While genetic engineering has yet to significantly improve worldwide crop yields or increase the drought resistance of many feedstock plants, researchers in Colorado are currently getting underway with a plan to use the technology to build a better biofuel. 

While biofuels as we know them currently offer one the best alternatives to carbon-heavy fossil fuels, the energy it takes growing and refining them reduces their carbon-mitigating abilities. But Copaifera langsdorfi, otherwise known as the kerosene tree, can produce 10.5 gallons of natural oil a year that can be used directly in existing combustion engines.

Researchers at the University of Northern Colorado are now hoping to transfer the genes that produce this oleoresin into an algae and a flowering plant with a completely sequenced genome, two species that can be raised quickly and in quantities, without consuming too much energy, and that can reveal much about the viability of the project. 

The project, if successful, would represent a clear leap forward in biofuel technology. As always, however, care must be taken to ensure that these genetically engineered organisms stay out of the general plant population as a whole; oil-producing algae could wreak untold havoc on any aquatic ecosystem into which they’re introduced.