Amyris uses Ceres' sweet sorghum hybrids for farnesene

Tuesday May 08 2012

Energy crop company Ceres Inc. in early May announced its sweet sorghum hybrids were successfully processed into farnesene by Amyris Inc. under a US Department of Energy (DoE) grant.

The pilot-scale project, funded in part by a DoE integrated biorefinery grant, evaluated both sugars and biomass from Ceres' sweet sorghum hybrids grown in Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and Tennessee. To process the sugars that accumulate in the plants, known as soluble sugars, the sorghum juice was first extracted from the stems and concentrated into sugar syrup by Ceres. The syrup was then processed by Amyris at its California pilot facility using yeast fermentation technology that converts plant sugars into farnesene, which Amyris markets under the name Biofene.

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