A Complete Harvest: the Future of Rice as BioEnergy
Channel: International Rice Research Institute
Date: 09/01/2014

For more information about this project, please visit: http://leachlab.colostate.edu/biomass

Colorado State University (CSU: http://www.colostate.edu) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI; http://irri.org) have outfitted a farm tractor with GPS (Global Position System) positioned sensors that allow the measurement of several plant characteristics such as plant height, temperature, water use, biomass, among others, on thousands of plants at once.

They are using this technology to identify plant genes that control biomass production -- the leaves and stems, and enable development of rice varieties with not only increased grain production, but better utilization of the leaves and the stems for animal feed or bioenergy.

The collaborators include Hei Leung (http://www.irri.org/about-us/our-people/experts/hei-leung) and Jan Leach (http://www.leachlab.colostate.edu)

The funding has been provided by a USAID-IRRI linkage grant and a U.S. Dept. of Energy/USDA joint grant.