The growing demand for energy and the subsequent consequences of energy use for the environmental condition of the biosphere is a major challenge facing the world. Most climate scientists believe that continually rising levels of carbon dioxide emissions release will result in severe alterations to weather, especially temperature and precipitation, with potentially dramatic impacts on the economic and social well-being of future generations. Part of the DOE’s strategy toward promoting alternative energy resources involves producing biofuels from plant mass. With a goal of displacing 30 percent of 2004 gasoline demand with biofuels by 2030, achieving this ambitious goal will require increases in our basic understanding of processes relevant to plant productivity. Switchgrass has been championed as a promising biofuel species, but few genomic tools have been developed to facilitate its improvement. One of the challenges lies in that all current cellulosic feedstock candidates have large and complex genomes. This project calls for developing Panicum hallii as a genetic and genomic model for better understanding C4 perennial grass biology. As a close relative of agronomic switchgrass, the plant offers researchers a model system for exploring Panicum genetics, genomics, and adaptation and for insights that may lead to agronomic improvement.
PI: Tom Juenger, University of Texas at Austin