The in situ application of rice straw enhances CH4 emissions by a large margin. The ex situ application of rice straw in uplands, however, may mitigate total global warming potential (GWP) of CH4 and N2O emissions from paddy-upland coexisting systems. To evaluate the efficiency of this practice, two field trials were conducted in rice-rice-fallow and maize-rape cropping systems, respectively. Y...

Mixed cultures of Cellulomonas sp. and Azospirillum brasilense were grown with straw or cellulose as the carbon source under conditions favoring the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. Rapid increases in cell numbers, up to 10 cells per g of substrate, were evident after 4 and 5 days of incubation at 30 degrees C for cellulose and straw, respectively. Nitrogen fixation (detected by acetylene redu...

Soil infertility is the main barrier to dryland agricultural production in China. To provide a basis for the establishment of a soil amelioration technical system for rainfed fields in the semiarid area of northwest China, we conducted a four-year (2007-2011) field experiment to determine the effects of wheat straw incorporation on the arid soil nutrient levels of cropland cultivated with winte...

Based on the carbon-nitrogen cycles and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and emission processes related to straw return and burning, a compound greenhouse gas budget model, the "Straw Return and Burning Model" (SRBM), was constructed to estimate the net mitigation potential of straw return to the soil in China. As a full GHG budget model, the SRBM addressed the following five processes: (1) soil...

Wheat straw is a suitable raw material for ethanol production since it has high cellulose content. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of cellobiase and surfactant on the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials. For this purpose, wheat straw was first pretreated by organosolv digestion. The chemical compositions of raw and pretreated wheat straw were analyzed. Much o...

Biobutanol produced by Clostridium spp. can be used as a biofuel and/or chemical feedstock. For cost-effective and sustainable production of biobutanol, an untapped biomass such as rice straw could be used as a substrate. Rice straw, which is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, is cheap and abundant. However, the utilization of rice straw is limited because butanol-producing clost...

The kinetics of cellulose hydrolysis by commercially available Cellubrix were described mathematically, with Avicel and wheat straw as substrates. It was demonstrated that hydrolysis could be described by three reactions: direct glucose formation and indirect glucose formation via cellobiose. Hydrolysis did not involve any soluble oligomers apart from low amounts of cellobiose. Phenomena includ...

Composite panels using virgin and recycled high-density polyethylene (VHDPE and RHDPE) and five types of natural fibers including four rice straw components (i.e., rice husk, rice straw leaf, rice straw stem, and whole rice straw) and wood fiber as control were made by melt compounding and compression molding. Fiber characteristics and the influences of fiber type and loading rate on HDPE cryst...

Background: Wheat straw is one of the most abundant crop residues produced in the world, making it highly interesting as a substrate for biogas production. However, due to the complex structure, its degradability and gas yield are low. The degradability can be improved by pre-treatment, making the material more accessible to microbial degradation. Methods: To investigate the microbial response ...