UMass Amherst researchers work to improve camelina yields

Biodiesel Magazine
By Erin Voegele
May 16, 2012

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst is working to significantly increase the oil yields of camelina with the goal of creating a commercially viable crop for biofuel production. The $2 million, two-phase project is supported by a $1.48 million grant from the U.S. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), with the remaining funding contributed by UMass Amherst, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Council and partners at Washington State University, University of California, Berkeley and Metabolics Inc.

According to Danny Schnell, a professor in UMass Amherst’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the method the team is using is a coupled strategy that features biological engineering. “The first strategy is to modify photosynthesis in camelina to increase CO2 fixation, [which] would of course generate additional carbon,” he said. “In the second part of the project we are engineering the plant to divert that increased carbon into seed oil production.” To complete the first component of the strategy the team is modifying photosynthesis within the plant, using a mechanism derived from cyanobacteria and algae.

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