Genetically modified crops to make petrol

By SIMON COLLINS

A New Zealand-educated scientist is playing a key role in an American project to genetically engineer corn and soyabeans to make petrol.

Professor Basil Nikolau, a Greek who was born in Turkey and educated at Palmerston North Boys High School and Massey University, says the plan would use up US grain surpluses.

It might also help to reduce global warming, because it would merely recycle carbon absorbed from the air by the plants and emitted again when the plant-based fuel is burned.

In effect, it would speed up fuel production by millions of years - the time it now takes for dead plant material to turn into coal, oil or gas underground.

Auckland-based AgriGenesis and Rotorua's Forest Research are among many other groups around the world that believe plant-based energy could be the next big wave in biotechnology, along with continued use of genetics in the medical area where the technology began.

But Forest Research's chief operating officer, Tom Richardson, who met Dr Nikolau in Iowa last Friday, said New Zealand's first steps in the field were more likely to be in creating pelletised fuels, rather than oils.

Dr Nikolau has been keen to collaborate with New Zealand scientists since he left to take up a post-doctoral fellowship in the US in 1982, and wants to use New Zealand's expertise in trees.

As director of the Centre for Designer Crops at Iowa State University, he leads teams looking for the genes that control starch production in corn and determine the balance of oil and protein in soyabeans.

Iowa State University Centre for Designer Crops