Yield10 Bioscience Offers Winter Camelina Contracts

Yield10 Bioscience, Inc., an agricultural bioscience company, today announced an open enrollment program for growers for contract production of winter Camelina. Farms located in Montana and Idaho, as well as southern Alberta (Canada) and Saskatchewan (Canada) are eligible to participate in the program.

Winter Camelina Production, Idaho, Spring 2022 (Photo courtesy of Yield10 Bioscience)

One of Yield10’s primary goals is to establish Camelina as a revenue generating winter cover crop that is also a low-carbon source of feedstock oil for use in the growing biofuels market. As a cover crop, Camelina has the potential to help reduce soil erosion, improve soil quality, and reduce nutrient run-off from land that is used for row crop production. Yield10 is developing proprietary varieties of winter Camelina that have been grown in field tests over the last three years.

Yield10 plans to contract with growers this winter for planting high-performing non-regulated winter Camelina as part of an initiative to establish pre-commercial production and offtake relationships in the biofuels market. Yield10 plans to expand the planting acreage going forward, introducing herbicide tolerant Camelina varieties to enable large acreage planting over time and is already field-testing herbicide tolerant Camelina varieties this year to identify lead and back up lines for commercial development and regulatory approval.

Yield10 has outlined a commercialization plan for Camelina as a platform crop to address three markets: Camelina oil for use as a biofuels feedstock oil; Camelina meal for use in animal feed; and longer term, PHA bioplastics produced in Camelina for use as a biodegradable plastic.

For more information on Yield10’s Camelina Opportunities for Growers, please contact Darren Greenfield, Senior Director of Seed Operations, at growers@yield10bio.com