Identifying Forage Sorghum Ideotypes for Advanced Biorefineries

Forage sorghum is a promising feedstock for the production of biofuels and bioproducts because it drought tolerant, high-yielding, familiar to farmers across world. However, spans diverse range phenotypes, unclear which are most desirable as bioenergy feedstocks. This paper explores four forage types, including brown-midrib (bmr), non-bmr, photoperiod sensitive (PS), insensitive (non-PS), from perspective their impact on minimum bioethanol selling price (MESP) at an ionic liquid pretreatment-based biorefinery. Among these there tradeoffs between biomass yield, lignin content, starch sugar contents. High biomass-yielding PS varieties have previously been considered preferable production, but, if sugars panicle retained during storage, use non-PS may result in lower-cost (MESP $1.26/L-gasoline equivalent). If advances utilization increase its value such that can be dried sold $0.50/kg, MESP each scenario lowered non-bmr become attractive option $1.08/L-gasoline While bmr lower comparatively yield results higher transportation costs negate fuel-yield advantage.