The technology has been taken up by Australian agricultural innovation firm Nufarm.
Thomas Vanhercke, who has worked on the project for more than 10 years, said the project was designed for oil production to not impact on food security.
“We were inspired to develop this technology in response to the world’s need for increased production of plant oil,” Dr Vanhercke said.
“We took the genetics for seed oil production and incorporated them across a range of crops with promising success.”
The research team expanded oil production beyond specialised seeds and fruits to encompass plant biomass, including leaves and stems.
“With CSIRO’s existing expertise in the area and the partnership with Nufarm on the Omega-3 canola project, we started thinking about how to extend that to the challenge of developing industrial scale feedstock oil from plants,” he said.
Project lead Xue-Rong Zhou said the world-leading research in boosting oil yield from plants was a major breakthrough.
“This development of new biofuels and renewable oils will support a sustainable future,” Dr Zhou said.
“We are looking forward to working with Nufarm and our global research partners to deploy the technology into high biomass energy cane and sorghum varieties and make it a reality.”
Nufarm chief executive officer Greg Hunt announced the formation of a global research partnership to further refine the technology.
“We have assembled a consortium of world-class R&D and technical partners who bring unique experience to develop this technology,“ Mr Hunt said.
“Nufarm is also working with key strategic partners to further support the technical project development and future downstream commercialisation.”
The partnership brings together researchers from CSIRO, the University of Florida and the Instituto Agronomico in Brazil.
The technology will be deployed into high biomass energy cane and sorghum varieties and is expected to take several years before its widespread use.
