Barley straw contains lignin, a tough polymer in plant cell walls that blocks enzymes from breaking the material down into sugars for biofuel production. This project will systematically test how altering lignin’s content and structure in barley affects sugar release, fermentation efficiency, and energy yield from burning. Current knowledge of lignin manipulation comes mostly from woody plants, but most potential bioenergy crops—such as Miscanthus and wheat—are grasses. Barley serves as a tractable model because its genetic tools are well developed, and discoveries often transfer to wheat. The researchers will also check whether changing lignin compromises disease resistance or stem strength, ensuring that modified plants remain healthy. If successful, the work will identify which barley varieties are already best for biofuel or heat generation, and provide breeders with genes and genetic markers to improve energy crops directly. This could make biofuel production from agricultural waste more efficient and economically viable, reducing reliance on fossil fuels without competing with food crops. The project is applied: it targets a specific industrial bottleneck—recalcitrant plant cell walls—and aims to deliver practical tools for breeding programmes.
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An obvious way of improving plant materials for biofuel production would be to manipulate the structure of plant cell walls, since it is resistant polymers in these walls that prevent microbial enzymes from degrading the plant material into simple sugars and ethanol. One of the most important cell wall polymers in this respect is lignin. We already know quite a lot about how lignin is made and how it can be manipulated in woody plants. However much of the plant biomass that could be used to produce energy comes from grasses, and more research is therefore needed to enable us to manipulate lignin in these types of plant. Barley is a good model for the grasses that might be grown for energy applications (e.g. Miscanthus), and there are more research tools available for barley than for most other grasses. Barley and wheat straw waste could also be useful resources for biofuel production, and genetic discoveries in barley are usually transferable to wheat. This project aims to determine how lignin content and structure influence (1) the amount of sugars that can be released from barley straw; (2) how efficiently these sugars can be converted into biofuels; and (3) the amount of energy that can be released from barley straw by burning. This will indicate how the polymer can best be manipulated to make it easier to produce biofuels from plant biomass. We also aim to determine whether any lignin biosynthesis genes are important for barley disease resistance or stem strength, so that we can determine how to manipulate lignin while keeping plants healthy. The genes and genetic markers that we isolate can be used directly in energy crop improvement breeding programmes. Because we will be looking at a lot of different barley varieties, we will also be able to identify which current varieties are best for biofuel production and for burning for heat and energy.
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