More plastics, paints and even nylons could be made from chemicals produced in plants, an environmentally friendly replacement for non-renewable and increasingly costly petrochemicals currently used for the job.

Last night CSIRO and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) launched the first phase of their joint Crop Biofactories Initiative which will initially invest $13 million over 4 years to further explore the potential of plants to make compounds for a variety of industrial uses.

“The chemical industry worldwide is undergoing a major shift from using petroleum based petrochemicals as raw materials to biological based raw materials,” says Mr Vince Logan, GRDC.

“The Crop Biofactories Initiative will look at a range of industrially useful compounds found in nature and try to make plants produce high yields of them at relatively low-cost to replace traditional petrochemicals.”

Moving away from petrochemicals to biological sources of raw materials frees up petroleum for other uses, reduces dependence on it and is a positive move towards a cleaner greener future for Australia.

Importantly Mr Logan adds that the plant 'biofactories' research is part of GRDC's long term strategy to help provide Australian grain growers with an alternative, high volume and higher value market for grain.

Compounds produced by plants are already used by industry to make some products such as biodegradable plastics, paints and polyurethane panels for machinery – but there are many more opportunities.

Estimates suggest that the world-wide value of new industrial biotech applications in the chemical industry alone could reach $160 billion by 2010.

CSIRO's Dr John Oakeshott says the Initiative will build on CSIRO's past success identifying novel enzymes and compounds from biological sources like plants and insects to determine if they have useful properties for industrial applications.

“We are searching for new compounds with valuable properties, like biodegradability, that are not known to the industry - that can be produced by plants,” Dr Oakeshott says.

The anticipated length of the entire Initiative is 12 years – in the first phase CSIRO and GRDC will explore a range of potential options to determine which might be the most promising, and will then seek to demonstrate 'proof of concept' in plants.