Researchers at the University of Queensland have hit upon a pretty sweet idea, which could see lemons used to create clean, renewable jet fuel.

A team is working to modify baker's yeast so that it will produce a synthetic variant of limonene – a chemical which occurs naturally in lemons.

Limonene is best known for its efforts giving lemons their smell, but now could be the jet fuel of the future, according to UQ's Dr Claudia Vickers.

“It was first identified in turpentine oil in the late 1800s and is now used as a flavour and fragrance in foods, household cleaning products, and perfumes. It also holds promise as an anti-cancer agent,” she said.

Previous demonstrations have shown the effectiveness of limonene as a jet fuel supply, now the Queensland-based team is working to produce it on a mass-scale for commercial viability.

“Fifty per cent of a 747's weight on take-off is its fuel. If you consider all the planes flying around in the world, that's a lot of fuel – and non-sustainable fossil resource carbon – being emitted in the atmosphere,” Dr Vickers said.

“However large-scale limonene production from citrus peel is impractical... producing it in yeast should provide a route to much greater yields of limonene which are easier to extract.”

Dr Vickers, from UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology last month won a UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award for her work with lemons and yeast.

The efforts to try to obtain jet fuel from limonene is the latest in a series which has seen cutting-edge science used to transform the often ancient practices of agriculture to multi-faceted and profitable methods for tomorrow. These kinds of projects will allow farming and resources to move into a new age, as non-renewable energy sources diminish.

“Chemicals derived from yeast can play a role in future-proofing the Queensland economy by capturing part of the $2 trillion global chemical market,” fellow UQ researcher Professor Max Lu said.

A short video on Dr Vickers and her limonene research can be seen here.