Energy Crop and Biotechnology for Biofuel Production

Selection of energy crops is the first priority for large-scale biofuel production in China. As a major topic, it was extensively discussed in the Second International Symposium on Bioenergy and Biotechnology, held from October 16–19th, 2010 in Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU), Wuhan, China, with more than one hundred registered participants (Figure 1). In the opening ceremony, Liangcai Peng, Chair of the organization committee, briefly described bioenergy research progress in HZAU over the past two and a half years since the first symposium was held there in March 16–18th, 2008. He first reminded the participants that there is limited arable land available and a large population to serve in China, and then stressed the need to develop lignocellulosic ethanol using residues of major food crops (rice, maize and wheat) and entire biomass of C4 plants (miscanthus and sweet sorghum) that can be well grown in marginal lands. The energy crops were defined with a high yield of grain for food supply and readily decomposed cell walls for efficient biomass degradation and bioconversion into biofuels. Peng finally proposed three practicable approaches for energy crop discovery: natural germplasm resource collection, cell wall mutant selection and genetic manipulation. So far, his team has found a few promising materials, and predicted to partially utilize them as energy crops for an ethanol production pilot facility in cooperation with Auguan company. Then, one of the two keynote speakers, Zhihong Xu, expresident of Peking University, presented a general picture of transgenic plant biotechnologies and their potential applications towards energy crop improvement. Kenneth Keegstra, director of DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center USA, described their efforts to improve biofuel crops by modification of plant cell wall properties. The first is to modify lignin composition, the second is to increase the level of hexose-containing hemicelluloses, and the third is to understand glucomannan biosynthesis as a route to increased hexose content. In the following session on energy crops, Haichun Jing from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), introduced sweet sorghum, a C4 model plant, which can be a dedicated biofuel crop through genome-based ge-