DOE awards University of Illinois $10.6 million grant for energycane

In Illinois, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the University of Illinois a $10.6 million, five-year grant to transform two of the most productive crops in America into sustainable sources of biodiesel and biojet fuel. The new research project Renewable Oil Generated with Ultra-productive Energycane–or ROGUE–kicks off on Feb. 25 with a team meeting held in conjunction with the 2018 Genomic Sciences Program Annual Principal Investigator (PI) Meeting in Tysons, Virginia.

ROGUE will engineer energycane, a bioenergy crop derived from sugarcane, and Miscanthus to produce the oil that is used to create biodiesel and biojet fuel. Their work is guided by computer models, which project that these crops can achieve 20 percent oil content in the plant–a dramatic increase from natural levels of less than a tenth of one percent.