Conference article

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.

Sweet sorghum; carbohydrate; bio-ethanol; bio-fuel