'Lipstick plant' offers to bring new meaning to the term plastic flower

Published on Tuesday 29 April 2008 22:52

IT MAY look like a weed, but the Arabidopsis plant could end the need for fossil fuels in the manufacture of household items such as paint and lipstick.

Australian researchers have genetically engineered a specimen of the plant – a member of the mustard family – to produce an unusual fatty acid normally only found in petrochemicals.

Scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CISRO) say the acid can be used to make polymers – the "building blocks" behind plastics and some paints and cosmetics.

As a "green" alternative to using fossil fuels to make plastic, its potential is seen as enormous as oil supplies dwindle and prices rise. It is hoped the same technology can now be engineered into a type of plant called the safflower, which would be suitable for growing on a large scale in Australia.

The CSIRO Plant Industry team was due to present its findings at a conference in Chicago last night.

Dr Allan Green, of CSIRO, said: "Our achievement is to engineer into plants the production of components of the oil that can be used to make polymers.

"This is a field that has been developing for some time but one of the problems has been, how do you get large amounts of those compounds, that have become the raw materials for polymers, made in plants?

"It needs to be able to be grown on a wide acreage in Australia so that we can get the volume requirements both to meet the industrial need and to give our farmers new opportunities for new product."

"Safflower is an ideal plant for industrial production for Australia. It is hardy and easy to grow, widely adapted to Australian production regions and easily isolated from food production systems."

Dr Green added: "Global challenges such as population growth, climate change and the switch from non-renewable resources are opening up many more opportunities for bio-based products. Using crops as biofactories has many advantages, beyond the replacement of dwindling petrochemical resources."

Professor Mark Tester, deputy director of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, described the research as a breakthrough.

"Plants do have massive potential to become factories and the nice thing about plant factories is that they don't have chimneys," he said. "They use light energy as a renewable energy source so they don't make any net contribution to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or climate change. They require minimal inputs so they can be used to provide raw materials for a large number of products where we currently rely on petrochemicals."

The new technology comes from the CSIRO's Crop Biofactories Initiative, and was being unveiled at the Fifth Annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing.

The conference aims to showcase innovation at the convergence of biotechnology, chemistry and agriculture.

However, opponents of genetic engineering in plants remained sceptical about the advance. Stuart Hay, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "To be eco-friendly this technology must not only be grown without fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilisers but biodegrade safely into the environment.

"Worse still, this could mean growing plastics instead of crops at a time of spiralling food prices."

The perils of producing too much plastic

100 million tonnes of plastic produced each year.

1 million sea-birds killed each year by ingesting or getting tangled up in plastic bags, according to Greenpeace.

275,000 tonnes of plastic used each year in the UK – that is about 15 million bottles per day.

500 years How long it takes plastic to decompose.

4% The rate at which the use of plastic in Western Europe is growing.

1 Number of recycled plastic bottles that would save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 3 hours.

600,000 tonnes of plastics litter that Dutch scientists estimate lies on the bed of the North Sea. The litter can smother the sea bottom and kill marine life.

90 days How long it takes for a new type of biodegradable resin manufactured in America called Plastarch Material to break down by 70 per cent.