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Three decades ago, a University of Nevada researcher who secured one of the first Energy Department grants to study the potential to turn plants into biofuels became convinced that a weed curly top gumweed was growing along the road to the future.
Now, scientists who've been cultivating the weed on the Reno campus think they're on the verge of producing diesel fuel from the sticky cousin of the sunflower that's found along highways in Nevada's high desert.
Glenn Miller, an environmental sciences professor, is leading the project in the second year of a four-year USD 500,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture.
He says gumweed requires only about one-fifth as much water to grow as alfalfa. And it doesn't compete for acreage with animal feed or food crops such as corn and soybeans used to make ethanol in the Midwest.
