Mycotechnology For Lignocellulosic Bioethanol Production: An Emerging Approach To Sustainable Environment

One of the major challenges for society in 21st century is to find a sustainable eco-friendly renewable liquid fuel for replacing petroleum based fossil fuels. Bioethanol is one of the most consumable biofuel in the world. Lignocellulosic plant biomass can be an untapped source of fermentable sugars for significant production of bioethanol. But, the polyphenolic lignin of the biomass hinders the digestibility of cellulose, thus the goal of any pre-treatment technology is to remove this structural component to improve the cellulose accessibility for enzymatic saccharification. A wide range of pretreatment methods and their combinations have been reported for delignification, but recently, the environment friendly approach of microbial pre-treatment has received much attention for enzymatic delignification and saccharificaton of biomass. The extracellular lignin degrading enzymes and cellulase enzyme complex from fungi are now considered for biological delignification and saccharification, respectively.