A team of scientists has cracked the code on the soybean genome, and that information could lead to better biodiesel yields from the oilseed.
This article from Physorg.com says the team consists of 18 institutions, including the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Purdue University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The DOE, National Science Foundation, USDA and United Soybean Board supported the research:
“The soybean genome’s billion-plus nucleotides afford us a better understanding of the plant’s capacity to turn sunlight, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water, into concentrated energy, protein, and nutrients for human and animal use,” said Anna Palmisano, DOE Associate Director of Science for Biological and Environmental Research. “This opens the door to crop improvements that are sorely needed for energy production, sustainable human and animal food production, and a healthy environmental balance in agriculture worldwide.”
With the soybean genetic code now determined, the research community has access to a key reference for more than 20,000 legume species and can explore the extraordinary evolutionary innovation of nitrogen-fixing symbiosis that is so critically important to successful agricultural crop rotation strategies.
Jeremy Schmutz, the study’s first author and a DOE JGI scientist at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Alabama, said that the soybean sequencing was the largest plant project done to date at the DOE Joint Genome Institute. “It also happens to be the largest plant that’s ever been sequenced by the whole genome shotgun strategy—where we break it apart and reassemble it like a huge puzzle,” he said. Of the more than 20 other plant genomes taken on by the DOE JGI, those already sequenced include the black cottonwood (poplar) tree and the grain sorghum, both targeted because of their promise as biomass feedstocks for biofuels production.
Soybean farmers will also be glad that the research could end the threat of soybean rust.
It looks like there will be plenty of soybeans for food and fuel use, especially since the non-renewal of the biodiesel tax incentive seems to have put a lot of refineries’ operations on hold.
The St. Louis-area Donald Danforth Plant Science Center will receive $44 million in stimulus bucks to conduct advanced biofuels research.
A proposed ethanol pipeline could create nearly 80,000 jobs across the country, according to a new feasibility report.
Ethanol producer 
“Pursuing this strategy runs counter to the stated goals of Governor Schwarzenegger and the State Assembly to reduce carbon emissions from motor vehicles,” said 
Schwarzenegger said biobutanol will meet California’s Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS), which was approved this week by the state’s Office of Administrative Law. “It is great companies like Cobalt that will help California meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets under AB 32 and our Low Carbon Fuel Standard,” said Governor Schwarzenegger, who used the occasion to promote his proposed sales tax exemption for clean tech companies. “Cobalt shows us that what is good for the environment can also be good for the economy. In fact, within the next few years, Cobalt has plans to build an even larger plant that will create 1,300 permanent jobs. I want that plant and those jobs right here in California.”