Rome, Italy
October 21, 2008The FAO
Biotechnology Forum is devoting its next e-mail conference to
the potential role that agricultural biotechnologies can play
for production of bioenergy in developing countries, with a
major focus on liquid biofuels. The conference takes place
from 10 November to 7 December 2008 and is being organised
in collaboration with the FAO Working Group on Bioenergy.
The conference is open to everyone, is free and will be
moderated. All e-mail messages posted during the conference will
also be placed on the
Forum website.
The role of
agricultural biotechnologies for production of bioenergy in
developing countries
The 22-page publication
is the background document for an upcoming FAO e-mail
conference that takes place from 10 November to 7
December 2008 and aims to provide information about the
conference theme that participants will find useful for
the debate. First, an overview is provided of the
current status regarding bioenergy, focusing on first-
and second-generation liquid biofuels, including the
reasons for the major current focus on liquid biofuels
as well as current concerns about them. Some of the
potential ways in which biotechnologies could contribute
to bioenergy production are then considered, covering
production of biomass as well as conversion of the
biomass to first- or second-generation liquid biofuels,
in addition to production of biodiesel from microalgae
and production of biogas. A small number of issues of
specific relevance to the debate are then briefly
described while some of the kinds of specific questions
that should be addressed in the conference are then
listed. In the final section, references to articles
mentioned in the document, abbreviations and
acknowledgements are provided.
The document is available at
http://www.fao.org/biotech/C15doc.htm
A copy can be requested from
biotech-admin@fao.org.
To join the conference, people
should send an e-mail to
mailserv@mailserv.fao.org with the following text on two
separate lines:
subscribe BIOTECH-L
subscribe biotech-room3 |
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