Agricultural crop residues wheat

Agricultural crop residues are a valuable renewable biomass resource. In 1999, American farmers harvested 53,909,000 acres of wheat (1). The straw from this acreage of wheat represents >50 million t annually. Currently, some of the straw is harvested (baled) for use as livestock bedding or low-grade animal feed. However, these low-value uses provide only a... 

Agricultural, wood, and urban wastes, crop residue Wood, logging residues, trees, shrubs Starch crops such as corn, wheat, and barley, sugar crops, grasses, vegetable oils, hydrocarbon plants e.g. Pittos-porum resiniferum, Euphorbia lathyris)... 

The most important future application of H2O2 may be its use in agriculture. Recent studies have shown that dilute alkaline treatment of wheat straw, corncobs, and cornstalks can render these poorly digestible crop residues far more nutritious to sheep and other ruminants. In one study, sheep fed treated straw gained 235 g/day, about the same gain they would realize if fed shell corn however, sheep fed only untreated straw lost 106 g/day. If alkaline H2O2 treatment of fibrous agricultural waste products becomes feasible, then an inexpensive, almost-unlimited food source will be made available for livestock production. 

After Flarvest. How do the memory effects shown by the other crops compare with those of winter wheat Winter wheat did not show a memory effect after one year, but oilseed rape does seem to do so. Researchers of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service found that nitrate production by microbes in the soil after a rape crop increased with the amount of fertilizer given to the crop (R. Sylvester-Bradley, personal communication). One reason may lie in this crop s habit of shedding its leaves as harvest approaches, which means that the microbes in the soil get early access to these residues. This habit might contribute to the apparently smaller efficiency of this crop in using nitrogen fertilizer. The crop may be just as efficient as winter wheat at taking up the fertilizer but drops... 

Allelopathy in agriculture. Schreiner and his associates published several papers shortly after 1900 which indicated that certain crop plants produce compounds inhibitory to growth of the same and other crop plants (2). McCalla and Duley (43.44) reported the allelopathic effects of decaying wheat residues in 1948-1949, and many papers on allelopathic effects of crop plants have been published in the past three decades. 

It was estimated how much bioethanol can potentially be produced from starch, sugar crops, and agricultural residues. These crops include corn, barley, oat, rice, wheat, sorghum, and sugarcane (12). The potential yield of bioethanol from various biopolymers, i.e., crops is listed in Table 11.1. 

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