Sustainable Production and Distribution of Bioenergy for the Central USA
The System Performance team focuses on providing detailed analyzes of feedstock production options. The team also creates models to assist policymakers, farmers, and the bioenergy industry to make informed decisions about which bioenergy feedstocks to grow, where to produce them, what environmental impacts they will have, and how biomass production systems are likely to respond to and contribute to climate change or other environmental shifts.
The Feedstock Logistics team works on developing systems and strategies to enable sustainable and economic harvest, transportation, and storage of feedstocks. The team focuses on the development and evaluation of harvest and logistics systems that are easily adaptable, produce consistent and quality feedstock for conversion, and are economically, energetically, and environmentally efficient and sustainable.
The Sustainable Feedstock Production Systems team conducts comparative analyses of the productivity potential and environmental impacts of the most promising bioenergy and bioproducts crops and management systems using a network of 17 fields strategically located across the Midwestern region.
The goal of Feedstock Development is to develop new and improved perennial grass cultivars and hybrids that can be used on marginal cropland in the Central US for the production of biomass for bioenergy and bioproducts.
Our Feedstock Development team members have produced an extensive resource library with material for everyone involved in the development of perennial grasses. Click the links below to jump to each one on the page:
The Germplasm to Harvest research group was led by Rob Mitchell, Research Agronomist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (Northern Plains).
Below are the four research teams in this group. Learn more about what each team researched and the materials they produced on the pages below:
Storing Perennial Grasses Grown for Biofuel - Kevin Shinners (Jan. 2015)
The primary goal is to develop new and improved perennial grass cultivars and hybrids that can be used on marginal cropland in the Central US for the production of biomass for bioenergy and bioproducts.
The team conducts comparative analyses of the productivity potential and environmental impacts of the most promising bioenergy and bioproducts crops and management systems using a network of 17 fields strategically located across the Midwestern region.
The Feedstock Logistics team works on developing systems and strategies to enable sustainable and economic harvest, transportation, and storage of feedstocks. The team focuses on the development and evaluation of harvest and logistics systems that are easily adaptable, produce consistent and quality feedstock for conversion, and are economically, energetically, and environmentally efficient and sustainable.
