-biomass crops.

Nufarm’s proprietary energy cane and forage sorghum genetics offer two of the highest biomass crops suited for the development and introgression of the Biomass Oil trait.

When crops are harvested, the lipids in the aerial part of plants can be removed via crushing and/or an enzyme extraction process and then refined into biofuels such as biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). After separation from the lipids, bioethanol can be created from the remaining sucrose content.

The CEO of Nufarm Limited Greg Hunt said: “These Biomass Oil IP assets provide a potentially transformational complement to Nufarm's bioenergy and beyond yield platform strategy aligned with our objective to develop an industry-leading bioenergy and consumer goods position from advanced feedstock crops.

“In addition to our proprietary plant genetics and research capability, this consortium of world-class R&D and technical partners was selected for their specific complementary capabilities and experience related to the activities required and the project is well underway.”

Nufarm is also working with additional strategic partners to identify new opportunities for technical project development and future downstream commercialization.

CSIRO’s Dr Thomas Vanhercke, who has been working on the project for more than a decade, said the technology would have the potential to create an important new global energy source.

Dr Vanhercke said: “We were inspired to develop this technology in response to the world’s need for increased production of plant oil without impacting on food security.

“With CSIRO’s existing expertise in the area and the partnership with Nufarm on the Omega-3 canola project, we started thinking about how to extend that to the challenge of developing industrial scale feedstock oil from plants.

“We took the genetics for seed oil production and incorporated them across a range of crops with promising success.”

Picture: CSIRO