Mountain West News Bureau

Could cactus pear be used as a water-saving biofuel for the Mountain West?

KUNR Public Radio | By Kaleb Roedel

Published March 3, 2026 at 2:09 PM MST

Photo of cacti, some of which have cactus pear sticking out of them. — Cactus pear can produce biomass using only a fraction of the water required by conventional biofuel crops and does not compete directly with food production.

Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, have received a $9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study an unlikely candidate for future fuels: cactus pear.

The desert-adapted plant already grows across much of the Mountain West, including Utah, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arizona. Scientists say it could help farmers produce renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel while using significantly less water than traditional biofuel crops like corn and soybeans.

Over the next five years, researchers will test hundreds of cactus pear varieties at sites from Arizona to Florida. They'll measure how much biomass each plant produces under different rainfall conditions and study its genetics and root microbes to better understand how it thrives with limited water.

Lead researcher John Cushman, a biochemistry and biotechnology professor at the university, said expanding water-efficient crops is increasingly urgent.

"The water availability and usage for agriculture is really an important issue right now, and so it's very timely that the Department of Energy has invested in our project," Cushman said.

Cushman added that the goal is to broaden where renewable fuel crops can grow.

"We want to scale up where we can plant this," he said. "And being a desert-adapted plant, it can be grown in places where other biofuel feedstocks cannot be grown."

If successful, cactus pear could become a next-generation biofuel crop, offering farmers in arid and semi-arid regions a new drought-resilient option as the climate continues to warm.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between KUNR, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.