Project properties

Title Influence of abiotic stresses on miscanthus biomass quality for biofuel production
Group Plant Breeding, Laboratory of
Project type thesis
Credits 36
Supervisor(s) Tim van der Weijde and Luisa Trindade
Examiner(s) Luisa Trindade
Contact info Luisa Trindade, luisa.trindade@wur.nl
Begin date 2014/11/01
End date 2022/03/15
Description Biofuels, produced from plant biomass, are a promising and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. The plant cell wall is the main component of all plant biomass and consists mainly of polymeric sugars. The production of 2nd generation biofuels comprises the release of these sugars and their fermentation into biofuel (bioethanol or biogas). The efficiency at which these sugars are released from the cell wall is dependent on the presence of components that protect the cell wall from degradation. There is a large variation in the composition and structure of the plant cell wall and as a result also a large variation in the quality of plant biomass for biofuel production.
The grass miscanthus is a very promising biofuel crop, because of its high yields, resource-use efficiency and broad adaptation to different environments. This also makes it an ideal crop for biomass production on the large areas of marginal soils in for example eastern Europe, unsuitable for agriculture due to low water and nutrient availability or other abiotic stresses. It is hypothesized that differences in tolerance to abiotic stress could be caused by differences in cell wall composition and structure, as these cause large differences in cell wall strength, although such relationships have not been described yet.
In this master thesis project the relationship between cell wall composition / quality for biofuel production and tolerance to several abiotic stresses will be investigated in miscanthus. Control and stressed samples from abiotic stress trials on a diverse set of miscanthus genotypes are available for high throughput analysis to identify if correlations exist between tolerance to different abiotic stresses (such as drought, salt and cold stress) and cell wall composition / quality for biofuel production.
This will help to identify miscanthus genotypes with a high potential for biofuel production that are suitable for growth on marginal soils.

Suggested reading:
Heaton, E. A., F. G. Dohleman, A. F. Miguez, J. A. Juvik, V. Lozovaya, J. Widholm, O. A. Zabotina, G. F. McIsaac, M. B. David, T. B. Voigt, N. N. Boersma and S. P. Long (2010). "Miscanthus. A Promising Biomass Crop." Advances in Botanical Research 56: 76-137.

Allison, G. G., C. Morris, J. Clifton-Brown, S. J. Lister and I. S. Donnison (2011). "Genotypic variation in cell wall composition in a diverse set of 244 accessions of Miscanthus." Biomass and Bioenergy 35(11): 4740-4747.
Pauly, M. and K. Keegstra (2010). "Plant cell wall polymers as precursors for biofuels." Current Opinion in Plant Biology 13 (3): 304-311.

Torres, A. F., T. Weijde, O. Dolstra, R. G. F. Visser and L. M. Trindade (2013). "Effect of Maize Biomass Composition on the Optimization of Dilute-Acid Pretreatments and Enzymatic Saccharification." Bioenergy Research: 1-14.
Used skills - Cell wall compositional analysis (biochemical methods)
- High-throughput phenotyping of sample material
- Correlation analysis between cell wall traits and abiotic stress tolerance
- Define breeding criteria for biofuel breeding programs for marginal soils
Requirements PBR-30306 Breeding for quality and resistance