Exploring Brassica carinata as a biofuel crop
June 13, 2024
The Crawford Fund’s highly sought after Student Awards are one way we support and encourage the next generation of Australians into study, careers and volunteering in international agricultural research.
The awards are funded by our State and Territory Committees and made possible by organisations including ACIAR, international centres, Australian and overseas universities and NGOs who host our awardees.
Sixteen talented university students from around Australia were awarded our 2023 Student Awards. As part of this cohort, we would like to share the experience of Ebtihal Mohamed, a PhD student from the Australian National University who is researching the development of Brassica carinata as a biofuel crop.
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“The Crawford Fund Student Award allowed me to attend the International Conference & Expo on Biofuels and Bioenergy in Rome, Italy,” she said.
The conference brought together scientists, researchers, scholars, professors and energy experts working on areas including: biofuels, bioenergy, biodiesel, algae biofuel, biogas and climate change.
The predominant research directions featured at the event were technologies to produce biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel; economical analysis of biofuels; and producing environmentally friendly biofuels to reduce carbon dioxide emissions she explained.
The conference’s presenters and audience were from all over Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and India. There were no researchers from Africa, the USA or China she noted.
“Most of the research projects were on canola and there was a lack of presentations on Brassica carinata. There was interest in Brassica carinata’s research presentations from the representatives from Brazil and Mexico as a potential feedstock for biodiesel production,” she said.
“This conference gave me the chance to learn the most recent research results and advances in the field of biofuels and bioenergy. And, it was a great opportunity to witness and participate in various scientific discussions and bestow future improvement in the field of biofuels,” she said.
“At the conference I had the honour of acting as a conference moderator for day one. I was chosen as a young researcher for this conference moderator role based on my curriculum vitae,” said Ebtihal.
“On day two, I presented my poster, which represented my PhD research project,” she said.
“The conference has influenced the research strategy for my PhD as I realised that there is a need for studies on the physicochemical properties of biodiesels as there is a direct correlation between them and biodiesel production techniques and the costs,” she concluded.
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A summary of Ebtihal’s PhD project is below:
The usage of non-renewable fossil fuels has problematic impacts on the environment and human health. Crop bioengineering approaches have the potential to change the properties of the oils that crops produce so that agriculture can deliver oils with the properties needed to meet future fuel needs. B. carinata (A. Braun.) is of interest as a non-food oilseed with great potential to produce renewable fuels.
This project tackles the challenge of optimising crop oil properties from two directions. One direction involves testing the oil properties of a collection of B. carinata material to assess the variation in oil properties that diverse B. carinata lines naturally produce. A panel of diverse B. carinata accessions and a double haploid population panel are being grown in the field/birdcage in Wagga Wagga, NSW DPI. Seeds were harvested at maturity and will be used for analysis of oil quantity and quality. Accessions of interest for the gene-editing subproject will be identified based on accessions having high and low erucic acid.
The second direction involves bioengineering B. carinata to introduce gene fragments that code for key enzymes that modify the chain length of fatty acids. This direction requires having an established transformation system. A transformation protocol for B. carinata is being trialled which is based on a Brassica napus transformation protocol. There is potential to genetically reprogram Brassicas such that they can produce oils with desired fatty acid chain lengths. However, the first step is to understand which combinations of molecular mechanisms will be required to program Brassicas for this purpose. Plant species such as nasturtiums and meadowfoam display the potential to make long-chain fatty acids with desirable properties. We are testing whether molecular mechanisms of interest from nasturtiums and meadowfoam can be used in B. carinata to modify oil properties.
