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Alkaline Pretreatments for Sorghum and Miscanthus Anaerobic Digestion: Impacts at Cell Wall and Tissue Scales

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Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is hardly degraded during anaerobic digestion. Among a large panel of pretreatments used to improve the biodegradability of this substrate, alkaline pretreatments are recognized as the most efficient to remove lignin and therefore improve the methane production of these substrates. This article uses different histological stains (FASGA, phloroglucinol, Mäule reagent, Congo red), immunolocalization, and histological quantification on pretreated internode stem tissue section in order to decipher the mechanism of alkaline pretreatment action (CaO and NaOH) in the anatomical and lignocellulosic matrix scale of Sorghum Biomass 140 hybrid and of Miscanthus × giganteus Floridulus. A significant delignification of all tissues was observed (sclerenchyma, parenchyma, and xylem) except in the epidermis and in the internal part of the perivascular sclerenchyma. The degradation of lignin under the effect of alkaline pretreatment is accompanied by a massive unmasking of cellulose and a reduction of crystalline cellulose. This induced an increase of anaerobic digestion kinetics for both biomass and of methane yield for miscanthus. Miscanthus is rich in G-type lignins located mainly at the level of the perivascular sclerenchyma of the external internode zone which was more degraded by alkalies than the S-type lignin; this may explain the improvement of miscanthus methane potential.

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Acknowledgements

Particular acknowledgements are addressed to Dr. Arnoult Stéphanie (INRA UE0972 GCIE) and Dr. Pot David (CIRAD-AGAP) who provided the raw miscanthus and sorghum stems, respectively. We thank Bio2E platform (https://doi.org/10.5454/1.557234103446854E12) and the MRI imaging facility, which is part of the UMS BioCampus Montpellier, and a member of the national infrastructure, France-BioImaging (www.mri.cnrs.fr, www.france-bioimaging.org), for providing facilities to perform experiments.

Funding

This work was supported by the project Biomass For the Future from the French National Research Agency (ANR, grant ANR-11-BTBR-0006-BFF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRAE, Univ Montpellier, LBE, 102 avenue des Etangs, 11100, Narbonne, France

    Hélène Laurence Thomas, Helga Felix P. Nolasco & Hélène Carrère

  2. PHIV, CIRAD, UMR AGAP Institut, 34398, Montpellier, France

    Marc Lartaud, Tuong-Vi Cao, Christelle Baptiste & Jean-Luc Verdeil

  3. UMR AGAP InstitutUniv Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, 34398, Montpellier, France

    Marc Lartaud, Tuong-Vi Cao, Christelle Baptiste & Jean-Luc Verdeil

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  1. Hélène Laurence Thomas
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  2. Helga Felix P. Nolasco
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Contributions

Hélène Laurence Thomas: investigation, formal analysis, visualization, conceptualization, writing—original draft.

Helga Felix P. Nolasco: investigation, writing—review and editing.

Hélène Carrère: funding acquisition, conceptualization, supervision, validation, writing—review and editing.

Marc Lartaud: formal analysis, writing—review and editing.

Tuong-Vi Cao: formal analysis, writing—review and editing.

Christelle Baptiste: investigation.

Jean-Luc Verdeil: conceptualization, supervision, validation, writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Hélène Carrère.

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Thomas, H.L., Nolasco, H.F.P., Carrère, H. et al. Alkaline Pretreatments for Sorghum and Miscanthus Anaerobic Digestion: Impacts at Cell Wall and Tissue Scales. Bioenerg. Res. 15, 792–809 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-021-10342-9

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