Cargill grant supports University of Minnesota effort to develop new crops that produce biofuels

In Minnesota, the University of Minnesota said that Cargill has awarded $2.5 million to the Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota to support research into two novel oilseed crops—winter camelina and domesticated winter pennycress—that can produce seed-based oil for low-carbon transportation fuels.

“Winter camelina and pennycress could be truly transformative for farmers, the environment, rural communities, and the economy of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest,” said Mitch Hunter, associate director of the Forever Green Initiative, a research platform in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. “We are extremely excited to have this support from Cargill, which will greatly advance our research and help make these crops a reality for farmers.”

The university said that Winter camelina and pennycress could be a major climate solution for hard-to-electrify parts of the transportation sector because their seed oil can be refined into drop-in replacements for jet fuel and diesel. Grown in the off-season and with few inputs, the crops produce seed-based oil with a small greenhouse gas footprint, it added.

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