In India, the agricultural sector generates substantial amounts of lignocellulosic wastes representing an enormous source of renewable feedstock for biorefineries. The strategy toward such a bioeconomy will only be successful if enough biomass and desired qualities can be provided to produce bio-based products. It is, therefore, crucial to have a reliable estimate of the biofuel potential in such lignocellulosic resources. The estimates help define technologies suitable for conversions and also lay the basis for government policies to support different initiatives. Currently, the conventional approach is time-consuming, laborious, and requires resources that make the method unreliable for a large number of sample screening and technology mapping. Herein, we present an optimized feedstock compositional analysis method akin to the conventional approach. The introduction of an automated liquid handling platform for processing multiple samples at lower volumes and reduced hydrolysis times allows faster analysis thereby having high-throughput system (HTS) for biomass compositional analysis. The results demonstrate the validity of the optimized method for analyzing biomass composition at 100 samples/day, minimal analysis times, and low sample requirements (10 mg) in the HTS studies. The estimated carbohydrate composition can be used for the prediction of the theoretical ethanol yield (TEY). Furthermore, the HTS protocol can help screen a large number of samples paving the way to map agri-waste feedstocks based on crop variants, climatic changes, storage conditions, precipitation, and biotic and abiotic stresses for their effects on biofuel potential.

Variability in enzymatic and non enzymatic antioxidants could be useful for breeding genotypes tolerant to different abiotic stresses. The objective of present study was to determine the variability in enzymatic and non enzymatic antioxidants in wheat at three different stages of development including leaves of vegetative stage, flag leaf stage after 5 days of anthesis and in mature grains. Forty wheat genotypes including 10 commercial cultivars, 5 rainfed cultivars, 17 advanced breeding lines and 8 Australian cultivars were raised under irrigated conditions. At vegetative stage, high activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POX), glutathione reductase (GR) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and low hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content was observed in many of the advanced breeding lines, while high proline and low malondialdehyde (MDA) content was observed in many commercial cultivars. In flag leaf after 5 days of anthesis higher activity of SOD and APX was observed in many of rain-fed cultivars; many commercial cultivars showed high activity of POX and GR while low H2O2 content was observed in many of Australian cultivars. Ruby, Binnu and Datatine have low H2O2 and MDA content so they could be used for studying tolerance towards different types of abiotic stresses. PBW 550 showed high antioxidant activity in leaves during vegetative and flag leaf stage, it could be worthwhile to study the performance of this cultivar under different abiotic stresses. Variability was also observed in mature grains of different wheat genotypes. In mature grains high proline content was observed in many of rain-fed cultivars while less GR, CAT and APX activity was observed in many of Australian genotypes. Mature grains of wheat genotypes PBW 644, PBW542, DBW 16, DBW 17, WH 1021, PBW 676, BWL 73 and PBW 175 have high activity of APX, GR and some have high proline content. In general genotypes with high enzymatic antioxidants and low H2O2 and MDA content may be useful for studying tolerance towards different abiotic stresses. Genotypes with high antioxidants were identified for possible use in wheat breeding programme.