**Meet the editors**

Thalita Peixoto Basso received her Bachelor's degree in Agriculture Engineering (2008) from Londrina State University (PR-Brazil). During this period she studied fermentation characteristics of *Saccharomyces cerevisiae* isolated from the ethanol industrial process. She obtained her Master's degree in Science from the Agri-food Industry, Food and Nutrition Department

at the University of Sao Paulo (ESALQ/USP, SP-Brazil) in 2010. During this time she isolated and selected fungi with enzymatic activity able to hydrolyze sugarcane bagasse. She received her PhD in Science from the Soil Science Department (Agricultural Microbiology Program) at ESALQ/ USP (2015), with a period of one year as visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley and Energy Bioscience Institute. Meanwhile, she worked on improvement of *S. cerevisiae* by hybridization for increased tolerance towards inhibitors from second-generation ethanol substrates. Currently, she is postdoctoral working with metabolomics and proteomics of fermentation processes in the Genetics Department at ESALQ/USP.

Luiz Carlos Basso holds a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture Engineering (1969) from the University of Sao Paulo (ESALQ/USP), a Master's degree (1973) in Soil and Plant Nutrition (ESALQ/USP), a PhD in Biological Science from UNESP, and a Postdoctoral degree from the Institut des Produits de la Vigne, Montpellier (1989), and from the Superior Technical Institute, Lisbon. Since

1980 he has been involved with yeast biochemistry and physiology, aimed at increasing the ethanol yield using the fed-batch industrial process. During the last 15 years he has been conducting a yeast selection program resulting in the most widely used *Saccharomyces cerevisiae* strains (PE-2 and CAT-1) in the Brazilian ethanol industry. Currently, he is a senior professor at the University of Sao Paulo (ESALQ/USP), teaching biochemistry (for undergraduates), biochemistry and physiology of yeast fermentation (for graduates), and selecting tolerant strains for lignocellulosic inhibitors.

Contents

**Preface VII**

**Section 1 Fuel Ethanol Production from Sugarcane in Brazil 1**

Chapter 1 **Assessment of Sugarcane-Based Ethanol Production 3**

**Section 2 Strategies for Sugarcane Bagasse Pre-treatment 39**

Chapter 3 **Emerging Physico-Chemical Methods for Biomass**

Edem C. Bensah and Moses Y. Mensah

Chapter 4 **Sugarcane Bagasse Pretreatment Methods for Ethanol**

Saleh Sabiha-Hanim and Nurul Asyikin Abd Halim

Chapter 5 **Potential of Weed Biomass for Bioethanol Production 83**

**Section 3 Non-conventional Biomass Source for Lignocelullosic Ethanol**

**Pretreatment 41**

**Production 63**

**Production 81**

Siripong Premjet

Rubens Eliseu Nicula de Castro, Rita Maria de Brito Alves, Cláudio Augusto Oller do Nascimento and Reinaldo Giudici

**and Interact with Yeasts during Ethanol Production? 23** Thiago Olitta Basso and Felipe Senne de Oliveira Lino

Chapter 2 **Clash of Kingdoms: How Do Bacterial Contaminants Thrive in**
