The world’s energy needs highly depend on fossil fuels, which were formed over several million centuries. The price of petroleum increases daily and unfortunately, its exploitation is currently at an alarming rate for such essential non-renewable energy. Also, the recent clamour for safe and cheap alternative means of energy generation to mitigate global warming and its detrimental effects is drawing attention towards biofuel production to supplement and possibly, substitute fossil fuels. To this effect, many plant materials have been tested and employed in the past decades for biofuel production. However, a good number of plants used in biofuel production as feedstock are crop plants, which have more economic value as food. Therefore, it is imperative to explore the possibility of biofuel production from non-food sources, hence, we examine the potential of microalgae as an alternative source of renewable energy. Microalgae are of great interest in biofuel production for its high productivity, cosmopolitan nature, easy culturing on waters and land, and noncompeting with conventional agriculture for resources. In view of these, this article focuses on the potentials of microalgae in biofuel production and mitigation of environmental pollution by its considerably low greenhouse gas emissions.
<p class="042abstractstekst"><span lang="EN-US">Genetic diversity information among a population is important in exploiting heterozygosity for the improvement of crop species through breeding programmes. This study was therefore, conducted to assess genetic diversity and establish molecular relationships among 20 selected exotic sugarcane accessions from the Unilorin Sugar Research Institute germplasm using Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) molecular markers. Genomic DNA was extracted from the sugarcane leaf. Fragments amplification was then performed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with ISSR markers and the data obtained were analyzed using MEGA 4 software. Analysis of the electropherogram showed a total of 39 loci consisting of 369 bands, out of which 95.8% were polymorphic. The biplot analysis showed all the markers contributed to the observed diversity with the least achieved with ISSR6. The principal co-ordinate analysis grouped the accessions into four clusters, comprising mixtures of all the six collection sites. The polymorphism obtained in the present study showed that the ISSR markers are effective for assessment of genetic diversity of the sugarcane accessions as it reveals the genetic similarity or divergence of the accessions regardless their place of origin or cultivation.</span></p>
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