PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2022

H ardly a season goes by when we don’t hear of some newkid on the block of central Illinois’ high-tech start-up scene. It can be hard to keep up. That ’s great news for the local economy, all of that energy and invention and excitement being spread around, but it also can make it easy to overlook the granddaddy of them all. Indeed, still sitting at the head of the local Innovation family table is the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) – aka the “Ag Lab” – which has filled more than 300,000 square feet of an art deco building on the corner of Peoria’s University and Nebraska Avenue since the Great Depression. Overlooking Interstate 74, the building at 1815 N. University and its occupant are no doubt a mystery to many a motorist driving by. Yet NCAUR has made legitimately global headlines over the decades. Its discovery regarding the mass product ion of penici l l in in the mid-1940s would win the Lasker Award – “America’s Nobel” — for its creators, while more importantly saving countless lives following its introduction just in time for World War II’s D-Day invasion. That breakthrough would usher in the era of antibiotics to treat otherwise deadly infection. Its scientists – nearly 90 of them still toiling away among a total workforce of approximately 250 — didn’t rest on those laurels, following up with technologies that revolutionized the way we live our daily lives, from Dextrose to Xanthan Gum, from Super Slurper to Oatrim. Today, the place seemingly plugs along without much fanfare, going about its business, flying below the radar. Don’t be fooled. “There’s a lot” going on at the Ag Lab now, says Dr. ToddWard, its director for the last two years, before punctuating it with yet one more, “There’s a lot.”

Indeed, “biobased” may be the buzzword of the moment, but it never really left the Ag Lab’s mission statement, taking the crops grown year after year after year in the fertile fields surrounding the city – corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum, barley, you name it – and converting them “into something of higher value,” saidWard. Fromchemicals to enzymes, polymers to biofuels, today the emphasis is oncreatingnatural, plant based alternatives to environmentally unfriendly products such as plastic and petroleum-based fuels. Meanwhile, the Lab’s largest research

THE EMPHASIS IS ON CREATING NATURAL, PLANT-BASED ALTERNATIVES TO ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY PRODUCTS

growing portfolio, with those climate concerns elevating the urgency to find new ways to enhance the resilience of crops to rising temperatures and CO2, said Ward. The Lab just got word that it will be getting a $4.5 million grant, requested by Congresswoman Cheri Bustos and Scientists carry out their research at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research.

unit is devoted to food security and public health, addressing crop pests and diseases, insect vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks, and more, the aimbeing to protect people and animals from naturally occurring toxins and other threats. Great progress has been in the alternative fuels market, from the use of high oleic acid soy oil to power jets

Todd Ward is the Ag Lab’s director.

to biobutanol from sweet sorghum for your SUV. There is promising research on hemp and the oils it produces, forbidden but just a few years ago. Over the last five years, NCAUR has added global warming to its vast and

CongressmanDarin LaHood in the fiscal year 2022 budget, that would go toward construction of a new greenhouse to aid in the study of climate change and its effects. Ward calls it “absolutely vital to expanding our programs in climate resilience architecture.”

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