Sweet Sorghum - A Potential Alternate Raw Material for Bio-ethanol and Bio- energy

Sweet sorghum Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench is a special purpose sorghum with a sugar-rich stalk, almost like sugarcane. Besides having rapid growth, high sugar accumulation, and biomass production potential, sweet sorghum has wider adaptability (Reddy and Sanjana 2003). Given that water availability is poised to become a major constraint to agricultural production in coming years (Ryan and Spencer 2001), cultivation of sugarcane becomes difficult. Sweet sorghum would be a logical crop option in lieu of sugarcane in such situations. Sweet sorghum can be grown with less irrigation and rainfall and purchased inputs compared to sugarcane. The sugar content in the juice extracted from sweet sorghum varies from 1623% Brix. It has a great potential for jaggery, syrup and most importantly fuel alcohol production (Ratnavathi et al. 2004a). The stillage after extraction of juice from sweet sorghum can be used for co-generation of power.