Rome, Italy
January 19, 2009
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. |
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