There is an urgent need to accelerate energy crop development for the production of renewable transportation fuels from biomass. Recent technological advancements have now made it possible to extract massive volumes of genetic, physiological, and environmental data from certain crops, but, even with these resources, the data still cannot be processed into the knowledge needed to predict crop performance in the field. The overall objective of the TERRA program is to develop tools that enable an increase in the rate and extent of genetic improvement of the yield of bioenergy crops grown in the field. If successful, the program will enhance land use efficiency, reduce competition between bioenergy and food crops, improve environmental sustainability, and provide a more stable supply of biomass for transportation fuels and bio-refineries.
ARPA-E seeks multidisciplinary teams to leverage advancements in automation, sensor technologies, computational analytics and low-cost nucleotide sequencing and develop innovative phenotyping systems that enable (a) new predictive algorithms for plant growth, (b) more detailed measurements for plant physiology, and (c) more sophisticated bioinformatics pipelines for gene discovery and trait association. TERRA will enable breeders to evaluate more individual plants, to select appropriate plants for breeding earlier in the growing season, to capture better information about them during their development, and to associate this information with the best genes to propagate.
A list of potential teaming partners can be found here: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/TeamingPartners - TERRA