Bioconversion offers a cheap and safe method of not only disposing the agricultural residues,
but also it has the potential to convert lignocellulosic wastes into usable forms such as reducing sugars that
could be used for ethanol production. This paper reports a preliminary study on the microbial pretreatment and
fermentation of the agricultural residues like wheat straw, rice straw, rice husk and bagasse. A combination of
six different fungi obtained from screening were used for pretreatment and
Saccharomyces cereviseae
(NCIM
3095) was used for carrying out fermentation. In case of Wheat straw and rice straw, pretreatment with
Aspergillus niger
and
Aspergillus awamori
and fermentation yielded highest amount of ethanol(2.5gl
-1 & 2.2gl
-1
respectively ), for rice husk and bagasse it was with
Aspergillus awamori and
Pleurotus sajor-caju
(8.5gl
-1 &
9.8gl
-1 respectively ).
