WINCHESTER — It’s too early to tell if Miscanthus, the darling of the biofuel industry, will live up to its hype of a big money maker on marginal land. One problem is the three-year delay before a crop is harvested. That coupled with the expense of planting might put the crop out of the cropping plans of most farmers.

Dr. Ashraf Tubeileh, a research agronomist at Kemptville campus of the University of Guelph, says the optimum rate of planting hasn’t been determined but is between 4,000 and 10,000 plants per acre.

When one farmer on the diagnostic crop tour of the research plots at Winchester, heard the crop couldn’t be seeded but had to be transplanted, he said "I’m out." The cost for each plant is about 50 cents.

The plots at Winchester were planted manually, and a potato planter has been used elsewhere. However, a new planter has been developed in the U.K. that plants about 50 acres per day.

Other energy crops discussed at Diagnostic Crop Day at Winchester included Switchgrass, hemp and Camelina, a plant related to mustard. But according to the experts, Miscanthus is the most promising.

All the crops can be processed as bricks or pellets but the market, except for experimental projects, is limited. Lafarge, near Belleville, is currently paying about $45 per dry tonne for Miscanthus, about the same cost as energy from coal. He says that might not be enough to sway farmers but a carbon credit system whereby growers would be paid about $15 to $20 per tonne might change minds. The federal government will not pay for carbon credits but the province is thinking about it.

Miscanthus is a perennial grass that yields about 25 tonnes per hectare after three years in a happy environment. But that happy environment doesn’t exist on clay soils. Three of the four cultivars planted at the University of Guelph Research Station at Winchester were winter-killed. The fourth cultivar, Giganteus, is surviving in a healthy five-to-six foot square plot but not living up to the golden promises of the literature. The plant appears wispy and a long way from the thick, impenetrable mass promised.

Tubeileh says better results were achieved at the Elora Research Station on lighter soils. As a perennial, Miscanthus uses less fertilizer but "after 10 or 15 years the crop will take something from the soil. Every crop takes something," he says.

Ian McDonald, speaking at one of the teaching sites at Diagnostic Crop Day at the Winchester Research Station, said an approved management package won’t be available for a few years. But researchers know the crop should be left in the field over winter so the nutrients can leach away. A spring harvest reduces the yield by about 30 per cent.

"We just want the carbon," he says. "We are trying to leave as much nutrients in the field as we can."

The problem? When the crop is burned to produce energy, potassium and chlorides leave behind glass-like clinkers that are hard to get rid of.

"We are at the stage where we are trying to understand the biology," McDonald said. "Can we make this biologically work?"

Tubeileh says the emphasis has been toward planting on marginal land that doesn’t compete with corn or soybeans. Yet though the crop has been designated for marginal lands, current varieties are not highly tolerant to wetness. Furthermore, researchers have learned that the plant, of Japanese origin, has little frost tolerance, and a thick layer of straw is often used in the establishment year.

The plant has a root mass that reaches four-to-five feet into the soil and apparently does well on well drained soils.

McDonald says the new energy crops will hopefully some day replace the petroleum economy.