The final products of the ethanol industry are alcoholic beverages, industrial ethanol and biofuels. They are produced by the same production process, which includes fermentation and distillation of raw materials which come from plant biomass. At the end of the distillation process a waste effluent is obtained called vinasse or stillage. The direct disposal of stillages on land or in groundwater (rivers, streams or lakes), or even for the direct irrigation of crops, pollutes the environment due to their high organic contents, dissolved solids and many other compounds which are toxic or could be contaminants under certain environmental conditions. This work reviews the characterization of vinasses from different feedstock sources and the main treatments for conditioning the soluble solids of vinasses before their disposal.

BackgroundA modified laboratory-scale upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor was used to obtain methane by treating hydrous ethanol vinasse. Vinasses or stillage are waste materials with high organic loads, and a complex composition resulting from the process of alcohol distillation. They must initially be treated with anaerobic processes due to their high organic loads. Vinasses can be considered multipurpose waste for energy recovery and once treated they can be used in agriculture without the risk of polluting soil, underground water or crops. In this sense, treatment of vinasse combines the elimination of organic waste with the formation of methane. Biogas is considered as a promising renewable energy source. The aim of this study was to determine the optimum organic loading rate for operating a modified UASB reactor to treat vinasse generated in the production of hydrous ethanol from sugar cane molasses.ResultsThe study showed that chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency was 69% at an optimum organic loading rate (OLR) of 17.05 kg COD/m3-day, achieving a methane yield of 0.263 m3/kg CODadded and a biogas methane content of 84%. During this stage, effluent characterization presented lower values than the vinasse, except for potassium, sulfide and ammonia nitrogen. On the other hand, primers used to amplify the 16S-rDNA genes for the domains Archaea and Bacteria showed the presence of microorganisms which favor methane production at the optimum organic loading rate.ConclusionsThe modified UASB reactor proposed in this study provided a successful treatment of the vinasse obtained from hydrous ethanol production.Methanogen groups (Methanobacteriales and Methanosarcinales) detected by PCR during operational optimum OLR of the modified UASB reactor, favored methane production.

Genetic improvement of coffee, an important commercial crop, through classical breeding is slow and cumbersome. Biotechnology offers alternative strategies for generating new and improved coffee varieties, including those resistances to environmental extremes, pests, and diseases, low in caffeine, and with uniform fruit maturation. Large improvements in somatic embryogenesis, development of haploids, and scale-up of micropropagation have been accomplished in the last 5 yr. The recent identification of expressed sequence tags (EST) that are differentially expressed during the infestation of coffee plants by coffee leaf miners and the isolation and cloning of the promoter for the N-methyltransferase gene associated with caffeine production open up the possibility of producing varieties of coffee with new traits. This review provides a summary of in vitro biological advances and directions as to how they could be applied to improve the production and quality of coffee.

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A complete and efficient regeneration protocol was developed for Vanilla planifolia ‘Andrews’, an endangered orchid species that represents an important crop in several tropical countries. Axillary buds excised from the first to the eighth node, considering the first to fourth nodes as “young” (zone 1) and the fifth to eighth as “mature” (zone 2), were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 5.73, 7.64, 9.55, or 11.46 μm 6-benzylaminopurine (BA) for shoot induction and in combination with 4.45 μm naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) to induce multiple shoot proliferation. Cytokinin concentration and bud position in the stem had a significant effect on the number of shoots regenerated. The greatest shoot formation per explant, for the two tested zones, was obtained with 9.55 μm BA on MS medium supplemented with 100 mg·L−1 myoinositol, 150 mg·L−1 citric acid, 100 mg·L−1 ascorbic acid, and 20 g·L−1 sucrose. Young buds from zone 1 were able to form an average of 18.5 ± 2.4 shoots per explant, whereas buds from zone 2 induced a maximum of 11.0 ± 1.0 shoots per explant. Plants of 2 to 3 cm height developed a root system in half-strength MS medium supplemented with 0.44 μm NAA and, once they reached 5 cm height on average, were transferred to greenhouse conditions for their acclimatization where a 100% rate survival was achieved. The optimal use of both young and mature buds from each mother plant to induce adventitious shoots permitted a marked increase in the number of shoots per explant. By using all buds from the upper stem part (zone 1 + zone 2) and subculturing every 90 d, the multiplication rate was 1.1 to 1.86 × 105 shoots per bud per year.