Mining genetic diversity of sorghum as a bioenergy feedstock

Abstract

Sorghum is a drought-tolerant rainfed crop that requires about 30 % less nitrogen fertilizer than corn to produce equal amount of ethanol per acre under nonirrigated conditions. Excellent genetic and genomic resources exist for improvement of sorghum as a bioenergy source. We expect a huge impact on biomass yield, quality, and conversion efficiency with appropriate plant breeding and biotechnology tools in order to develop energy sorghum germplasm that allows highly efficient production of biofuel. The outlined improvement should produce benefits that include: (1) genetic improvement of a biomass crop with significantly reduced overall cost of biomass-to-ethanol conversion; (2) selection of a reliable bioenergy feedstock that is drought tolerant, inexpensive to grow, environmentally friendly and cultivated in nearly all temperate and tropical climate regions; (3) expansion of the production area for bioenergy crops by developing cold tolerance germplasm and hybrids and by offering both annual and perennial sweet sorghum types; and (4) reduction in cell wall lignin for improved efficiency in production of biofuels.