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BBSRC Studentship: The role of cell wall structure in determining sustainable bioalcohol production from lignocellulose

Reference	BBS/E/F/00042606
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Keith Waldron
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Quadram Institute Bioscience
Department	Quadram Institute Bioscience Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	3,200
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/10/2010
End date	30/09/2014
Duration	48 months

Abstract

Commercial exploitation of straw co-products for bio-alcohol production requires improvement in the levels and ease of enzymatic digestibility of plant cell wall carbohydrates. The morphological characteristics and chemical composition of wheat and oilseed rape stems vary between varieties and are being studied across ~48 lines of each crop species in the BBSRC Integrated Biorefinery Technologies Initiative (IBTI) Club project “Optimization of wheat and oilseed rape straw co-products for bio-alcohol production”. The plant cell wall is the common structural entity here since it is the range of material properties of the wall that determines stem strength and fracture properties, and it is the polysaccharide component of the cell wall which provides the source of sugars for fermentation. There is a paucity of information how the cell wall archestructure, and interpolymeric cross-linking affect such digestibility. This project will focus on elucidating the underlying role(s) of plant structure (macro- through to polymer) in manifesting the genetically-determined differences in phenotype, harvesting and ease of enzymatic digestion for bioalcohol production.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Bioenergy, Crop Science, Industrial Biotechnology, Plant Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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