23/3/07 (soyatech.com)  Orlando  -Scientists and researchers are grappling for more breakthroughs before ethanol, biodiesel and other fuels of the future are produced in large enough quantities at prices low enough to revolutionize the country's energy independence, specialists in the field said Thursday in Orlando.

But a concerted effort could enable farms and forests to eventually generate more than 100 billion gallons of biofuel a year, enough to replace the amount of gasoline the United States imports annually, said Ralph Hardy, president of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council.

The council is a consortium of nonprofit research institutions at Cornell University's Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Ithaca, N.Y.

"We're seeing some dramatic developments in the biofuels area, and traditional crops are a good way to get started," Hardy said in an interview during the Fourth Annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, which is taking place at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort.

But corn and other crops and all the available farmland in the country are not enough to meet demand unless major breakthroughs are made, Hardy said. The country needs to find ways to generate at least 10 tons of biomass crops per acre annually, he said, double the best current rate, and tap vast amounts of land that's not already producing food or fiber.

"The economics must work," he said, to keep food prices affordable while still generating alternative fuels. Right now, he said, corn prices are rising because of demand for ethanol at a growing number of plants nationwide.

About 1,100 people from throughout the country, Canada and Europe are attending the conference and trade show, designed primarily for academics, researchers and government-agency representatives. The conference sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization continues through Saturday.

One of attendees on the trade-show floor, Joshua Strege, a research engineer with the University of North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center, said the center has developed an aviation-grade ethanol and tested it in small planes. "It works," he said, and could eventually offer another outlet to replace more imported fuel.

Germany's Ministry for Economics and Technology has a booth at the show and is looking to attract foreign investment to develop and expand its growing biofuel industry, said Flerida Regueira Cortizo, project manager for Invest in Germany.

"The biofuel market is huge in Germany, " she said, with innovation spurred by a government mandate that more than 60 percent of the country's conventional fuel be blended with renewable fuels such as ethanol, which is produced mainly from corn, sugar cane and other crops.