Achievement

Steve Zicari has played a key role with industrial partner, Mendota Bioenergy LLC, efforts to rapidly develop a large, commericial-scale beet energy biorefinery in California. Participation has required Steve to manage several aspects of the research and development effort, including beet field trials, lab analyses and fermentation experiments, and estimation of large-scale process parameters. Sugarbeets have been grown in greenhouse and field trial conditions and harvested for both hydrolysis/fermentation and transient protein expression experiments. This activity required interdisciplinary coordination with corporate partners and seed vendors, multiple lab groups and members, UCD agronomists and plant science field workers, and UC greenhouse managers. Beet compositions and yields were measured in the fall 2011 and spring 2012.