%0 Journal Article
%T Energy Cane: Its Concept, Development, Characteristics, and Prospects
%A Sizuo Matsuoka
%A Anthony J. Kennedy
%A Eder Gustavo D. dos Santos
%A Andr¨Ļ L. Tomazela
%A Luis Claudio S. Rubio
%J Advances in Botany
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/597275
%X Unlike conventional sugar cane (Saccharum spp.) energy cane is a cane selected to have more fiber than sucrose in its composition. This is obtained simply by altering the genetic contribution of the ancestral species of sugarcane using traditional breeding methods. The resulting key feature is a significant increase in biomass yield. This happens because accumulating sugar is not physiologically a simple process and results in penalty in the side of fiber and yield. This review paper describes the initial conception of fuel cane in Puerto Rico in the second half of 1970s, the present resurgence of interest in it, how to breed energy cane, and the main characteristics that make it one of the most favorable dedicated bioenergy crops. The present status of breeding for energy cane in the world is also reviewed. Its potential contribution to the renewable energy market is discussed briefly. 1. Introduction Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is a well-known feedstock rich in sucrose which has been exploited globally in sugar production for centuries. But in the mid-1970s, the petroleum embargo by OPEC highlighted the fragility of an economy depending on a foreign energy feedstock. This caused a general attention to planning for alternative energy sources (e.g., [1]). Brazil took the lead during this period by starting a project of mass production of ethanol to use it as fuel to run cars by fermenting the sucrose of sugarcane (e.g., [2¨C6]), soon followed by the USA that decided to make ethanol from corn instead (e.g., [7]). Initially, economic and strategic security reasons were the driving force of BrazilĄ¯s ethanol production from sugarcane program, but later, when the debate on the planetĄ¯s environment sustainability was opened, it was realized that it was the most successful program of renewable energy from biomass so far carried out (e.g., [8, 9]). The high biomass productivity of sugarcane is the biological factor that contributes to the high positive life cycle energy balance (LCEB) of ethanol produced from it with a resultant positive balance of greenhouse gases emission (GHGE) [10, 11]. The growing interest in bioenergy in recent decades pushed scientists to better understand the plantĄ¯s physiological source-to-sink process as an obvious basic step to get efficiency either in the process of capture of sunĄ¯s energy by the plant or its subsequent accumulation of sugar and ultimately the use of the resultant total plant by mankind (e.g., [12]; see revision in [13, 14]). As a C4 plant, sugarcane is very efficient in the photosynthetic process, so that its dry
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/abot/2014/597275/