Biodiesel Production from Sugarcane A multi-institutional team led by plant biology professor Stephen P. Long from the University of Illinois reports that it can increase sugarcane's geographic range boost its photosynthetic rate by 30 percent and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production.These are the first steps in a bigger initiative that will turn sugarcane and sorghum  two of the most productive crop plants known  into even more productive oil-generating plants.The team presented its latest findings to the U.S. Department of Energy's ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington D.C. in February this year.But soybean isnt productive enough to meet the nations need for renewable diesel fuels Long said.Working first with the laboratory-friendly plant Arabidopsis (rockcress a relative of cabbage and mustard) and later with sugarcane the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant. They increased oil production in sugarcane stems to about 1.5 percent.The team hopes to increase the oil content of sugarcane stems to about 20 percent he said.Using genetic engineering the researchers increased photosynthetic efficiency in sugarcane and sorghum by 30 percent Long said. And to boost cold tolerance researchers are crossing sugarcane with Miscanthus a related perennial grass that can grow as far north as Canada. The new hybrid is more cold-tolerant than sugarcane but further crosses are needed to restore the other attributes of sugarcane while preserving its cold-tolerance Long said.Ultimately the team hopes to integrate all of these new attributes into sugarcane he said.The research team led by the University of Illinois includes scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory the University of Florida and the University of Nebraska. Long is an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois.