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Physicochemical and Structural Characteristics of Corn Stover and Cobs After Physiological Maturity

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Abstract

Corn stover removal for biofuels production removes potentially recyclable nutrients and carbon challenging the sustainability of the process. Therefore, this study focused on quantifying the distributions of dry matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, carbon, sugars and lignin in corn stover fractions, and cobs. In 2016 and 2017, corn plants from different hybrids were collected from a corn field in Ohio at two maturity levels. The properties were evaluated for different non-grain corn plant fractions (i.e., stover fractions above and below ear, and cob). Stover fractions below and above ear (not including cobs) and cobs contributed, respectively, to 42–56%, 31–38%, and 13–18% of the total non-grain aboveground dry matter in 2 years. Glucose and lignin concentrations were uniformly distributed and ranged from 321 to 407 mg/g and 87 to 158 mg/g, respectively, for both years. Cobs contained the highest concentration of other sugars (351–361 mg/g) in both years, compared to 217–298 mg/g in other fractions. Nitrogen and phosphorus were uniformly distributed across the different corn stover and cob fractions, ranging between 4–20 mg/g and 0.2–1.5 mg/g, respectively. Potassium concentration was the highest in stover fraction below ear (10–24 mg/g) compared to 5–11 mg/g in other fractions. The results suggest that harvesting cob and above ear stover fractions from the field would allow corn stover collection with suitable sugar concentrations for biofuels/products while retaining stover fractions with higher nutrients concentrations in the field.

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Funding

This work was supported by funding from USDA NIFA AFRI Foundational Program (Grant No. 2017-67021-26141) and USDA NIFA Hatch Project (Grant No. 1005665).

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  1. Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Ohio State University, 1680 Madison Avenue, Wooster, OH, 44691, USA

    Asmita Khanal, Ashish Manandhar & Ajay Shah

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Khanal, A., Manandhar, A. & Shah, A. Physicochemical and Structural Characteristics of Corn Stover and Cobs After Physiological Maturity. Bioenerg. Res. 12, 536–545 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-019-09992-7

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