By Ryan C. Christiansen
As printed in Ethanol Producer Magazine, October 28, 2008.

A scientist at The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Inc. agricultural research center in Ardmore, Okla., who has made advancements in efficiently producing cellulosic ethanol, has been named Oklahoma Scientist of the Year by the Oklahoma Academy of Science.

Richard Dixon, senior vice president, professor, and director of the Plant Biology Division at the Noble Foundation, has been studying how to genetically modify plants to reduce the amount of lignin in their cell walls in an effort to improve the efficiency of the acid pretreatment process in the production of cellulosic ethanol.

Dixon will receive the honor during the OAS's annual meeting Oct. 31 at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla.

In the early 1990s, Dixon and his team of researchers set out to create a low-lignin line of alfalfa and improve the digestibility of the plant for livestock. Dixon and his colleagues later showed that when the genetically modified alfalfa was subjected to an acid pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis, more sugar was released from the cell walls of the plant than an unmodified plant.

Dixon began his employment with the Noble Foundation as the founding director of the then newly created Plant Biology Division in 1988. According to the foundation, Dixon is widely recognized as a leading authority on flavonoids, isoflavonoids, condensed tannins, and lignin. He is the author of more than 360 scientific papers. In 2002, the Institute for Scientific Information named Dixon one of the 15 most cited authors in the plant and animal sciences worldwide. In May 2007, Dixon was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

This article appeared in Ethanol Producer Magazine, www.ethanolproducer.com, on October 28, 2008.