1.1 EPOBIO is an international project to realise the economic potential of plant-derived raw materials, funded through the European Union’s 6 th Framework Research Programme. EPOBIO will provide the science to support policy decisions of national and international funding agencies. Outputs will enable the design of new generations of plant-based bioproducts for the market 10-15 years from now. Through these activities EPOBIO establishes the evidence-base required for successful development of biorenewables and the supporting regulatory frameworks.
1.2 Agricultural feedstocks are the new sources of chemicals and energy as fossil reserves become increasingly expensive for manufacture. Photosynthesis, driven by solar energy, provides a sustainable means to make complex chemical products in large quantities. Global industry will benefit from bio-refining plant-derived raw materials for use in sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy.
1.3 In the project, science, technology and supply chains are integrated to design new bio-based products. Uniquely, the EPOBIO process validates the decision to develop these products through analysing their environmental impacts, the economic case and the social attitudes of the public towards their development. This unique process ensures a thorough evidence-base to inform decision-making by funding agencies and underpins the future development of sustainable products of high utility to benefit society.
1.4 EPOBIO builds on work of the EC/US Taskforce on Biotechnology that established objective selection criteria for Flagship themes for plant-based bioproducts with significant potential to benefit end-users. At the 2006 Workshop, the international community of industrial and academic scientists with expert knowledge worked with EPOBIO to review independently and define further the priorities of the programme. This executive summary provides information on these priorities to inform uptake by the global community of stakeholders.
1.5 Plant-based feedstocks, whether biomass crops, agricultural by-products or waste mainly consist of cell walls, a complex composite and high energy resource. To reduce the costs, improve the energy balance and optimise the value of products from biorefining, the process of saccharification is all-important. New work is needed to:
1.6 Current understanding of plant cell walls is limited, particularly the regulatory processes that determine the relative composition of polymers, whether protein, lipid, polysaccharide, or those based on phenylpropanoids. Regulation is both developmental and defence/stress related and the changes directly affect the efficiency of saccharification as well as the nature and quantity of value added products that can be extracted from the wall in the biorefinery process. New work is needed to investigate carbon partitioning, the regulation of polymer synthesis and their assembly in the wall to underpin novel in planta strategies to decouple the synthesis of the different cell wall components and thereby design the raw material quality of the biorefinery feedstocks.
1.7 The global market for lubricants, including engine oils, is immense and is currently dependent on fossil reserves. Plant oils offer a sustainable alternative, with wax ester replacements produced by agricultural crops. The oil crop, Crambe, has considerable potential to synthesise a diversity of wax esters, with their ratios in the oil tailored for different applications. New work is needed to optimise Crambe for this purpose, specifically to:
1.8 Plant oils have the potential to fulfil market needs in a wide range of industrial sectors from health, bulk and speciality chemicals to energy and transport. The sustainable production of oil by agricultural crops offers major opportunities to reduce global economic dependence on mineral oil. There are key issues that must be addressed to realise this potential. New work is needed to investigate the regulatory processes controlling yield of native and novel oils to underpin in planta strategies for optimising a non-food oil crop platform that can be used as a generic field-based system to produce bespoke oils in quantities that make mineral oil replacements economically viable.
1.9 Rubber is a natural plant-based commodity used for high value and/or high volume applications for which there are often no alternative feedstocks. Its global supply is limited and at risk from plant disease. New work is needed in two related areas:
1.10 The scale of current use of petrochemicals for monomer/polymer production by the global chemical industry is at threat from rising oil prices. Field crops offer the potential for high volume production of commodities. It will become increasingly necessary to underpin the chemical industry with agricultural feedstocks and sustainable replacements to those products currently made from petrochemicals. New work is needed to investigate the synthesis of those monomers and biopolymers that can be more effectively and cheaply produced in plants compared to microbial fermentation. Production of polymers or building blocks in plants will require the development of novel extraction and processing systems for cost-effective fractionation.
1.11 In each of the three Flagship themes, an immediate target has been prioritised together with the establishment of a major platform technology for generic development of plant-based bioproducts. It can be anticipated that information sharing across the three platforms will ultimately lead to sharing of technologies to underpin ‘the integrated biorefinery’. The involvement of industry is key to ensure market focus and the means to ensure the new plant-based bioproducts are taken up by the consumer.
1.12 The advice from the international community emphasised the fundamental importance of multi- and inter-disciplinary strategies to achieve the required outputs in the prioritised areas. This will necessitate teams incorporating a broad knowledge-base and skills-set within the biological sciences as well as the inclusion of complementary disciplines such as chemistry and engineering. Also, to achieve a successful systems approach, the involvement of life-cycle specialists, environmental scientists and socio-economists in project design and validation is strongly encouraged.
© Copyright 2006, CNAP Policy Statements
Updated
27 February, 2008
by CPL Press - web@epobio.net