ICON · Industrial Crops producing added value Oils for Novel chemicals

Replacing fossil oil with renewable resources is perhaps the most urgent need and the most challenging task that human society faces today. Cracking fossil hydrocarbons and building the desired chemicals with advanced organic chemistry usually requires many times more energy than is contained in the final product. Thus, using plant material in the chemical industry does not only replace the fossil material contained in the final product but also save substantial energy in the processing. Of particular interest are seed oils which show a great variation in their composition between different plant species. Many of the oil qualities found in wild species would be very attractive for the chemical industry if they could be obtained at moderate costs in bulk quantities and with a secure supply. Genetic engineering of vegetable oil qualities in high yielding oil crops could in a relatively short time frame yield such products. This project aims at developing such added value oils in dedicated industrial oil crops mainly in form of various wax esters particularly suited for lubrication. This project brings together the most prominent scientists in plant lipid biotechnology in an unprecedented world-wide effort in order to produce added value oils in industrial oil crops within the time frame of four years as well as develop a tool box of genes und understanding of lipid cellular metabolism in order for rational designing of vast array of industrial oil qualities in oil crops. Since GM technologies that will be used in the project are met with great scepticism in Europe it is crucial that ideas, expectations and results are communicated to the public and that methods, ethics, risks and risk assessment are open for debate. The keywords of our communication strategies will be openness and an understanding of public concerns.