A totally new approach to biofuel. That’s what researcher Andres Torres Salvador of Wageningen University is working on. He won't be using food for the production of fuel, nor will he be trying painstakingly to harvest a small amount of energy from plant waste. Instead he is beginning at the beginning: with a new plant.

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Andres Torres (24) is developing a new kind of corn. This plant should yield a lot of food, while the non-edible parts - leaves, stems and roots - will be easy to turn into large quantities of cheap bio-ethanol. In this way food and fuel production will go hand in hand: grow more food and you automatically make more fuel and vice versa.

Until now the problem with the use of corn waste has been that the hard parts of the plant can only be broken down with great difficulty by the micro-organisms which convert it to bio-ethanol. In the new plant it is precisely these hard parts that should be “good eating” for the bacteria.

Andres Torres firmly believes his new method means that 30 percent of all car fuel could be plant-based. And he has every reason to believe: when it comes to plant modification, the University of Wageningen has an enviable worldwide reputation. And what’s more: young Andres has received a million euros in research funding.