The main objective of this proposal is to improve sugarcane productivity with the perspective of increasing bioethanol production.
This objective will be achieved by engineering part of the sugarcane genome to obtain plants more tolerant to stresses, with faster growth rates, proportionally higher sugar accumulation, and altered cell walls.
We expect that combining these factors will help improve both first- and second-generation bioethanol production in Brazil.
Having sugarcane bioethanol as a benchmark, we intend to characterise some new bioenergy crops to evaluate their potential for bioethanol, biodiesel, and bioelectricity.
We want to assess the responses of selected bioenergy crops to climate change and produce data for modelling future expansions of the use of these feedstocks (or their residues) for sustainable bioenergy production.