Sugar Cane Plants

Dow Sugarcane Venture to Make Competitively-Priced Bioplastic

Dow Chemical Company aims to make biomass a larger part of its raw material mix with plans for the world's biggest bioplastic production facility.

Building off of current operations in Brazil, Dow will operate the plant as a joint venture with Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co. to make plastic from sugarcane.

The venture will initially produce ethanol from sugarcane -- Brazil is the second biggest ethanol producer in the world -- and after the completion of additional facilities, use that to make biopolymers. Production will focus on polyethylene, the most commonly-used plastic, targeted for use in high-performance flexible packaging and medical equipment.

"The flexible packaging market is currently booming, not only in Brazil but throughout Latin America," said Gina Gibbs Foster, associate communications director at Dow. "At the same time, consumers are increasingly turning to sustainable solutions. For these reasons, we are certain that there is ample market demand and growth potential for biopolymers, particularly within the high-performance flexible packaging, hygiene and medical markets."

Sugarcane is one of many biomass feedstocks companies are exploring as they turn to non-petroleum resources. Heinz and Odwalla are both using the Coca-Cola Company's sugarcane-based plastic technology for bottles, and Procter & Gamble has tested sugarcane packaging for shampoo and makeup.

Although Dow expects its final bioplastic products to be competitive price-wise with oil-based plastics, MIT's Technology Review reports, the company "hopes to charge more for the product because of the significant demand for low-carbon, sustainable materials."

Keeping Dow's costs down are the Brazilian government's support for ethanol production and the fact that Dow is handling all stages of the operation, from sugarcane growing to plastic production.

Construction of a new plant for producing ethanol is expected to begin later this quarter, followed by the completion of plans for facilities for converting the ethanol to plastic.

As part of the venture, Mitsui will become a 50 percent equity interest partner in Dow's sugarcane growing operation in Santa Vitória, Minas Gerais, in southeast Brazil.

Dow had set previous plans to create a bioplastic-producing joint veture in 2007, but one of the partners was taken over by a company that didn't want to take part in the project.

Sugar Cane Plants - News

Dow Sugarcane Venture to Make Competitively-Priced Bioplastic

Building off of current operations in Brazil, Dow will operate the plant as a joint venture with Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co. to make plastic from sugarcane. The venture will initially produce ethanol from sugarcane -- Brazil is the second

Ugandan Sugar Prices May Start Falling This Month, Group Says

Kinyara Sugar Works Ltd., the second-biggest local producer, is on schedule to resume operations in the third week of August, Jim Kabeho, chairman of the Uganda Sugar Cane Technologists Association, said today by phone from neighboring Rwanda.

Sun rises on tequila plant harvesting for biofuel

Dr Daniel Tan, a plant physiologist from the University of Sydney and co-author of the study, says that agave produces ethanol of a similar quality to sugarcane, but has additional benefits. "The advantage is that it doesn't need to be irrigated - it

Dow, Mitsui Brazil Plant to Make 350000 Tons of Bio-Polymer

July 19 (Bloomberg) -- Dow Chemical Co., the largest US chemical maker, said its planned bio-polymer plant with Mitsui & Co. Ltd. will be able to produce 350000 tons of polyethylene a year from sugar cane, the world's largest for making plant- derived

Cheap Plastic Made from Sugarcane

Dow Chemical is building a plant to make polyethylene from sugarcane at costs that rival petrochemical production. By Kevin Bullis Making plastic from sugar can be just as cheap as making it from petroleum, says Dow Chemical. The company plans to build

Differential Protein Expression in Sugarcane during Sugarcane ...

Abstract

To understand the molecular basis of a specific plant-pathogen interaction, it is important to identify plant proteins that respond to the pathogen attack. Two sugarcane varieties, NCo376 and Ya71-374, were used in this study. By applying 2-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE), the protein expression profile of sugarcane after inoculating with Sporisorium scitamineum was analyzed. In total, 23 differentially expressed proteins were identified by MALDI-TOF-TOF/MS. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the functions of these 20 differential proteins were associated with such functions as photosynthesis, signal transduction, and disease resistance, while the function of the remaining three proteins was not determined. From above, we can assume that the protein regulatory network during the interaction between sugarcane and Sporisorium scitamineum . Following infection, sugarcane plants often tiller profusely with the shoots being more spindly and the leaves being more upright and narrow (“grass-like” in appearance) and “buggy-like” whips emerging from the shoots. Less common symptoms are leaf and stem galls and proliferating buds. The development of sugarcane smut depends on environment, cultivar, and pathogen interactions.

Plant disease resistance is complex, involving a complex network of recognition of avirulence determinants by plant receptors, triggering of specific signal transduction pathways, oxidative bursts, accumulation of pathogenesis-related (PR-) proteins and phytoalexins, and localized cell death [ 1 ]. Understanding the basis of pathogens causing a certain disease in one host plant but not in another has long intrigued and motivated plant pathologists. Until recently, increasing attention has been paid to the study of the interaction between sugarcane and S. scitamineum interaction at the molecular level has also identified an inventory of candidate genes that are preferentially expressed during the process [ 5 – 7 ], suggesting an active role for the host plant.

Despite what we have already learned, little is known about the proteomic background of the interaction between pathogen and host in this pathosystem. Differential proteomics, whose essence is to discover the differential protein expression among different samples caused by a specific factor, is an important part of the overall proteomics study. The identification of differentially expressed proteins under various exogenous stresses can most probably give clues as to what kind of defensive mechanisms and biochemical pathways are regulated in specific circumstances. Theoretically, once enough information about protein differences is obtained, the basis for these changes can be deduced; thus, the study of differential proteomics provides a powerful tool for basic life science research. Recently, methods to study proteins that show differences in abundance under different conditions, such as 2-DE and MALDI-TOF-TOF/MS, have been developed. Moreover, the protein expression profiles of many plants under various biotic stresses have been studied by the application of differential proteomics technology, and the relevant information of the response mechanism of differential protein under various stresses has been obtained [ 8 – 12 ]. Thus, this technology has been demonstrated to be an excellent tool to identify novel proteins related with plant resistance to certain pathogen.