By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
WASHINGTON - Beyond the scientific jargon, researchers who met here last week said their breakthrough work on customizing trees and crops could soon be applied to producing electricity more efficiently by burning waste from a new generation of plants.
Biomass energy production, which was touted by President Bush in his State of the Union address, uses byproducts from timber and grain harvests to generate power. The technology is new and hardly widespread, but it could be coming to Central Oregon by the end of next year.
The scientists who met in Washington are exploring genomics, a field that looks at entire strands of DNA, the genetic road map of all living organisms.
Their findings can be difficult to understand at first blush. But soon, genomics could be applied to such things as customizing trees for whatever use the grower desires and designing blueberry plants that can withstand cold temperatures.
"While it doesn't look attractive now, I think it could be improved," said North Carolina State University forestry professor Ronald Sederoff.
He pointed to the work of several of his colleagues, who have singled out genes in different tree species that control factors like how quickly a tree grows and how dense its leaves become.
Scientists from around the world gathered at the National Academy of Sciences last week for the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium on Functional Genomics.
Sederoff's work has focused on understanding the genome of eucalyptus trees, which are useful because they can be made to grow quickly and still have strong wood. He contends that trees must be domesticated - that is, grown like field crops - to keep up with continuing demands for wood and paper products, and for emerging biomass power plants.
Customized, domesticated trees could be used to provide fuel for biomass power plants like the one under development at Warm Springs Forest Products Industries, north of Madras.
But Warm Springs Chief Executive Officer Larry Potts isn't so sure that domesticated trees are the best idea, given Central Oregon's climate.
"In the West, water is critical. In the West, numerous ... hybrid poplar (tree) plantations require vast quantities of water," Potts said. "Should we be using all of that water to grow tress in areas where trees have not historically grown?"
There are more than 17,000 acres of hybrid poplar trees growing in Northeastern Oregon. Those trees, which are planted and managed by the Potlatch paper company, are ground up for pulp. But the leaves, bark and stumps left over could be used to fuel biomass power plants.
The hybrid poplars represent earlier work to breed trees that grow very quickly.
The research now being done looks at even more factors, beginning with growing plants that withstand stresses like drought and cold. At its most advanced stage, scientists are learning how to activate different genes in trees to change their cellular structure, which in turn affects the density of the trees and how much energy can be extracted from them.
"In theory, the idea of using those trees as crops to feed biomass energy production is a good idea," said Matt Shinderman, natural resources professor at Oregon State University-Cascades Campus in Bend.
"If you compare them to the native species in Central Oregon, they will certainly require more water," he said. But that doesn't necessarily make them a bad fit for the Oregon climate, Shinderman said, as long as they are managed responsibly.
When the Warm Springs plant starts producing electricity, by the end of 2007, Potts said he expects most of the fuel to come from sawdust at the mill, and from small-diameter trees culled from area forests.
Even though researchers already have singled out the genes that would make trees grow faster and provide more energy, putting their findings to work is harder than just planting rows of seedlings.
"It's not a simple thing, if you have one tree, getting a million of them," Sederoff said.