Growing biomass feedstocks from marginal lands is becoming an increasingly attractive choice for producing biofuel as an alternative energy to fossil fuels. Here, we used a biogeochemical model at ecosystem scale to estimate crop productivity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from bioenergy crops grown on marginal lands in the United States. Two broadly tested cellulosic crops, switchgrass, an...

Serendipita vermifera (=Sebacina vermifera; isolate MAFF305830) is a mycorrhizal fungus originally isolated from the roots of an Australian orchid that we have previously shown to be beneficial in enhancing biomass yield and drought tolerance in switchgrass, an important bioenergy crop for cellulosic ethanol production in the United States. However, almost nothing is known about how this root-a...

Growing lignocellulosic crops on marginal lands is a promising solution for sustainable biofuel production. We evaluated the productivity of bioenergy cropping systems [switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L., var. Cave-In-Rock), miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus, “Illinois clone”), hybrid poplar (Populus nigra P. maximowiczii A. Henry ‘NM6’), native grasses (five species), early successional vegetat...

BACKGROUND One of the main obstacles in lignocellulosic ethanol production is the necessity of pretreatment and fractionation of the biomass feedstocks to produce sufficiently pure fermentable carbohydrates. In addition, the by-products (hemicellulose and lignin fraction) are of low value, when compared to dried distillers grains (DDG), the main by-product of corn ethanol. Fast pyrolysis is an ...

BACKGROUND The C. bescii genome does not encode an acetaldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase or an acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and no ethanol production is detected in this strain. The recent introduction of an NADH-dependent AdhE from C. thermocellum (Fig. 1a) in an ldh mutant of this strain resulted in production of ethanol from un-pretreated switchgrass, but the thermolability of the C. thermocellum...

This study integrates a biophysical model with a county-specific economic analysis of breakeven prices of bioenergy crop production to assess the biophysical and economic potential of biofuel production in the Midwestern United States. The bioenergy crops considered in this study include a genotype of Miscanthus, Miscanthus giganteus, and the Cave-in-Rock breed of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)...

Microbial diversity on earth is extraordinary, and soils alone harbor thousands of species per gram of soil. Understanding how this diversity is sorted and selected into habitat niches is a major focus of ecology and biotechnology, but remains only vaguely understood. A systems-biology approach was used to mine information from databases to show how it can be used to answer questions related to...

Land-use conversion into bioenergy crop production can alter litter decomposition processes tightly coupled to soil carbon and nutrient dynamics. Yet, litter decomposition has been poorly described in bioenergy production systems, especially following land-use conversion. Predicting decomposition dynamics in postconversion bioenergy production systems is challenging because of the combined infl...