High-sugar Ryegrass as Potential Bioethanol Feedstock

A scientific team from Glyndŵr University, Aberystwyth University and Bangor University (all in Wales) has obtained a research grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council's Integrated Bio-refining Research and Technology Club (IBTI) to look into ryegrass as a biorefinery feedstock. Ryegrasses are considered to grow ideally under climatic/soil conditions in the United Kingdom, can thrive on marginal lands, and can have yields of about 15 tonnes dry weight per hectare per year. One aim of  the research is to investigate how sugars from new types of ryegrass can be chemically processed to produce a wide variety of bioproducts, including biofuel ethanol. Ryegrass is known to be a "cool season grass" with desirable agronomic qualities. The new forms of ryegrass are reported to have fructans (polysaccharides of fructose) as the main storage carbohydrates, instead of starch molecules which are found in traditional ryegrasses.

Fructans are more amenable to processing into ethanol compared to starch, because of their high water solubility and saccharification to simple sugars needs only a single. They are also easier to modify into other biobased products. In addition to the production of ethanol, the production of other value-added products from ryegrass (also known as the "biorefinery" concept) is necessary in order to make commercialization realizable. One target is to "utilise the diverse range of fructan molecules found in the ryegrass, as well as novel molecules created by the action of fructan hydrolysing enzymes on the fructans to produce novel high value chemicals."

Related information on ryegrass: http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/freepubs/pdfs/uc080.pdf.