Biofuels from Engineered Tobacco Plants?

Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a new method to increase the quantity of oil in tobacco leaves so that it can be used as biofuels in the future.  They posit that tobacco can produce biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops.  However, upon extraction, most of the oil is available in tobacco seeds.

Statistics show that tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil per dry weight.  Also, tobacco plants don't produce seeds in copious amounts (only about 600 kg of seeds per acre).  Despite these drawbacks, researchers seem optimistic about these new findings and aim to find ways for these tobacco plants to produce more oil by manipulating certain genes found in the leaves of these plants.

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