Breeding Rice for Sustainable Bioenergy Production

Abstract

Bioenergy including biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass has immense potential to meet growing energy demand of the ever-growing world population. Bioenergy will help to mitigate the environmental problems arising due to burning of fossil fuels. Rice is the staple food for more than half of the world population and is grown in more than 100 countries. Rice straw is rich in lignocellulose and several technologies are available for efficient extraction and conversion of cellulose to ethanol. Thus, the surplus rice straw can be utilised to produce biofuel, so as to replace conventional fossil fuel sources. But it is reported that the present-day rice varieties showing high lignocellulosic straw biomass have low grain yield potential. Hence, it is important to re orient the breeding strategies for developing dual purpose rice varieties that are bioenergy efficient without compromising grain yield.