Concern over ethanol's contribution to increasing food prices, among other things, has shifted biofuels research away from corn and into new alternatives, both in the United States and abroad.

Countries are looking toward cellulosic sources, or non-food crops, to replace current fuel feedstocks, such as corn and soybeans. Different areas of the world are researching different types of feedstocks and processes for converting them to fuel, depending on what's available in their region.

The urgency to expedite advances in cellulosic biofuels came to the forefront Tuesday after an international group of food scientists said halting the production of traditional ethanol could lead to a 20 percent decrease in global corn prices. The three senior scientists of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an international group that fights hunger, all pushed for a cessation of corn-ethanol production.

However, President Bush, in a speech Wednesday, said he believes ethanol is responsible for 15 percent of the food-price increase, and encouraged further growth of the industry. Despite this support, he also said the long-term solution lies in cellulosic sources, pointing to the large sum the U.S. government currently invests in their development.

In the last year, Department of Energy officials, for instance, have announced plans to invest $1 billion in biofuels research and development, $114 million in small-scale cellulosic biorefineries and $385 million in commercial-scale biorefineries.

But the United States isn't the only one working on developing these fuels.

New Zealand hopes to use softwood feedstocks, such as pine wood, to produce enough ethanol to meet the country's new biofuels mandate. Last year, the government announced its goal to replace 3.4 percent of current transportation fuels with biofuels by 2012 and eventually reach 100 percent carbon neutrality. The transportation sector must play a key role if this ambitious goal is to be met, but researchers there think they're up to the challenge, including Trevor Stuthridge, unit manager of the Eco-Smart Technologies group at Scion, a state-owned forestry research institute.

"We have a significant forest resource in New Zealand," Stuthridge said Tuesday at the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing being held this week in Chicago.

Of the 18.8 million acres of available land in the country, 5.7 million will be necessary for the country to become totally self-sufficient on biofuels -- a goal Scion researchers believe pine-based ethanol can make a reality, Stuthridge said.

The industry plans to start with wood residues, because they don't compete with the paper and pulp industries for resources. However, in the future, "energy plantations," or man-made forests, may be grown to produce the feedstock, according to Scion news releases.

Like New Zealand, concerns about carbon emissions have pushed Canadian policymakers and businesses to delve into cellulosic ethanol development. The government has invested $500 million in a Next Generation Biofuels Fund to speed up research.

One Canadian company, Lignol Energy Corp., has developed a method of converting cellulosic materials into biofuels that company researchers say is competitive with traditional starch-based ethanol, such as that made from corn.

"Lignol's technology is now able to approach the conversion efficiency of starch-based ethanol production technologies, which are presently regarded as the best standard for bioethanol production," said Kendall Pye, Lignol's chief scientific officer.

Cellulosic feedstocks are more difficult to break down and convert into alcohols than starchy crops. Most research in the field, including Lignol's technology, focuses on ways to pretreat the biomass in order to release fermentable sugars, which are then converted to alcohol.

One of the most promising aspects of cellulosic ethanol is the potential use of its byproducts, Pye said. Among these is lignin, a tough organic compound that hardens cell walls.

The leftover lignin can be burned to fuel the cellulosic ethanol plant, or used for other purposes.

"You can add it to animal feed (and) use it as an industrial lubricant," among other things, Pye said.

Other countries are also looking for new ways to produce biofuels, including India, where officials hope to increase energy security and decrease costly foreign oil imports by encouraging home-grown energy, said Sonti Ramakrishna, of Praj Industries International, a biofuels technology company that operates in India and other countries.

"Biomass ethanol has a high potential in India," Ramakrishna told United Press International.

Like other countries, India now has the technology to produce cellulosic ethanol, Ramakrishna said, but it will be another five years or so before commercialization.

Japan is also trying to develop second-generation biofuels in an economical way, said Hideaki Yukawa, from the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, a public-private research center based in Japan.

RITE's technology, developed in partnership with Honda, utilizes microorganisms to convert the sugars from inedible leaves and plants into ethanol.

The Japanese government has provided subsidies to encourage the production of feedstocks, but further funding is needed to go commercial, Yukawa told UPI.

"We need some government subsidies to start big-scale production �� because we need (money) to build the facilities to produce the ethanol," he said.