A breakthrough by the African Centre for Crop Improvement in the breeding of sorghum could have far-reaching implications for the biofuel and bioplastic industries in South Africa.
For the last decade, ACCI director Professor Mark Laing has been working on developing sorghum and sugar beet varieties, as part of an integrated package to provide crop material (feedstock) for these two industries. His interest in the project started about 15 years ago when the price of oil rose to $150 a barrel.
“A large plastics company couldn’t get enough ethylene to make the quantities of polythene on order, so they wanted to start their own sugar-to-polythene plant and approached me about suitable sugar crops for the interior of South Africa,” he says.
With funding from Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), which is based in South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology (DST), Laing has been working on how to produce year-round feedstock on an industrial scale, by rotating sorghum and sugar beet.