Chromatin, Inc. Awarded $5.7 Million from the DOE to Develop Drop-in Biofuels

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chromatin, Inc., a developer of energy-crop feedstock solutions, today announced the award of a $5.7-million contract under the PETRO (Plants Engineered To Replace Oil) program of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

“Building on our success deploying our proprietary technology that can add multiple sets of genes to sorghum, we are able to produce sorghum varieties that meet the specific needs of renewable-energy producers”

The award will fund a three-year program to develop new varieties of sweet sorghum for use as an energy-rich, low cost feedstock for transportation fuels.

“Building on our success deploying our proprietary technology that can add multiple sets of genes to sorghum, we are able to produce sorghum varieties that meet the specific needs of renewable-energy producers," said Dave Jessen, Chromatin's Chief Technology Officer. "In collaboration with academic and industry experts, this award will accelerate Chromatin’s optimization of sorghum as a feedstock for drop-in biofuels and energy-rich replacements for coal and petroleum.”

Chromatin is working to develop non-food varieties of sorghum that have higher energy content making it ideal for the production of low-cost and renewable transportation fuel, high value chemicals and a high-BTU source of biopower. Sorghum can produce tremendous biomass yields with less water and fewer chemical inputs than major food crops and on land that is not devoted to food production.

About Chromatin:

Chromatin, Inc. is developing renewable energy-crop feedstocks for power, fuel and chemical producers. It also is developing expertise in the supply chains to serve energy fuel and chemical producers and is serving growers by developing high-value next-generation sorghum seeds using its proprietary crop- breeding technology and biotechnology programs. The company licenses its innovative gene-stacking technologies to support the crop-breeding programs of leading agriculture companies, and it applies these technology platforms to its subsidiary, Sorghum Partners LLC, which produces and markets hybrid sorghum seeds to growers in the US and more than 20 other countries. Chromatin is privately owned and based in Chicago. For additional information, please visit www.chromatininc.com.