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November 3, 2008
At the 2008 American Seed Trade Association Farm and Lawn Seed Conference and Western Seed Association Annual Meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, Edenspace Systems Corporation today announced the availability of Linebacker(tm) sorghum, the company's first Energy Sorghumtm hybrid seed product. Edenspace's Linebacker(tm) sorghum is a non-transgenic, high-yielding photoperiod sensitive (forage) sorghum that is an ideal feedstock for production of cellulosic biofuels such as ethanol and butanol.
Production of biofuels from plant leaves and stems is widely seen as necessary to meet the surging demand for renewable transportation fuels. A growing number of ethanol producers across the Midwest are developing facilities for converting such lignocellulosic biomass into biofuels. These facilities require feedstocks that are abundant, easy to produce and harvest, and readily processed. High-performing Edenspace Linebacker(tm) sorghum meets these requirements and offers a new market opportunity for farmers, seedsmen and processors. Linebacker(tm) sorghum and other non-transgenic hybrids have outstanding agronomic characteristics as well as superior processing characteristics for biofuels production, out-yielding alternative biomass crops. Linebacker(tm) sorghum is now available in commercial quantities.
Edenspace is also developing next-generation crops for conversion to biofuels and will soon offer varieties of sorghum, corn, switchgrass, and other crops that are bioengineered for enhanced energy performance by incorporating genes for cellulases and other process-optimizing traits. The effect will be to greatly reduce the cost of producing biofuels from non-food plant biomass. When activated after harvest, biodegradable endoplant cellulases "unzip" cellulose in plant leaves and stems, yielding simple sugars such as glucose that can be fermented into ethanol, butanol or other biofuels. Producing enzymes in the plants themselves, rather than in microbial bioreactors, is expected to substantially reduce downstream costs. Integrating high-efficiency endoplant enzyme crops with new techniques for storage, transportation and processing is projected to double per-acre ethanol yields, reduce the cost of cellulosic ethanol by 20%, increase farm income per acre by 25%, and relax pressures on farmland availability and water use.
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October 28, 2008
At the 21st NREL Industry Growth Forum in Denver, Colorado, Edenspace Systems Corporation today announced the award of a two-year, Phase II STTR grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Under the grant, Edenspace will develop the use of ensilement to reduce the costs of processing plant biomass into renewable biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol. Edenspace is teamed with DOE's Idaho National Laboratory on the project.
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Edenspace is a start-up biotechnology company that uses plant genetic engineering to develop bioenergy feedstocks that reduce the need for resource intensive pretreatments and overcome the inherent resistance, or recalcitrance, of plant cell wall polymers to deconstruction into simpler sugars. The sugars and lignin released during biomass conversion can be used as raw materials for biofuels and biomaterials by fermentative and catalytic technologies. Genetically modified feedstocks facilitate the breakdown of the cell wall by engaging the plant's protein synthetic machinery to produce cell wall modifying enzymes -such as cellulases, xylanases, hemicellulases, pectinases, and accessory enzymes. Edenspace's optimized crops are being developed to express a suite of cell wall degrading enzymes that mimic the effective multi-enzyme systems found in nature. |
