Characterization of Sorghum Cultivars for Bioenergy Production Under the Southeast Texas Environment.

Southeast Texas is an official state-designated hub for bioenergy development as it has long growing season, ample rainfall, availability of adequate potential crop land for biomass crop production, organized support network including members from industry, government, research and academia, strong transportation infrastructure and a strong fuel-production infrastructure.  Research is needed to ensure that adequate biomass is sustainably available and economically desirable for bio-refineries. Bioenergy sorghum provides the combination of high biomass yield, commercial availability, the flexibility of an annual crop, and the potential of some cultivars to be cut multiple times during a season. Bioenergy sorghum has low annual production costs because of fairly low management input requirements. The objective of this study was to select and characterize sorghum cultivars for bioenergy production in Southeast Texas. In the first year of the study, 19 sorghum cultivars (representative sweet/syrup and forage types) were grown and the 3 best yielding cultivars were selected for characterization for bioenergy production in Southeast Texas. Our results indicated that sorghum cultivar M81-E (sweet type) is the best biomass-yielding sorghum cultivar for bioenergy production in Southeast Texas, followed by Mega Green (forage type), thus good sorghum cultivars exist in support of diverse biorefinery technologies in Southeast Texas.