credit: Matt Thompson, Ethanol Producer magazine
A new breed of corn, produced with the ethanol industry in mind, promises more corn oil yield and higher-protein distillers grains.
Charlie Brown, CEO of Brownseed Genetics, says a lesson his dad taught him has been the guiding principle of his company. “My dad in the ’70s told me, if we as farmers made 10 more cents per bushel instead of 10 more bushels per acre, we can double our profit,” Brown says. “And that always remained with me.” He adds that his goal is to increase the value of grain.
And he hopes his company’s new corn hybrid, E+, will help increase the value of corn for growers and ethanol producers alike. In July, Brownseed announced a partnership with Benson Hill Biosystems, and the new corn hybrid. The new corn is designed to increase oil production—the breed yields about 9 percent corn oil—and protein for distillers grains. “This is a project that I’ve been working on for over 20 years,” Brown says. “We found a way for corn to express more oil and protein and simply by increasing the size of the embryo in the kernel.”