If Corn is King of Biofuels, Tropical Maize May Be Emperor

http://www.renewableaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=50329

When University of Illinois crop scientist Fred Below began growing tropical maize, the form of corn grown in the tropics, he was looking for novel genes for the utilization of nitrogen fertilizer and was hoping to discover information that could be useful to American corn producers.

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Early research results show that tropical maize, when grown in the Midwest, requires few crop inputs such as nitrogen fertilizer, chiefly because it does not produce any ears. It also is easier for farmers to integrate into their current operations than some other dedicated energy crops because it can be easily rotated with corn or soybeans, and can be planted, cultivated and harvested with the same equipment U.S. farmers already have.

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What it does produce, straight from the field with no processing, is 25 percent or more sugar—mostly sucrose, fructose and glucose.

"Corn is a short-day plant, so when we grow tropical maize here in the Midwest the long summer days delay flowering, which causes the plant to grow very tall and produce few or no ears," says Below. Without ears, these plants concentrate sugars in their stalks, he adds. Those sugars could have a dramatic affect on Midwestern production of ethanol and other biofuels.

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thanks for posting :hi:

...the welfare queen. :eyes:

Further, corn biofuels drastically deplete the soil because they take the "residue" and turn it into ethanol, also (they have to, because corn ethanol produces a relatively low energy-out/energy-in ration).

The "residue" is the root system normally left in the soil by farmers to replienish it with nutrients.

Ethanol is a giant Archer Daniels Midland Boondoggle which will make Bushies' trillions of $$$s while addressing not one thing that is a genuine problem.

Sorry to throw water on everyone, but it's better to realize this now before we waste all this time and money and arable land, that we are soon going to need for FOOD, in this boondoggle.

I haven't seen the farm equipment used to pull the corn plant out by the roots.

Do you have a link?

posted it here. It is likely I read it here, but it was a couple months ago, so it may be archived.

Even if that is the case, one thing I am certain about is that residues (whatever they may be) are supposed to be left to decay back into the soil to re-nutrify.

Frankly, I think that we should be composting everything that will compost and is not contaminated to improve soil quality and substitute for commercial fertilizers.

I read an EPA warming paper a few years ago that said that soil with a high hummus content holds water much better, and will sustain crops through a drought better than soils that are depleted. The EPA suggested that farmers, especially in the grain-growing states, start immediately to improve their soil. Somehow, I don't think that's happening.