Another greenhouse is going up in the neighborhood. SG Biofuels, Inc., which is cultivating a Jatropha-based biofuels business, says it is establishing an advanced Jatropha research and development center in the San Diego area that will include a 42,000 square-foot greenhouse. A few weeks ago, synthetic Genomics held an open house at its greenhouse, where it is growing different species of algae for use in making diesel and other fuels. As I reported last year, SG Biofuels has been working to make petroleum feedstocks from oil in the oval-shaped seeds of the Jatropha curcas, a non-edible shrub native to Central America. The Encinitas, CA-based company says the greenhouse space will help accommodate the company’s expanding library of Jatropha genetic resources, which now includes more than 6,000 unique genotypes.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow