USDA ARS using giant electronic scanner to select best energy sorghum varieties

October 12, 2016 |

In Arizona, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service is experimenting with a giant electronic scanner to study the individual characteristics of thousands of energy sorghum plants growing underneath it in work funded by the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) known as Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture (TERRA). The work in Maricopa aims to speed crop development to bring the best varieties for energy sorghum in a challenging arid climate to market as soon as possible. Sorghum use as a feedstock for ethanol production jumped to 137 million bushels in 2015/16 from just 18 million bushels the year before.

Category: Research

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