ANALYSIS-Promising biodiesel crop needs time to prove itself

Reuters Africa
Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:23pm GMT

* Attractive due to higher oil yield than palm, jatropha
* Doubts linger as not proven yet on commercial scale
* Some say may be best suited to small farmers

By Nina Chestney

LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Several new companies are betting on the little-known pongamia pinnata tree as a biodiesel feedstock that does not hurt food production, but a decade or more of research and development is still needed to determine its value as a commercial crop.

Pongamia pinnata, also known as millettia pinnata, is native to Australia, India and parts of southeast Asia. Its oil has so far been used in medicines, lubricants and oil lamps.

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Ethanol Co-products Boost Nutrition in Asian Flatbread

Innovations Report (Germany)
07.06.2010

South Dakota State University research shows a traditional Asian flatbread called chapathi, or chapati, gets a big boost in protein and fiber when fortified with food-grade distillers grains.

SDSU food scientist Padu Krishnan said it is one example of the ways in which distillers dried grains with solubles, or DDGS, can help improve human nutrition worldwide. DDGS is produced as a co-product when processing corn into ethanol, so corn producers from the American Midwest and elsewhere could tap a vast new market if manufacturers begin using it to fortify products in human diets.

Krishnan and his student, Sowmya Arra, worked with Kurt Rosentrater of the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory on the project. In lab studies they found that using DDGS to make up 10 percent of the dough in chapathi, an Asian whole wheat unleavened bread eaten in South Asia and East Africa, boosted the fiber from 2.9 percent to 7.8 percent. Using 20 percent DDGS in the dough increased the fiber to 10.3 percent.

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Sources Of Climate- And Health-afflicting Soot Pollution Over South Asia Identified

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2009) —

A gigantic brownish haze from various burning and combustion processes is blanketing India and surrounding land and oceans during the winter season. This soot-laden Brown Cloud is affecting South Asian climate as much or more than carbon dioxide and cause premature deaths of 100 000s annually, yet its sources have been poorly understood.

In the journal Science Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues at Stockholm University and in India use a novel carbon-14 method to determine that two-thirds of the soot particles are from biomass combustion such as in household cooking and in slash-and-burn agriculture.

Brown Clouds, covering large parts of South and East Asia, originate from burning of wood, dung and crop residue as well as from industrial processes and traffic. Previous studies had left it unclear as to the relative source contributions of biomass versus fossil fuel combustion.

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