Australia
June 17, 2005
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. |