Purdue gets $6.5 million from ARPA-Energy for sorghum research

In Indiana, Purdue University has been awarded $6.5 million by the U.S. Department of Energy for research aimed at producing superior strains of sorghum suitable for growing as a biofuel.

The grant is among six Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture awards nationwide from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The projects are focused on accelerating energy crop development for the production of renewable transportation fuels.

A team of researchers from the Purdue colleges of Agriculture and Engineering and Purdue’s Polytechnic Institute has partnered in the project with IBM Research, the largest industrial research organization in the world, and a scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia.

Purdue was competitive for the funding because of the investment in Purdue Moves, a range of initiatives, including plant sciences, that the university introduced in 2013 to broaden Purdue’s global impact and enhance educational opportunities for its students.