Tata Chemicals joins ICRISAT’s sweet sorghum ethanol consortium

Indias Tata Chemicals Limited (TCL), a leading company in the Tata group of industries, signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to join the Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Research Consortium (SSERC). William Dar, director general of ICRISAT, and Homi R. Khusrokhan, managing director of TCL, signed the MOA at Hyderabad, India. According to William Dar, the partnership will go a long way in enhancing the commercialization of sweet sorghum for bioethanol production. Recently, TCL established a plant in Nanded, Maharashtra, for the manufacture of bioethanol from sweet sorghum. Through the MOA, TCL can now avail itself of the sweet sorghum research outputs of ICRISAT, which is headquartered in Andhra Pradesh, India. (November 21, 2007)