Thousand Oaks energy crop company Ceres Inc. has developed a plant trait that could bring new life to millions of acres of abandoned or marginal cropland damaged by salts, including the 15 million acres of salt-affected soils in the U.S. Ceres researchers tested the effects of very high salt concentrations and also seawater from the Pacific Ocean on improved energy grass varieties growing in its California greenhouses, and found that the crops, including switchgrass, are showing levels of salt tolerance not seen before. “Today, we have energy crops thriving on seawater alone,” said Richard Hamilton, Ceres President and CEO. “The goal, of course, is not for growers to water their crops with seawater, but to enable cropland abandoned because of salt or seawater effects to be put to productive uses.” The new salt-tolerant trait could provide significant benefits to food production, too, according to Ceres executives. The company now plans to evaluate energy crops with its proprietary salt-tolerant trait at field scale. If results are confirmed, biofuel and biopower producers will have more choices for locating new facilities, gaining greater productivity on marginal land and displacing even greater amounts of fossil fuels, the company said. Andrea Alegria
