Sweet sorghum Fantastic!

Sweet like sugarcane, which looks like corn, is extremely easy to grow, not only can it be used for human food, animal feed, but also as a raw material for biofuel preparation, while the corpses leave can be used in electricity production, which is sweet sorghum (sweet sorghum or sorghum bicolor).

Sweet sorghum is the world's fifth-largest food crop after rice, corn, wheat and barley. Speaking of sweet sorghum, the world agricultural world often uses fine words such as 'magic tree', 'smart tree', 'ideal tree' because apart from these advantages, its use as a production material Ethanol, a current 'fashionable' biofuel, does not affect food prices nor does it affect global food security like corn, and does not harm the environment like fossil fuels (gasoline , oil, gas).

A sweet sorghum field in Nigeria.(Photo: AFP)

According to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India, the so-called 'ideal' crop is because sweet sorghum can be grown under drought and climate conditions. hot, salty and waterlogged. Because the trees are friendly to the arid lands and bare hills in poor countries, farmers do not need to cut down the forests to get the same land as palm or sugarcane.

Cultivating sweet sorghum does not require much water and minimizes the use of gasoline-powered irrigation pumps that release carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ), the leading greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to Climate Change. Compared to corn and sugarcane (today's ethanol production material), sweet sorghum only 'eats' half of the water and only ' eats ½ of fertilizer.

Farmers can harvest sweet sorghum as food or grow it for sale to make food for cattle or supply ethanol factories. That's why this kind of tree can grow to a height of 2.6-4 m which is praised as 'smart tree'.

To make ethanol processing materials (or biodiesel), the plants will be harvested before seeding, which is rich in sugar ingredients pressed into water and fermented and distilled to produce ethanol. The production of sweet sorghum ethanol consumes less electricity than when using corn or sugarcane. That is not to say that sweet sorghum has a relatively high energy content, equivalent to sugarcane and nearly four times higher than corn without waste products. After being pressed, the stem can be dried and used as fuel to produce electricity. And like other biofuels, ethanol is made from sweet sorghum that doesn't emit CO ₂ as fossil fuel.

Research to improve high yielding sweet sorghum varieties in the US.(Photo: Miami Herald)

According to ICRISAT, sweet sorghum ethanol production is more economical than other raw material plants. Specifically in India, where the world's first sorghum ethanol distillation plant has recently been put into operation, the cost of raw materials produces 1 gallon (3.78 liters) of sweet sorghum ethanol calculated as 1 , 74 USD compared to 2.19 USD for sugar cane and 2.12 USD for corn. An ICRISAT expert said that India could meet all of its fuel needs if there were 100 bioethanol plants such as the one in Andhra Pradesh, which now produces 40,000 liters of ethanol from sweet sorghum. provided by local farmers.

Projects of ethanol production from sources such as India are also being deployed in the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya . under the technical support of ICRISAT. Not only developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the United States and the European Union are also very interested in biofuel production technology from sweet sorghum. The US Department of Agriculture is expected to hold an international conference on the ethanol production potential of this plant in August. Many companies in the United States are also promoting the establishment of a plant producing ethanol from sorghum to mix with the marketed gasoline to reduce fuel costs for vehicles.

Sweet sorghum is currently planted on an area of ​​42 million hectares in 99 countries and territories, most of which are in the US, Nigeria, India, China, Mexico, Sudan, Argentina.

In addition to the body used to prepare biofuel, sweet sorghum seeds can be used to cook porridge or grind into baking powder or fast food. The leaves are used as animal feed while the roots are used as fuel.

In the production of sweet ethanol and sorghum, there is a disadvantage that must be prepared within 24 hours of harvest or the sugar content of the trunk will no longer exist.

MAI