Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Introduction
The current scenario of declining fossil fuel reserves along with increased concerns
on environment pollution and climate change is fundamentally responsible for
greater interest in renewable energy sources globally. Sustainable availability of
raw material for any economic and constant product production is one of the
essential requirements. This has become more appropriate for the constant con-
sumption products like biofuels, as the entire world economy is dependent on the
availability of fuel resources. Interest in sweet sorghum (
Sorghum bicolor
(L.)
Moench) in semiarid and rain-fed environments is increasing because of the
multiple uses of this novel feedstock either for production of biofuels from stalk
juice or for power generation from bagasse or for utilization in dairy industry as
nutrient rich and easily digestible fodder [
1
,
2
]. Additionally, sweet sorghum
biomass is used for fiber, paper, syrup, and biopolymers. Sweet sorghum being a
C4 crop has wide environmental adaptation, rapid growth, high grain and biomass
productivity, suitability for marginal soils, and high concentrations of the easily
fermentable sugars like sucrose, glucose, and fructose [
3
]. Drought and salinity are
widely prevalent abiotic stresses that significantly lower the yields of various crops,
and their frequency of occurrence is expected to increase due to climate change.
Sweet sorghum grows in marginal areas because of its high tolerance to saline and
drought conditions. Sweet sorghum has higher water-use efficiency than other
summer crops under both well-watered and water-stressed conditions [
4
-
6
]. From
the agronomic point of view, sweet sorghum is more environmentally friendly than
maize because of its relatively low nitrogen needs and water requirements. It was
reported that sorghum requires 310 kg of water to produce 1 kg of biomass, while
maize consumes 23 % more water, i.e., 370 kg to produce same quantity of biomass
[
7
]. Besides biofuel production from sweet sorghum, a plethora of food products
such as beverage, cookies, syrup, sweets, chocolates [
8
], and bioproducts like
biopolymer resin can be produced [
9
]. However, the commercialization of this
smart feedstock primarily hinges on the national biofuel policy of respective
countries besides identification of productive cultivars adapted to the targeted
region owing to significant genotype
environment interaction [
10
].
This chapter will focus on genetic enhancement of sweet sorghum through
conventional plant breeding and the production of various bioproducts based on
this novel feedstock.
Food: Fuel Trade Off
It is often stated that sweet sorghum cultivars do not produce grain yield or the grain
yield is very less vis-a-vis that of grain sorghum. Studies at the International Crops
Research Institute for the Semiarid Tropics (ICRISAT) showed that sweet sorghum
hybrids had higher stem sugar yield (11 %) and higher grain yield (5 %) compared
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