Future flying will most likely continue to rely on liquid fuel, as it is the only known source with enough calories to take off from earth, without weighing down the aircraft.
Yet the drive to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has researchers searching for alternatives.
Professor of innovation at the University of Queensland, Robert Henry and his team with support from the CSIRO, and Sugar Research Australia have been researching ways to create jet fuel from sugar cane bagasse and until now were stymied by the lack of genetic information in the sugar cane plant.
This week in an article published in Nature, the researchers revealed that the sugar cane genome has been decoded, and the secrets to its propagation are revealed.
Lead author, principal Investigator and CSIRO Research Scientist Dr Karen Aitken says the genomic breakthrough has been performed on one of the last major crops to have its genome mapped, such is its complexity.
She says the data will now be used to address the challenge of stagnating sugar yields "by tapping into the previously inaccessible genetic information in the sugarcane genome".
"This is a major step forward for sugarcane research and will improve our understanding of complex traits like yield and adaption to diverse environmental conditions as well as disease resistance," she says.
The decade long project mapped 100 chromosomes, or three times that of a human, and co-author Prof Henry pans to use that information to progress the plant's value not only for sugar production but also fuel.
"We plan to build on top of this genome technology," he says.
"We've been working on the genome for a decade and now we've got it. The next step is to breed better substrates.
"We'll be looking at the cell wall composition. We know different compounds create higher sugar recovery when processed microbially."
The envisaged fuel production method is not through an ethanol process, although sugar has great success flying planes in places like Brazil - including the president's own.
Neither does Prof Henry's process char the bagass to create synthetic gases which can be converted to liquid - and synthetic aviation fuel, although that process is reported to have merit.
In fact the UQ model adopts biochemistry to create micro conversions in a catalyst.
"We intend to change the substrate," Prof Henry said. "At the moment recovery of fuel from bagasse is low but through higher recovery we can get the price down and it is our intention to get that down to current fuel prices."
Plant selection for breeding will take advantage of data technology learned through recent work in macadamias.
Prof Henry said the sugar cane plant was regarded as an important source of biomass, or raw material for the fuel-making process.
"We use most of our oil to make things, he says, emphasising the ongoing need for plastics, nylon carpets, fibre-pile jackets and ... perhaps more critically aviation fuel, in a world that will increasingly refuse to burn fossil carbon.
"We don't need fuel for cars as we can use electricity for that, but for electric-powered flight the alternative doesn't make the grade.
"Plants, however, can fill a need for fuel on our path to net zero emissions."
