Input costs for sugarcane production have escalated sharply over the past five years, especially fertiliser costs. It has become imperative for growers to manage fertiliser input costs by ensuring that they have an accurate nutrition management programme in place. The South African Sugar Association Experiment Station has, over many years, contributed hugely through their research and extension...

BACKGROUND Sugarcane, a tropical C4 perennial crop, is capable of producing 30-100 tons or more of biomass per hectare annually. The lignocellulosic residue remaining after sugar extraction is currently underutilized and can provide a significant source of biomass for the production of second-generation bioethanol. RESULTS MYB31 and MYB42 were cloned from maize and expressed in sugarcane with...

Background The international energetic system strongly depends on fossil fuels, which causes negative effects in the environment, such as the global warming. Biofuels appear as an environmental and economic alternative for the energetic industry because of their potential source of renewable energy. Several studies are based on sugarcane culture and its derivatives, as bagasse, the sugarcane re...

Genome editing opens new and unique opportunities for researchers to enhance crop production. Until 2013, the zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) were the key tools used for genome editing applications. The advent of RNA-guided engineered nucleases - the type II clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/Cas9 (CRISPR-a...

Increase of biofuel production is an important component in the development of alternative energy in Thailand. To meet the higher amount of biofuel (targeted by Thailand Department of Alternative Energy Development and Efficiency, DEDE), a lot of biofuel feedstock production is needed which in turn requires a large volume of water for irrigation. This study assesses the water footprint (WF) of ...

Agro-industrial wastes such as sugarcane bagasse, wheat bran, rice bran, corn cob and wheat straw are cheapest and abundantly available natural carbon sources. The present study was aimed to production of amylase and xylanase simultaneously using agro-industrial waste as the sole carbon source. Seven thermophilic strains of actinomycete were isolated from the mushroom compost. Among of these, s...

BACKGROUND The development of 'energycane' varieties of sugarcane is underway, targeting the use of both sugar juice and bagasse for ethanol production. The current study evaluated a selection of such 'energycane' cultivars for the combined ethanol yields from juice and bagasse, by optimization of dilute acid pretreatment optimization of bagasse for sugar yields. METHOD A central composite de...

In Brazil, the production of ethanol from sugarcane produces large amounts of lignocellulosic residues (bagasse and straw), which have been driving research and development for the production of second generation ethanol. In the present work, a recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain expressing the βglucosidase gene from Humicola grisea was used for ethanol production from three different c...

The objective of this study was to infer the opportunity cost of land use of the Feijão River watershed (São Carlos-SP, Brazil), in order to estimate the financial resources necessary to compensate landowners willing to convert their production areas into areas of environmental preservation. Net values were estimated by calculating the Annual Value and the Net Present Value of each activity. Th...

Sugarcane, one of the most photosynthetically efficient crops, is an important source of sugar and feedstock for green energy and co-generation. The high level of polyploidy and genomic peculiarities in this crop point towards a complex mechanism of regulation for the economically important traits like sugar content, cane yield related traits, resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses etc. The ...