The reed is a perennial called Miscanthus sinensis, native to northern
China and Japan. German researchers claim that it can yield 30 tonnes
of dry matter per hectare per year.

‘We are having to answer inquiries from farmers every day of the week,’
says Manfred Dambroth of the Federal Research Institute for Plant Breeding
and Crop Husbandry in Brunswick. The reed can grow as high as 3 metres
in one season, so local farmers call it ‘elephant grass’.

According to Colin Speller of ADAS, a government-owned agricultural
research agency near Ely in Cambridgeshire, it could compete with short-rotation
coppicing using trees such as willow and poplar, which usually achieve yields
of up to 16 tonnes per hectare per year. He sounds a note of caution, however.
ADAS has just completed a review of studies around the world on Miscanthus
for the government’s Energy Technology Support Unit at Harwell. Speller
says that estimates of the plant’s yield vary widely, from below 20 tonnes
annually per hectare to as high as 35 tonnes. But if Miscanthus can achieve
annual yields over 20 tonnes per hectare then it ‘moves into a new league’,
he says.

Interest in the crop is such that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food has commissioned ADAS to carry out a six-year trial at a cost
of £45 000 in the first year. ADAS has planted plots this spring
at its centre in Ely as well as ones in Herefordshire and Devon.

Miscanthus meets many of the requirements of an ideal biomass crop:
it is dry when harvested, burns cleanly and can be harvested annually.
Speller believes such a crop will be more appealing to farmers than those
requiring coppicing, as they can only be harvested every three years and
require machinery.

Miscanthus also has a different metabolic pathway for photosynthesis
from all British crops except maize. British crops are suited to temperatures
below 25 °C, while Miscanthus is more characteristic of subtropical
plants. It thrives in high light and high temperature conditions and uses
water more efficiently. This is why Speller is reluctant to predict yields
for Britain’s temperate climate.

As with any biomass fuel, any carbon dioxide produced when the reed
is burnt was extracted from the air when it grew, so producing and burning
it does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. There are other environmental
benefits as well. ‘It offers high production on minimal chemical inputs,’
explains Dambroth. ‘No pesticide sprays are required and the plants’ rhizomatous
root system has proved to absorb fertilisers efficiently, so helping prevent
seepage of nitrate into ground water.’

In Germany, some farmers are pressing ahead with production. A group
of Bavarian growers has signed contracts to supply Miscanthus to a local
crop drying cooperative. Twenty hectares of Miscanthus have been planted.
The plan is for the crop drier to change over from heating oil to 80 per
cent home-grown fuel by 1995.

In Dresden, a paper manufacturer is testing locally grown Miscanthus
as a cellulose source instead of timber. Its tests have shown cellulose
from Miscanthus to be just as good as that from timber and better than that
from any other annual farm crop.

VEBA, an oil and chemicals company near Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr, has
planted over 30 hectares of Miscanthus plots this year. The crop is used
to produce hydrogen gas which in turn is used in the refining process for
crude oil.

The most obvious users for Miscanthus would be power stations. ‘Systems
must be created: with farmers supplying the Miscanthus on contract to small
community central heating and power stations, for instance,’ says Dambroth.
‘Machinery must also be developed for harvesting and packing the Miscanthus
into tight bales for efficient transport and handling.’

One problem with the crop as a power source is that it is all harvested
at one time in the year. Speller believes it will be suitable for integrated
power stations which at different times of year could burn Miscanthus,
wood chips from coppicing, straw or even domestic waste.

Wheat for bread-making generally contains around 11 per cent protein in the grain in northern Europe. Dinkel averages between 14 and 15 per cent protein and some types have topped 17 per cent. There’s also a greater concentration of minerals and vitamins in the grain. And a growing number of consumers are recognising, and acclaiming, the unique ‘nutty’ taste of products baked from dinkel flour.

But the key opening the door for dinkel into modern agriculture is the crop’s ability to withstand disease without the help of modern pesticides-and to grow well with little or no artificial fertiliser.

‘The plant is relatively unaffected by fungus and insect attack,’ explains , head of wheat breeding at Hohenheim University, Stuttgart. ‘Also, dinkel can produce well with little nitrogen needing to be applied to the soil. This means the crop is very appropriate in environment-protection areas or where farmers want to use less chemicals, or none at all, in production.’

Developing such a crop to protect the environment spurred the founding of a Dinkel Foundation by Stuttgart brewery magnate Wolfgang Dinkelacker (no relation!). Plant breeders such as Kling are involved in the research and development programme as are representatives of the milling and baking industries in Germany.

While this foundation was being formed, groups of farmers in Swabia, southern Germany (the ancient European home of dinkel), had been looking for a cereal alternatives to wheat to grow on their lands. In dinkel they found a crop that brought a new taste to the breadboard, that was healthier to eat than wheat, cheaper to produce, demanded less chemical inputs and, unlike modern wheat, was not in overproduction.

In short, dinkel is seen as an effective public relations device by farmers striving to regain popularity in the public eye after production excesses encouraged by the European Community’s agricultural policies. The crop may also help the growers’ image with their bankers: millers are now paying double the price of bread wheat for the tasty old Triticum.

The result is that the area where dinkel is grown has risen from a few isolated pockets in Swabia, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria to over 6000 hectares in southern Germany alone last year. North American farmers have been in touch, too, and a crop of dinkel is being tried out on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, according to the Dinkel Foundation.

Dinkel is believed to have been brought about 5000 years ago into what is now Swabia from Asia. Remains of the corn are found in the ruined kitchens of Roman villas, and during the so-called Dark Ages dinkel was hailed as a homoeopathic panacea.

Even as late as 1850 there were an estimated 200 000 hectares of dinkel growing in the south German region of Wrttemberg. At the time, wheat covered only 12 000 hectares. Then came dinkel’s demise. It proved lower yielding than the modern wheats and the very attribute that helps to protect the crop against disease-a close-fitting husk around the grain-made it difficult to thresh. Wheat, easily mechanised although less resistant to disease, soared ahead in the harvest stakes. By the Second World War, dinkel had all but disappeared.

‘We’ve still a lot of research to do,’ says Erwin Langanke from the Dinkel Foundation. ‘For instance, we have now a modern, fully automatic de-husker on trial handling dinkel at one of the main mills. The foundation financed this development. The only other way to strip the husk off the grain is the age-old method of running it between two millstones. The stones were kept at an exact distance apart so that the grain was rubbed and not ground. This was painstaking and slow: as little as half a tonne per hour with some grains having to be rerun through the process twice or even three times.’

Now, production trials are checking for the best varieties among the very few survivors (no fewer than five from 20 types being tested were first registered before 1904), and examining new crosses. This winter, researchers at Hohenheim University are to study the grain’s chemical composition with special attention being paid to analysing the proteins present.

Kling says there’s no obvious reason why the crop cannot be grown in other areas, including perhaps parts of Britain. Another point that may encourage the development of this Stone Age corn here-is the Dinkel Foundation’s latest finding: dinkel also makes a very good light beer!

Norman Dunn writes from Ludwigshafen, Germany.

The robot’s favourite snack is ‘blister’ packs: the transparent containers
with cardboard backing which typically contain such objects as small plastic
toys, woodwork screws or sparking plugs.

But conventional blister packs pose a problem for recyclers because
they often combine a PVC blister with backing made from other plastics or
cardboard. ‘This makes separation and recycling very expensive,’ says Stefan
Petzolt of Hoechst.

To overcome this the company is making the backing of blister packs
from recycled PVC. It then proposes that customers ‘feed’ the discarded
packaging to robots positioned in shops or supermarkets. The robots will
read the bar code on the packaging to see if it is PVC. If it is, the robot
then shreds the material ready for collection and recycling.

So far Hoechst has only made one prototype PVC-eating robot. The company
says that there is a certain resistance from German supermarkets. They would
much rather see customers take their rubbish home than have plastic-eating
robots prowling the premises. Hoechst says it intends to persevere with
the development, however.