July 13, 2007

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WESLACO -- A scientist in South Texas has earned a string of awards recently for developing patented methods designed to greatly expand where sugarcane can be grown -- and what it produces.

The pioneering research work of Dr. Erik Mirkov, a virologist and molecular biologist at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Weslaco, is turning sugarcane into mini "biofactories," allowing it to be grown in barren, rural areas of the state to produce biofuels.

In a similar line of research, Mirkov is producing new sugarcane varieties that will produce proteins to treat human diseases and enzymes for industrial uses, he said.

Mirkov's work has earned him three major awards from the Texas A&M University System this year.

In January, he was given the Vice Chancellor's Award in Excellence for off-campus research. A month later, he was given the Vice Chancellor's Award for technology innovation for the number of patents he received in 2006. And earlier this month, Mirkov was named outstanding professor in Texas A&M's department of plant pathology for exemplary service to the department.

Until now, sugarcane could be grown only in tropical or sub-tropical climates like that of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Mirkov said.

"If we're going to use sugarcane to produce all the ethanol we need, we need to make it more water efficient to protect our water supplies," he said, "And we need to grow it in cooler parts of the state, say from Laredo to Corpus Christi. But we can only do that if sugarcane is cold- and drought-tolerant."

To do that, Mirkov has developed a series of procedures whereby genes from non-sugar producing plants are transferred into existing varieties of commercial sugarcane.

"The significance of that is that cane will be able to be grown north of the sub-tropical Valley, say in Falfurrias or Sarita (south of San Antonio)," Mirkov said. "In these areas it will be grown to produce ethanol, not sugar. Not only will that help decrease our dependence on foreign oil, it will create new jobs and new markets for rural Texans."

Cane improved to withstand only 5 degrees Fahrenheit of colder temperatures would greatly increase the range of where and when it can be grown, including areas with poor soils and limited water supplies, and during the winter, he said.

"Brazil ferments sugar to make their ethanol," he said. "We're proposing using the biomass, or fibrous part of the plant, in what's called a cellulose conversion process to make ethanol. Here in the Valley, the sugar would still be extracted for food uses."

In addition to ethanol, sugarcane plants converted from food crops to mini biofactories would allow growers to also produce new, high-value proteins for treating human diseases, Mirkov said. The plants also could be made to produce industrial and food processing enzymes.

"By using sugarcane as biofactories, we can produce these proteins and enzymes much cheaper than the way they are currently made industrially," he said. "And we do it with sugarcane because cane has a high ratio of biomass per acre and there is no concern that these new genes would spread to other crops in the food chain through pollination."

Mirkov explained that sugarcane in South Texas rarely flowers, and when it does it is sterile because it produces no pollen. He is confident the cane's sterility will reduce the federal regulatory process to between three and five years, and that the new cane varieties can eventually be grown commercially.

"We refer to these new sugarcane varieties as sugarcane platforms because they will allow companies in the future to come to us and ask that their particular proteins or enzymes of interest be produced and purified from sugarcane using our patented methods," he said.

Dr. Michael Gould, director of the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Weslaco, said Mirkov's research is the future of agriculture.

"We're proud and excited that Erik's cutting-edge research is receiving such prestigious recognition," Gould said. "It's the kind of research to which the Weslaco Center is now devoting vast resources because of the promise it holds for the 21st century,"

Mirkov also conducts research on producing insect and disease resistant citrus varieties.