Corn Commentary

Corn for Biomass Research

Plant breeders are coming up with new varieties of corn plants that could play a big role in producing biomass for next generation ethanol production, as well as other desirable traits.

University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has been working on a couple of new plants with some serious potential.

For one, Moose doubled the “Glossy 15″ gene that slows down shoot maturation and ended up creating a plant with a giant potential for biomass. “What happens is that you get bigger plants, possibly because they’re more sensitive to the longer days of summer,” Moose explained. The addition of the gene “makes the plant slow down and gets much bigger at the end of the season.”

The ears of corn have fewer seeds compared to the normal corn plant but more sugar and the energy to make the seed goes instead into the stalk and leaves. “We essentially can make any corn variety bigger with this gene,” said Moose.

Moose has also been working with crop scientist Fred Below crossing maize plants adapted to the tropics with lines used as parents of popular Midwestern corn hybrids. In doing so, they have developed a new type of plant that uses less nitrogen and can yield three different crops – grain, sugar and biomass.

“These plants are massive,” Moose said. “They have big stalks, and unlike normal corn where stalks become hollow as they supply the grain with nutrients, these corn stalks are all filled up inside with sugar. If you harvest at the right time, it’s almost like harvesting sugar cane — the amount of sugar in the stalk is like sugar cane.” They calculated that there is six times the amount of sugar in the stalk of this newly developed corn and could produce about 200 gallons of ethanol per acre.

Test plots indicate that this type of corn would make a better energy crop than switchgrass. The yields of this new corn, even under low nitrogen, beat the record for switchgrass yields in the Midwest.