Assessing lignocellulosic biomass as a source of emergency foods

Siva, Niroshan; Anderson, Charles T.

doi:10.1016/j.crfs.2023.100586

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 34 publications

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“…Plant biomass is plentiful across the Earth's land surfaces, translating into ∼450 Gt of carbon (Bar‐On et al., 2018). If about half of the carbon in this biomass is embodied in the form of cellulose, which is composed of glucose, as part of the plant cell wall (Bengtsson et al., 2020), then there would be sufficient lignocellulosic biomass available for conversion to foods to sustain humans for many decades, even at a conservative conversion efficiency of 30% for all nutrients, assuming that the cellulose, which cannot be digested by humans, can be deconstructed to simple sugars (Siva & Anderson, 2023). It should be noted that lignocellulosic biomass‐derived foods would also have utility in a variety of other challenging scenarios, such as climate change, famine, floods, droughts, regional wars, and mass migrations, that create food crises.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preparation and Compositional Analysis of Lignocellulosic Plant Biomass as a Precursor for Food Production During Food Crises

Mather,

Siva,

Jauregui

et al. 2024

Current Protocols

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In the event of a sunlight‐blocking, temperature‐lowering global catastrophe, such as a global nuclear war, super‐volcano eruption or large asteroid strike, normal agricultural practices would be severely disrupted with a devastating impact on the global food supply. Despite the improbability of such an occurrence, it is prudent to consider how to sustain the surviving population following a global catastrophe until normal weather and climate patterns resume. Additionally, the ongoing challenges posed by climate change, droughts, flooding, soil salinization, and famine highlight the importance of developing food systems with resilient inputs such as lignocellulosic biomass. With its high proportion of cellulose, the abundant lignocellulosic biomass found across the Earth's land surfaces could be a source of energy and nutrition, but it would first need to be converted into foods. To understand the potential of lignocellulosic biomass to provide energy and nutrition to humans in post‐catastrophic and other food crisis scenarios, compositional analyses should be completed to gauge the amount of energy (soluble sugars) and other macronutrients (protein and lipids) that might be available and the level of difficulty in extracting them. Suitable preparation of the lignocellulosic biomass is critical to achieve consistent and comparable results from these analyses. Here we describe a compilation of protocols to prepare lignocellulosic biomass and analyze its composition to understand its potential as a precursor to produce post‐catastrophic foods which are those that could be foraged, grown, or produced under the new climate conditions to supplement reduced availability of traditional foods. These foods have sometimes been referred to in the literature as emergency, alternate, or resilient foods. © 2024 The Authors. Current Protocols published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.Basic Protocol 1: Convection oven drying (1 to 2 days)Alternate Protocol 1: Air‐drying (2 to 3 days)Alternate Protocol 2: Lyophilization (1 to 4 days)Support Protocol 1: Milling plant biomassSupport Protocol 2: Measuring moisture contentBasic Protocol 2: Cellulose determinationBasic Protocol 3: Lignin determinationBasic Protocol 4: Crude protein content by total nitrogenBasic Protocol 5: Crude fat determination via soxtec extraction systemBasic Protocol 6: Sugars by HPLCBasic Protocol 7: Ash content

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preparation and Compositional Analysis of Lignocellulosic Plant Biomass as a Precursor for Food Production During Food Crises

Mather,

Siva,

Jauregui

et al. 2024

Current Protocols

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Nutritional Composition of Post‐Catastrophic Foods

Mather,

Siva,

Jauregui

et al. 2024

Current Protocols

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In addition to current challenges in food production arising from climate change, soil salinization, drought, flooding, and human‐caused disruption, abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (ASRS), e.g., a nuclear winter, supervolcano eruption, or large asteroid or comet strike, are catastrophes that would severely disrupt the global food supply and decimate normal agricultural practices. In such global catastrophes, teragrams of particulate matter, such as aerosols of soot, dust, and sulfates, would be injected into the stratosphere and block sunlight for multiple years. The reduction of incident sunlight would cause a decrease in temperature and precipitation and major shifts to climate patterns leading to devastating reductions in agricultural production of traditional food crops. To survive a catastrophic ASRS or endure current and future disasters and famines, humans might need to rely on post‐catastrophic foods, or those that could be foraged, grown, or produced under the new climate conditions to supplement reduced availability of traditional foods. These foods have sometimes been referred to as emergency, alternate, or resilient foods in the literature. While there is a growing body of work that summarizes potential post‐catastrophic foods and their nutritional profiles based on existing data in the literature, this article documents a list of protocols to experimentally determine fundamental nutritional properties of post‐catastrophic foods that can be used to assess the relative contributions of those foods to a balanced human diet that meets established nutritional requirements while avoiding toxic levels of nutrients. © 2024 The Author(s). Current Protocols published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.Basic Protocol 1: Total digestible glucansBasic Protocol 2: Apparent protein digestibilityBasic Protocol 3: Vitamins B1, B3, B9, C, and D2 by HPLCBasic Protocol 4: Total antioxidant activity (DPPH‐scavenging activity)Basic Protocol 5: Total phenolic compounds (Folin–Ciocalteu reagent method)Basic Protocol 6: Mineral content by ICP‐OES

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Nonindustrial pretreatment and enzymes can yield sufficient calories from lignocellulosic biomass for human survival

Siva,

Anderson

2024

Food Science & Nutrition

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Following a global catastrophe causing reduced sunlight, the environment would become unfavorable for crop growth. Under such conditions, people might need to convert inedible plant biomass into food to meet their daily nutritional requirements. However, the possibility of converting biomass into food under low‐resource conditions has not been thoroughly studied. To address this uncertainty, we evaluated the potential for using resources available in a typical household to extract sugars from willow biomass and meet the carbohydrate needs of an adult. Grinding willow biomass in a household blender for 24 min produced willow particles similar to those produced in a laboratory‐scale Wiley mill. Thermal treatments of these particles with hot water extraction, pressure cooking, or microwaving only extracted 0.5%–0.8% (w/w) glucose from the biomass. Household acid or alkali treatments yielded only 0.5% (w/w) glucose. These sugar yields would be insufficient to provide nutrition to an adult. In contrast, enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated willow at 50°C for 72 h yielded 2%–8% (w/w) glucose, and pretreating willow with sodium hydroxide and pressure before enzymatic treatment increased glucose yields to 28% (w/w). With this pretreatment approach and subsequent enzymatic conversion, ~1.4 kg of biomass/day could potentially fulfill the energy needs of an adult under post‐catastrophic conditions. We posit that while biomass can be successfully pretreated for enzymatic deconstruction at a household level, producing sufficient enzymes for efficient sugar extraction from inedible plant biomass in a post‐catastrophic environment might not be feasible at the household scale, thus requiring community‐scale infrastructure and coordination.

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Assessing lignocellulosic biomass as a source of emergency foods

Cited by 4 publications

References 34 publications

Preparation and Compositional Analysis of Lignocellulosic Plant Biomass as a Precursor for Food Production During Food Crises

Preparation and Compositional Analysis of Lignocellulosic Plant Biomass as a Precursor for Food Production During Food Crises

Nutritional Composition of Post‐Catastrophic Foods

Nonindustrial pretreatment and enzymes can yield sufficient calories from lignocellulosic biomass for human survival

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