The Energy Biosciences Institute — the $500 million research collaboration between BP, the University of California, Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois — has been quietly developing the EBI Energy Farm, a swath of agricultural land in Urbana, Illinois, which will act as a lab for potential biofuel feedstocks. Across 340 acres of the farm researchers will be able to study ways to manage, store, and harvest crops for biofuels. They plan to grow at least 100 different crop species, including miscanthus, switchgrass,
and maize. EBI says the area will be “one of the world’s leading outdoor test sites for such research. If you can’t make it out to the farm’s first public open house next Thursday, check out these photos, which were snapped by photographer Susan Jenkins for EBI:

Microplots that will study the effect of insects on crops for biofuels.

The miscanthus crop, after the harvest and before the harvest.

An unmanned aerial vehicle that monitors crops on the farm.

Energy Biosciences Institute Deputy Director Steve Long, who is also Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, checks out the crops. (Long is actually leaving in the Fall for a position as the Associate Director at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.)
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