Energy-Geek: More from Pongam, the “Ginsu Knife” of Biofuel Crops

Thursday, February 9, 2012

More from Pongam, the “Ginsu Knife” of Biofuel Crops

Last week we launched you to an up-and-coming biofuel tree called pongam, which we called the “Ginsu knives of treedom” since they seemed to have a thousand and one particular uses – apart from extracting oil from their seeds for creating biofuel, that is. Properly, it seems like we just scratched the surface because we’ve been tipped on a number of much more uses, as well.

Restoring Depleted Soil with a Biofuel Crop

The biofuel company we highlighted very last week, TerViva, obtained back to us with a note that they’ll be establishing their special strain of Pongamia in “abused” former pineapple plantations, exactly where the trees will support replenish nutrients in the soil with their nitrogen-fixing ability. That underscores the possible for biofuel crops to enjoy a part in soil restoration tasks on lands that are no more time fit to develop foods, rather than competing for land with meals crops.

Biofuels, Bovines and Honeybees

TerViva also famous that cattle will fortunately take in the nitrogen-wealthy grass close to pongam timber but they are not involved in the leaves, so there is a possible for farmers to extract a bit of further worth from a pongam grove by doubling it up as a grazing location for livestock, without having dread of possessing their crop devoured. According to researchers at the College of Queensland, honeybees like the pollen from pongam blossoms, enabling farmers with an apiary to squeeze out a small extra worth, way too.

Preserving Land…Or Blowing it Up

Pongam bushes can provide shade and stabilization for weakened lands while offering oil-abundant seeds for many years, to say practically nothing of the aforementioned feast for cattle, bees, and other co-existent wildlife (pongam trees are pest-resistant, by the way). This benign and productive harvest is quite a contrast with fossil fuels, which aside from the danger posed by spills, accidents or leaking pipelines can, in the circumstance of tar sands oil and mountaintop removing coal mining, include harvesting methods that by nature ruin anything in their route.

A Pongam Tree in Each and every Pot

For now, TerViva is focusing on introducing pongam timber into Citrus Belt states this kind of as southern Texas, Florida, and Hawaii. Pongam timber are not obviously cold tolerant, but

TerViva is working on producing a strain that could adapt to a wider variety of climates. In the meantime, pongam could emerge as an important financial device in semi-arid tropical areas this sort of as parts of India, enabling creating communities to increase a cash crop without having impinging on the land they need to increase foods.

Graphic: Pongam tree blossom. License Some legal rights reserved by SSKao.