Energy Crops Growing On Seawater

Ceres Salt-Tolerant Trait Could Unlock Millions More Acres of Marginal Cropland

THOUSAND OAKS, California, June 30, 2010 - Energy crop company Ceres, Inc. announced today that it has developed a
plant trait that could bring new life to millions of acres of abandoned or
marginal cropland damaged by salts. Results in several crops, including
switchgrass, have shown levels of salt tolerance not seen before.

Ceres reported that its researchers tested the effects of very high salt
concentrations and also seawater from the Pacific Ocean, which contains
mixtures of salts in high-concentration, on improved energy grass varieties
growing in its California greenhouses. Energy grasses, such as sorghum,
miscanthus and switchgrass, are highly productive sources of biomass, a
carbon-neutral feedstock used for both biofuel production and electricity
generation.

"Today, we have energy crops thriving on seawater alone," said Richard
Hamilton, Ceres President and CEO. "The goal, of course, is not for growers
to water their crops with seawater, but to enable cropland abandoned because
of salt or seawater effects to be put to productive uses."

Currently, there are over one billion acres of abandoned cropland
globally that could benefit from this trait and others in Ceres' pipeline,
including 15 million acres of salt-affected soils in the U.S. The company now
plans to evaluate energy crops with its proprietary salt-tolerant trait at
field scale. If results are confirmed, biofuel and biopower producers will
have more choices for locating new facilities, gaining greater productivity
on marginal land and displacing even greater amounts of fossil fuels.

"In the end, this is not so much a salt trait, but a productivity trait
and a land-use trait," Hamilton said. "I am convinced more than ever that
techniques of modern plant science can continue to deliver innovations that
increase yields and reduce the footprint of agriculture. Improved energy
crops will enable the bioenergy industry to scale far beyond the limits of
conventional wisdom."

Chief Scientific Officer Richard Flavell said that Ceres' salt-tolerant
trait could provide significant benefits to food production, too. In
conventional plant breeding, breakthroughs in one crop have little bearing on
another crop. However, by using techniques of modern biology to develop
traits, researchers can duplicate this trait much more easily, and extend the
benefits from energy to staple food crops.

"Soils containing salt and other growth-limiting substances restrict crop
production in many locations in the world. This genetic breakthrough provides
new opportunities to overcome the effects of salt," said Flavell. In food
crops, Ceres has confirmed the trait in rice to date and is preparing
additional testing in others.

Flavell believes that salt-tolerant crops need to be combined with better
land and water management practices as well as with agronomic techniques that
minimize salt build-up in the soil. Furthermore, like first-generation
traits, plant traits developed by Ceres can be stacked together to
revolutionize plant yields.

"When we begin stacking together salt tolerance, drought tolerance and
traits that allow plants to require less nitrogen fertilizer, we can deliver
significant productivity and yield increases with fewer inputs than used in
the first Green Revolution, as well as valuable increases on marginal or
abandoned cropland that does not currently sustain economic yields," said
Flavell.

ABOUT CERES

Ceres is a leading developer of energy crops that can be planted as
feedstocks for advanced biofuels, biopower and bio-based products. Its
development efforts include switchgrass, high-biomass sorghum, sweet sorghum,
miscanthus and energycane. The company markets its seeds under its Blade
Energy Crops brand. Ceres holds one of the world's largest proprietary
collections of fully sequenced plant genes.

Gary Koppenjan of Ceres, Inc., +1-805-376-6546, mediaoffice at ceres.net