OPUS - Optimized use of wheat and barley straw material for bioethanol production and investigation of the bio fuel waste products nutritional and probiotic value

OPUS has contributed to extensive studies of the magnitude and causes of differences in bioavailable carbon in the straw of winter wheat varieties. It is shown that the differences may have a significant impact on the utilization of carbon from straw for bioethanol production, or other biotechnological purposes. The results indicate that there is no negative correlation between the core and the yield straw suitability for supplying carbon to biotechnological purposes, which is very important in relation to the processing industry's future interest in this capacity. Within the completed project, we have, for budgetary reasons, been confined to breeders own data in connection with harvesting, which includes a number of traits, but no measurements of straw yields. Therefore, it has not been possible to do a thorough elucidation of the genetic variation in straw yield. Efforts are however on a smaller dataset of saccharification-potential from straw of different cereals and wheat varieties in relation to straw yields and thus the spatial yield in ethanol. Preliminary studies indicated that genetic differences in the straw yield per surface area plays an important role in the overall yield of ethanol.