The British government and 15 businesses including Royal Dutch Shell BP and SABMiller directed 27 million pounds ($38.10 million) on Tuesday for research on new biofuels that do not use up food.

It is Britain's biggest ever public investment in bioenergy.

The money will fund research at six centres around Britain with the goal of replacing petrol in cars with fuels derived from willow, straw and other non-food crops, government officials and scientists said.

Focusing on these plants along with industrial and agricultural waste -- such as unused corn husks -- offers the potential to provide a major source of clean, low carbon energy without using up farmland needed to produce food, they added.

"The challenge for biofuels is whether we can make the fuels sustainable and efficient enough," Britain's Science Minister Lord Paul Drayson told reporters.

"So in this sense this is a very smart investment and addressing a demand that is already there."

Biofuels are mainly produced from food crops such as wheat, maize, sugar cane and vegetable oils.

Advocates see them as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change but some environmental groups have argued they may worsen the problem by contributing to the destruction of rain forests.

Europe is looking to biofuels to help cut greenhouse gas emissions with the European Parliament mandating that 10 percent of EU transport fuel should come from renewable sources by 2020.

The investment in the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council can help meet this target with a locally-grown fuel source that could help prevent destruction of rain forests, those involved in the project said.

"At the moment we make biofuels from food crops," said Angela Karp a scientist at Rothamsted Research, one of the six research centres. "This diverts crops from the food chain and it takes intensive energy to grow the crops."

The researchers are first focusing on willow and straw, looking for ways to boost their yields and figure out how best to extract the sugars that can be turned into fuel.

A hurdle is that it is harder to tap sugars from these plants than from food crops such as maize and different ways to do this efficiently need to be sought, the researchers said.

Research will also take place at centres based at the Universities of Cambridge, Dundee, York and two at the University of Nottingham.

Another seven universities and institutes along with the fifteen businesses will contribute to research ranging from bioenergy production to analysing economic, social and environmental impacts of biofuels.