Feed production from sweet sorghum residues after extraction of juice for ethanol

[Slp_ grant_icrisat07]

full title: "Feed production from sweet sorghum residues after extraction of juice for ethanol"

Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is well adapted to the semi-arid tropics and is one of the most efficient dryland crops at converting atmospheric CO2 into sugar. This high-efficiency sweet sorghum has potential as a crop to produce biofuel in the form of ethanol. The partner institutions proposing this work have recently set up a pilot ethanol distillery near Hyderabad in India that can produce 40 000 litres of ethanol daily from the extraction of 800 tonnes of sweet sorghum stems. The sweet sorghum is supplied by small-scale farmers from the area surrounding the distillery. They have been part of the enterprise from the beginning, and have received information and training as well as improved cultivars. The sweet sorghum-based ethanol technique and the approach used in establishing the distillery are being transferred to both the Philippines and Uganda through a collaborative project with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). With an improved choice of cultivars, ethanol extraction and better use of residues for fodder, efficient use can be made of the whole sweet sorghum plant. The seed grant helped sorghum breeders, livestock nutritionists and economists, production linkage institutions (e.g. the ICRISAT Agro-Business Incubator initiative in India) and entrepreneurs (ethanol distillers and the feed industry) to work together to develop a research proposal.