FRANKLINTON - Enzymes culled from the microbial soups of the earth were mixed with plant scraps inside a laboratory here, fermented into a sugary liquid, dumped into a beaker and presented Thursday morning to the presidential nose.

"Would you like to smell it?" asked laboratory technician Erin Quattrini.

President Bush, clad in a white lab coat and safety glasses, leaned over for a sniff. This, to his way of thinking, is the scent of progress.

Bush came to Novozymes in Franklinton on Thursday to tout his "20 in 10" proposal to reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent over the next decade. Landing amid a rotor wash of mowed cornstalks on company property, he toured labs, posed for pictures with workers and led a panel discussion with scientists about new kinds of ethanol.

For Bush, it was another step in his tour across the country to pitch the priorities he outlined in his State of the Union address in January.

But for Franklinton, the visit was a big deal indeed. The company's CEO flew over from Denmark. The town's mayor was there, along with county commissioners. U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield of Wilson, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of Winston-Salem and state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler showed up. Signs around town welcomed the president, and a quartet of children on a nearby road manned a candy stand, hoping Bush might stop by for a $1 Snickers.

Alas, he arrived by helicopter.

Marine One touched down about 11:15 a.m. Bush ducked into an armored black sport utility vehicle, and his motorcade drove a few hundred yards to the door of a nearby laboratory building.

Then, Bush took a well-orchestrated tour. Novozymes has become one of the leading suppliers of enzymes, helping the United States create about 7 billion gallons a year of ethanol out of corn kernels. But because ethanol is pushing up corn prices, hog and cattle farmers are crying for help.

Now, Novozymes has created an enzyme cocktail that, it says, will significantly reduce the costs to mass produce "cellulosic ethanol," derived from tougher plant matters such as saw grasses and wood chips. The ethanol can be blended with gasoline to run vehicles.

Inside the plant, Bush moved from room to room to hear the process of how enzymes can be found, selected and converted. A man in a goatee showed Bush a bottle of liquid in a glass bottle.

"Senator, don't drink this!" Bush hollered over his shoulder to Burr.

"I quit drinking in '86," Bush added. He would mention the date twice more in his tour through what is, essentially, a giant fermentation operation with the faint aroma of a brewery.

In a room of 2-gallon carboys holding liquid the color of amber beer, Bush picked up a jar of straw to show off to the journalists tagging along.

"Straw!" he proclaimed. Cameras clicked and whirred.

"Someday, you're going to be using this in your car," he said.

He picked up another jar. "Spruce chips!"

He picked up yet another vessel, this one containing clear ethanol, and took another sniff.

A one-two punch

The straw and the chips comprise one of the two prongs in Bush's plan to reduce gasoline usage.

First, he has called for increases in funding for research on alternative fuels. The administration's farm bill proposal includes $2 billion in loans for plants producing cellulosic ethanol.

Second, Bush has called for modernizing the mileage requirements for cars and trucks. Outside the plant, Bush checked out an Indy-style race car, painted lime green and sky blue, that runs on ethanol.

"It may be hard for Americans to believe, but someday we'll be taking piles of wood chips and using technology developed here -- developed for fuel for automobiles," he said. "And when that happens, that'll make us less dependent on foreign oil and better stewards of the environment."

Later, he talked about the possibilities with a panel of hand-picked guests. The discussion stretched about 40 minutes inside a warehouse adorned with stage lighting, blue draperies and an excited audience of nearly 200 Novozymes employees.

"If you really want to reduce the amount of oil that you consume, you got to reduce the amount of gasoline you use," Bush said.

He heard from scientists at Novozymes and at a national energy laboratory, and from a corporate executive of a company building an ethanol plant in Aurora. He cracked a joke with Thomas Nagy, president of Novozymes' North America operations based in Franklinton.

"Like you're the president, right?" Bush asked.

"Well, you're the president," Nagy answered.

Among the panelists was Ratna Sharma, a bioengineer from N.C. State University who described scientists' search for energy sources from sweet potatoes, feedstock and other agriculture sources.

"We feel it's achievable," Sharma said of Bush's 20-in-10 goal. "We just need to work a little harder on that."

The panel ended by 1 p.m., and Bush spent about 15 minutes shaking hands and signing autographs. He ducked out a side door, rode a few hundred yards back to Marine One and took off, leaving a swirling flurry of cellulosic cornstalks in his wake.