DOE Early Career Program Funds Philipp Zerbe’s Biofuel Research
Arid lands—with cracked soil and oppressive heat—aren’t usually places that inspire the potential for growth. But Assistant Professor Philipp Zerbe, Department of Plant Biology, sees an opportunity in these harsh lands: they’re prospective beds for growing biofuel crops of the future.
“Switchgrass is a Department of Energy flagship bioenergy crop,” said Zerbe. “It has a high net energy efficiency and is drought-tolerant, offering the possibility to grow it in areas not suitable for maize or rice and some of our other major food crops. It may actually allow us to grow biofuel crops without competing with food production.”
Funded by the DOE’s Early Career Research Program, Zerbe and his colleagues will study the contribution of small molecules to the environmental stress tolerance of switchgrass, with hopes of developing new avenues to generate crops that better withstand stress and produce biofuel more efficiently.
“Our idea is to bring together our two main interests: crop stress resilience and terpene metabolism,” said Zerbe.