FAO Biotechnology Forum explores "The role of agricultural biotechnologies for production of bioenergy in developing countries"
From 10 November to 14 December 2008, the FAO Biotechnology Forum hosted a moderated e-mail conference on "The role of agricultural biotechnologies for production of bioenergy in developing countries", jointly organised by the FAO Working Group on Biotechnology and the FAO Working Group on Bioenergy.
About 430 people subscribed to the conference and 88 messages were posted by 52 people in 21 different countries. Sixty percent of messages came from people living in developing countries.
Major topics of discussion included:
* applying biotechnologies in jatropha;
* the potential benefits for small-scale farmers of applying biotechnologies for bioenergy production;
* biogas production in developing countries; and
* production of enzymes for efficient bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass to liquid biofuels.
Other issues discussed included the impacts of intellectual property rights; thermo-chemical versus biochemical conversion of lignocellulosic biomass; and microalgae.
Of the different biotechnologies, most attention was paid to applications of genetic modification, molecular markers and tissue culture in crops (with only minor attention paid to forest trees) for biofuel purposes.
All the messages posted are available at
http://www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c15logs.htm or can be requested as a single e-mail (size 135 KB) from
biotech-admin@fao.org.
