Studies on plant cell wall deconstruction of agro-industrial remnants and bioconversion assessment to value-added product.

India possesses abundant bio-resource as agro-industrial remnants, the potential of which has
not been exploited so far to derive value-added products. The estimated production of agro�industrial remnants in India is about 550 million tons/annum and is the only continuously
available renewable resource for the production of value-added products such as food, feed,
and fuel grade products.
Bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass to biofuels is highly challenging owing to its
recalcitrant nature of the biomass. The recalcitrance of the biomass mainly lies in the
polymerized components of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and their cross-linkages. The
lignin-carbohydrate complex plays a pivotal role in impeding the enzyme accessibility to the
cellulose. Hence, a pre-treatment step is pre-requisite in order to deconstruct the biomass and
make it susceptible for further valorization to value-added products.