Sweet Sorghum: A Sweet Grass for Bioenergy

Abstract

Sorghum bicolor (L.Moench) is one of the most important multipurpose crop for production of golden syrup and treacle and alcohol from stalk juice. Its bagasse and green foliage could be used as an excellent fodder for animals, as organic fertilizer or for paper manufacturing. Sweet sorghum is a high-biomass and sugar yielding C4 plant containing approximately equal quantities of soluble glucose and sucrose, and insoluble carbohydrates (cellulose and hemicelluloses). Sorghum has been shown to be excellent silage in many areas of the world. Plant cell walls are vast reserves of photo synthetically fixed carbon. The brown midrib mutants have been used to identify and characterize the genes that encode the major enzymes for specific steps of monolignol biosynthesis for sorghum.