The tall grasses make a swishing sound as they bend in the breeze over a 0.8-hectare plot of black muck in the heart of South Florida's Glades growing region.

But they're not everyday plants. These grasses  sugar cane hybrids, elephant grass and giant reed among them  could be part of the solution to the nation's energy crisis.

"The good news is that we have had several crops that have shown promise.

"We need to look at them closer," says Zane Helsel, a Rutgers University agronomist who is spending a year at the University of Florida Everglades Research and Education Center studying 45 experimental crop varieties.

Helsel is trying to figure out which of the grasses have the potential to produce the most energy.

The research, which costs about US$1 million, is being conducted at a time when record-high fuel prices have increased interest in renewable energy.

Florida's fuel ethanol industry is expected to start production sometime in 2009.

Although Midwestern feed corn is the primary stock for ethanol in the United States, it does not make sense to transport that corn to Florida to make ethanol, Helsel says. An economical, local ethanol stock is needed.

"Unlike coal and oil, all biomass energy will be relatively local because of its low-energy density," Helsel says. "Petroleum is almost pure energy. Biomass' energy value is significantly lower than petroleum. You cannot afford to transport it a long way."

Helsel and Curtis Rainbolt, a weed scientist at the center, made the first energy-crop plantings about a year ago.

After initial evaluations, the two scientists selected the top 20 highest-yielding grasses in terms of biomass and planted them in a second 0.8-hectare block near Clewiston, Florida, in cooperation with landowner Florida Crystals Corp of West Palm Beach, Florida.

"This is very preliminary research," Rainbolt says. "We don't want to rule anything out at this point."

The crop mix includes giant reed, or Arundo donax, a tropical grass that has become a seriously invasive weed in California and Texas.

Millions of US dollars have been spent trying to eradicate it from natural areas there, Rainbolt says.

"We don't have records to indicate its behavior in Florida," he says. "It has not become an invasive problem yet. We are being very cautious with it. We are keeping it very confined."

The idea promoted by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson is that farmers could grow the bioenergy crops during the off-season and have another source of income.

Terry McElroy, spokesman for the state Agriculture Department, says the crop research is crucial to the future of the ethanol and renewable-energy industries.

"Before people will invest large sums of money, they will want to know what crops to grow and what processes to use to convert these commodities to energy," McElroy says.

There is a sense of urgency to the scientists' efforts, given the stakes. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, some work was done on bioenergy crops, but it did not continue, says Christine Waddill, director of the university center.

"This time, we realize this crisis is not going to go away," Waddill says. "It's a national security issue. It's costing our economy."

That makes the research even more important, says Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington.

"Everyone who has looked at the issue understands that there is a limited amount of ethanol that can be produced from corn," Hartwig says. "Being able to develop additional feedstocks expands the number of feedstocks and opens ethanol production to regions of the country that people do not associate with renewable fuels today, like Florida."

Within the year, Helsel and Rainbolt will take some of their crops to a lab in Gainesville, Florida, to test their ability to produce cellulosic ethanol. Because the crops can be grown at will all year long, the grasses offer more energy flexibility than traditional fossil fuels such as oil, Helsel says.

The bad news is we cannot just turn on a spigot, drive up to a pump and put it in our gas tanks as easily as fossil fuels."