Turkey - Riding high in biofuels research!

Just this past month, Science had an article (you may need subscription to read it) about Brazil's growing research program in biofuels. It included a table that showed top nations in biofuels research according to the number of papers published between 1998 and April, 2008 (see the table below). Brazil is 11th with 80 papers on the topic. But what caught my attention was Turkey: 158 papers and 2nd in ranking, behind only the US. This is all the more striking considering the low contribution of science research papers from the Muslims states. I don't know why Turkey has such a strong program in biofuels, but this is encouraging for science in the region.