Perennial Grasses for Energy and Other Biomass-Based Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Grasses have played an important role in human civilization since its beginning. They have been utilized by humans to enhance their lives and environments for more than 10 centuries. Including the cereals, the grass family is the most important plant family to human civilization, owing its spread to the development of grass-based agriculture. Globally, human culture has been shaped by grasses and the products made from them. Grass communities were the cradle of the first anthropoid creatures over 300,000 years ago. Today, our civilization must face some important challenges. Here, once again, grasses can play a very important role. Population growth, rising living standards, and urbanization have increased the demand for food and products. Thus, the establishment of a bio-economy, in which fossil-based products are replaced with bio-based ones, will require more land and sea areas dedicated to meeting this increased demand. Many perennial grasses are being used increasingly worldwide as sources of biomass, and many of them can be grown with minimal maintenance on marginal soils and harvested to produce large volumes of carbon-rich biomass. In addition to being used for fodder or bioenergy purposes, whole crops or residues of perennial grasses can be used, for example, in paper pulp production or as an additive in particleboard manufacturing for construction and building materials. Grasses are still underevaluated, and they hold outstanding and immense value.

For this Special Issue, you are invited to share your recent advances in research and development in various fields of perennial grass applications. Review papers are also welcome. Submissions are welcome on topics including (but not limited to) the following suggestions: (1) grass genetics and breeding for new applications; (2) lignocellulosic biomass for agriculture and industry; (3) grass biomass in modern applications; and (4) economic aspects of grass biomass cultivation and processing.

Dr. Grzegorz Żurek
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• biogas
• biocomposites
• biomass yield
• fiberboard
• insulation
• lignocellulosic feedstock
• MDF
• paper