Planting Sweet Sorghum Under Hot and Dry Climatic Condition for Bioethanol Production

Abstract

Plants are the best choice for meeting the projected bio-ethanol demands.For this scope, a comparative analysis of the technological options using different feed stocks should be performed. Sweet sorghum can be used as a feedstock for ethanol production under hot and dry climatic conditions. Because, it has higher tolerance to salt and drought comparing to sugarcane and corn that are currently used for bio-fuel production in the world. In addition, high carbohydrates content of sweet sorghum stalk are similar to sugarcane but its water and fertilizer requirements are much lower than sugarcane. Also, sugarcane is not a salt tolerant plant. On the other hand, high fermentable sugar content in sweet sorghum stalk makes it to be more suitable for fermentation to ethanol.In this work, planting sweet sorghum in hot and dry provinces of Iran generally produced 80 tons stalks, 5 tons grains and 15 tons green leaves per hectare. However comparison among 29 sweet sorghum cultivars and lines showed that Rio had higher biomass (117.14t/ha), stalk yield (95.00t/ha), grain yield (5.00t/ha) and leaves (17.00 t/ha). It is interesting to point out that sweet sorghum could be cultivated in southern parts of Iran 3-4 times per year. Based on these results it is more economical to plant sweet sorghum for bio-ethanol production in hot and dry regions of the world.