Abstract
Sweet sorghum is raising considerable interest as a feedstock of either fermentable free sugars or lignocellulosic feedstock with the potential to produce fuel, food, feed, and a variety of other products. Sweet sorghum is a C4 plant with many potential advantages, including high water, nitrogen, and light efficiency, broad agroecological adaptation, as well as a rich genetic diversity for useful traits. For developing countries, sweet sorghum provides opportunities for the simultaneous production of food and bioenergy (e.g., bio-ethanol), thereby contributing to improved food security as well as increased access to affordable and renewable energy sources. In temperate and usually more industrialized regions (e.g., in Europe), sweet sorghum is seen as promising crop for the production of raw material for second-generation fuels or for biogas. This chapter describes some general aspect of sweet sorghum value chains and assesses its socio-economic impacts, including opportunities, risks, and challenges.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the European Commission for the support of the SWEETFUEL project in the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development, as well as the project partners of the SWEETFUEL project: Serge Braconnier, Bellum Reddy, Srinivas Rao, Robert Schaffert, Rafael Parella, Arndt Zaccharias, Nils Rettenmaier, Guido Reinhardt, Andrea Monti, Stefano Amaducci, Adriano Marocco, Wikus Snijman, Hannelie Terblanche, and Francisco Zavala-Garcia.
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Rutz, D., Janssen, R., Khawaja, C. (2014). Socio-Economic Impacts of Sweet Sorghum Value Chains in Temperate and Tropical Regions. In: Rutz, D., Janssen, R. (eds) Socio-Economic Impacts of Bioenergy Production. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03829-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03829-2_7
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