Biotech Tools Improve Biomass Quality of Sorghum
Recent advances in genomics research and plant biotechnology provide opportunities to facilitate the development of new sorghum cultivars and hybrids for high productivity of biomass with desirable cellulose. Yinghua Huang of the United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service says that cellulosic biomass is becoming an attractive energy feedstock as the supplies are more abundant, and sorghum, in particular shows great potential due to its "high water-use efficiency, high biomass productivity under sustainable low-input conditions, and amenable to manipulation of its cell-well characteristics."
In a paper Molecular breeding of sorghum for use as a sustainable biofuel feedstock Yinghua sees the potential of genomic and biotechnological tools to enhance biomass productivity and manipulate cell wall structure and composition leading to an improved biomass quality. Furthermore, fundamental knowledge learned from sorghum (as a model) can rapidly be applied to other fuelstock candidates such as Miscanthus and switchgrass for their genetic improvement.
E-mail Yinghua Huang at yinghua.huang@ars.usda.gov or view the highlights of the paper at http://www.safetybio.agri.kps.ku.ac.th/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6766&Itemid=47
This article is part of the Crop Biotech Update, a weekly summary of world developments in agri-biotech for developing countries, produced by the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology, International Service for the Aquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications SEAsiaCenter (ISAAA)
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