Timely planted, mild winter, great-looking crops and we were almost beginning to believe that the 2019-20 carinata season would be a winner at all SPARC locations. Not so fast! Depending on where we are in the US, the COVID-19 pandemic has had the majority of us confined to anywhere between 20 to over 30 days of limited activity, social distancing, and remote working, all while discovering the evolving and seemingly limitless capabilities of the virtual world. What that means for production agriculture and research, extension, and education efforts are, missed data points, missed crop management targets, missed opportunity for direct stakeholder and student engagement and many more direct and indirect effects. SPARC institutions however are trying their best to not let the season go to waste and operating within the established guidelines of their respective institutions to protect germplasm, support graduate student research and pursue outreach and engagement. A successful virtual field day, the first of its kind hosted by the SPARC team at NC State University is a great example of this.

The fact that an episode starting locally in one part of the world could impact the globe to such an extent is something we have theorized in the past, but actually living and experiencing right here in the present. But then again, in a non-pandemic context as well, regional developments leading to global impact is not a brand new concept either. In fact it is the essence of the SPARC mission-“Building a resilient global bioeconomy through a regional partnership”. Time will tell how the pandemic will affect this mission but affect, it will. Maybe teleworking will become more common, but global aviation that moves people and goods is not going anywhere. Will airlines go back on their commitments or will consumer demand and corporate social responsibility help them adhere to the commitment without losing sight of the larger mission of taking carbon out of the air. Some plans may have derailed for now but as long as we collectively acknowledge that the problems we are here to solve still remains, carinata and other lipid feedstock delivering low carbon fuel will be part of the solution to that problem.

The 3rd Annual SPARC meeting and 7th Carinata Summit at Tampa helped remind the team of our mission and infuse energy and momentum into the team with all the members participating in active discussions that spanned subject matters from how to increase crop yield within the framework of sustainability, to crop insurance, to setting up a bio refinery in the Southeast, to global successes in carinata adoption and expansion. Comprehending the global implications of a regional undertaking as well as understanding the regional impact due to global developments in the renewable energy and climate change arenas are both integral to the success of SPARC. We cannot claim we had this attitude on day 1, but we can certainly say we are very close. Stay safe!

The annual Carinata Summit and 3rd SPARC Annual Meeting was held February 26th-28th, 2020 at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL. The event brought together industry, academia and government agencies who have a shared interest in the development of a carinata-based bioeconomy. The 2020 Carinata Summit provided an opportunity for many carinata researchers to become acquainted with new industry partner NuSeed, which acquired Agrisoma in 2019. NuSeed’s Leon Streit provided a vision for the future of carinata which included the return of commercial production to the Southeast US. While no solid timeline was provided, NuSeed indicated that the development of higher yielding, frost-tolerant, early maturing hybrids are a critical need for the region. Representatives of the carinata community agreed that research in this direction is important for the future of carinata and SPARC’s mission of commercializing it in the Southeast US.

Another major takeaway from Carinata 20/20 was the need for oilseed crush facilities that can handle relatively small volumes of seed expected from initial production of carinata when it is reintroduced commercially in the Southeast US. As carinata produces an inedible oil, existing crush facilities require a complete cleaning after handling carinata seed. In order for such processing to be economically viable, minimum seed volumes on the order of 40,000 tons are required at industrial scale crushers in the region. Similarly, 30,000 tons of seed are required to fill a cargo ship for transport to Europe for processing. These volumes likely will not be achievable in the first years after reintroduction of carinata production in the region. Therefore, it is necessary to start exploring alternative options to the large, industrial crush facilities already in place in the Southeast.

Nathan Chan of TerViva, the local leader in the pongamia industry, was part of a panel during Carinata 20/20 which discussed developing lipid feedstock supply chains in the Southeast US 20/20. He explained how they addressed the issue of low-volume crush for their supply-chain. TerViva was able to obtain financial support for the construction of a 2 million gallon per year oilseed crush facility in Florida to handle their seed. This was recognized by SPARC as a viable model for the future of carinata in the region. The supply chain and extension teams assumed leadership roles in pursuing new opportunities in crush for carinata. This will include identifying and applying for grants which may fund feasibility analyses and identifying
partners that can collaborate on the identification and development of new crush opportunities for the carinata industry.

The carinata team also heard from Winthrop Phippen of Western Illinois University who represented the new USDA-NIFA Coordinated Agricultural Project cleverly named Integrated Pennycress Research Enabling Farm & Energy Resilience (IPREFER). This CAP focuses on developing pennycress, a cool season oilseed crop which thrives in the cold winters of the Midwest. This concept was very familiar to the carinata team and many similarities to SPARC were identified. Also presenting was Tim Ulmasov of CoverCress, IPREFER’s industry partner. Tim covered the agronomic and biochemical characteristics of pennycress. One outstanding difference from carinata identified by Tim was the poor performance of pennycress in hot climates which would make it unsuitable for production in the Southeast. IPREFER is just getting started so the SPARC team was able to provide a lot of advice to the new project. It was also clear that there will be a lot of opportunity for cooperation between the two CAP projects in the future while keeping both industry partner’s interests in mind.

Ramdeo (Andy) Seepaul, Ed Coppola, John Leeds, and Rich Altman all received awards for their contributions to the pursuit of a carinata based bioeconomy and the SPARC program. Richard Altman convened a panel discussion on “New Perspectives in Carinata Supply Chain in the Southeast US. The panel participants provided a comprehensive look at the work done so far using the Freight and fuel Transportation Optimization Tool (FTOT). A robust discussion of the latest results from FTOT ensued and feedback was provided to the modelers concerning next steps in this effort. The panel also echoed the sentiment of participants in the summit that the lack of appropriate-scale oilseed crush and extraction is a major bottleneck in the supply chain.

The next event at the Annual Meeting was the debut of ‘SPARC Tank’, an interactive activity developed by Extension Team member Ben Christ and his cohort at the UF/IFAS Natural Resources Leadership Institute (NRLI). This activity asked SPARC team members to assume the role of either “Shark” or “Entrepreneur” where the entrepreneurs developed a pitch to the sharks based on the perspective of one of the SPARC teams. Each entrepreneur team was composed of members of several SPARC teams to provide a diverse perspective in developing the pitch. SPARC Sharks then showered the entrepreneurs with Shark Bucks™ and a winner was declared. While the activity was a lot of fun, it also allowed the entire SPARC team to think outside their silo and work with other teams to develop a concept using SPARC outcomes. The activity was a roaring success and really woke the meeting participants up early in the morning on the last day of SPARC 20/20.

After SPARC Tank, SPARC members broke into their workstream teams to develop plans for 2020 and beyond. The meeting provided excellent opportunity for students to present their research, and for all of us (students included) to coordinate our future efforts as we move into Year 4. It was particularly enlightening to get perspectives from teams other than those I work with on a daily basis, which provided a larger, “30,000 foot view” of the overall research effort.

The Meal Efficiency Team reported that Dr. Miller continues experimenting with procedures to extract sinapic acid and a discussion took place about the possibility of using the meal for cattle feeding after the sinapic acid was extracted. This approach may yield benefits in terms of improved palatability because of the removal of one of the compounds that could be affecting cattle preference for the meal.

The Workforce Development Team met with various SPARC members to discuss expanding the breadth of student education across various disciplines; providing students with additional experiential learning opportunities and identifying new opportunities for interdisciplinary research collaboration among PIs through submission of joint proposals to the USDA and other federal and state agencies.

The Extension and Supply-Chain Teams took responsibility for pursuing the development of appropriately scaled oilseed crush in the region. They will work together to follow opportunities with partner organizations to establish this capacity in the Southeast. The Extension team also identified several products that will be useful in maintaining interest in carinata during the commercial production pause. Some that were discussed included carinata “Mythbusters” to address misconceptions about carinata, grower focused resources that provide a comprehensive look into the “First 30 days of carinata” for a successful crop, further development of the carinata mobile application.
The Fuels and Co-Products Team was encouraged by opportunities to reduce production cost by co-processing low cost feed stocks with carinata oil and the commercial opportunities for erucic acid, sinapic acid, and other valuable co-products. A new concept was conceived at the SPARC meeting to co-locate the cleanup portion of the conversion process with a carinata crush facility. That concept will be evaluated further in the coming months as an approach to reduce crushing costs and produce a very low metal content carinata oil that may expand market opportunities.

System Metrics Team reported making steady progress in accomplishing research objectives. A preliminary economic analysis for representative carinata based crop rotation systems in the region is getting its finishing touches before review. A module for aboveground carbon emissions related to jet fuel produced from carinata needs to be integrated with a techno-economic analysis in the coming months. A framework for land use change model in the presence of carinata as a potential cover crop in the tri-state region of FL,GA, and AL has been developed. An initial watershed-scale modeling revealed the benefits of carinata on hydrology, nutrients, and sediment loads for Little River watershed. SWAT modeling at a larger scale (the upper Suwannee River Basin), is under way to assess the effects of carinata on hydrology, nutrient, and sediment loads. The CROPGRO model has been adapted for carinata based on growth analysis data collected by SPARC collaborators. Initial DayCent model outputs are now in place and need to be further developed to provide all the relevant metrics.

The meeting wrapped up with a synthesis, by Sheeja George and Wendy-Lin Bartels that summarized the progress made at the meeting and outlined the plan for the next year. The most significant takeaway at the synthesis session was that SPARC is at an exciting stage where members are comfortable with what each of them are charged with doing and having now found their niche, are willing to step out and understand how the realization of carinata commercialization is a sum total of complex and mindboggling number of variables but more importantly, acknowledging how each of their contributions impact

one or more of those variables and take carinata one more step toward global success.