In an effort to develop an inexpensive and rapid evaluation of the feedstock quality for cellulose ethanol production, scientists from the University of Wisconsin and Iowa State University (both in the United States) report the use of forage quality and composition measurements to predict ethanol yield from corn stover. A variety of choices for cellulosic feedstocks are available for ethanol processing, but some may have better ethanol yields compared to others. Inevitably, rapid and high-throughput methods to predict/screen feedstocks with higher ethanol yields will be necessary to process a large number of samples. Such methods will also be useful in agronomic research and breeding programs for bioenergy crops. The results of the study indicate that ethanol yield is mostly a function of carbohydrate convertibility. Convertibility and ethanol yield are reported to be highly correlated with forage quality measurements, and are strongly, but negatively correlated with lignin content. The research is a preliminary step to establish models to predict biofuel feedstock quality from rapid measurements of digestibility and composition. The results are published in the open access journal, Biotechnology for Biofuels (URL above)..