For Italian Scientist, Tobacco Means Cleaner Air

He might not smoke, but an Italian geneticist is convinced that tobacco can make the world a cleaner place by helping to reduce air pollution.

After years of research, Corrado Fogher and his team has turned oil from the plant’s seeds into a biofuel to run everything from water boilers to power generators.
With this discovery, his biotechnology firm, Plantechno Srl, is contributing to a growing body of scientific research into clean and renewable sources of energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

One of the advantages of Plantechno’s variant of the tobacco plant is that it would eliminate the need for farmers to displace food crops from their best land to grow it.

“The tobacco plant can grow on marginal land where you can’t grow any other plants,” said Fogher, 57.

Compared with other biofuel crops, tobacco is cheaper to grow and produces bigger yields, according to Fogher. For every hectare (2.5 acres) on which it is grown, two tonnes of oil can be extracted from its seeds, about twice as much as rape or soy.

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