Mild alkali-pretreatment effectively extracts guaiacyl-rich lignin for high lignocellulose digestibility coupled with largely diminishing yeast fermentation inhibitors in Miscanthus

• G-rich Miscanthus sample has high biomass digestibility under alkali pretreatments.
• S- and H-rich samples show relatively low biomass saccharification.
• G-rich sample displays effective extraction of lignin–hemicelluloses complex.
• G-rich sample is in favor of diminishing lignin inhibitors to yeast fermentation.
• Minor monolignin modification for cost-effective biofuel production in Miscanthus.

In this study, various alkali-pretreated lignocellulose enzymatic hydrolyses were evaluated by using three standard pairs of Miscanthus accessions that showed three distinct monolignol (G, S, H) compositions. Mfl26 samples with elevated G-levels exhibited significantly increased hexose yields of up to 1.61-fold compared to paired samples derived from enzymatic hydrolysis, whereas Msa29 samples with high H-levels displayed increased hexose yields of only up to 1.32-fold. In contrast, Mfl30 samples with elevated S-levels showed reduced hexose yields compared to the paired sample of 0.89–0.98 folds at p < 0.01. Notably, only the G-rich biomass samples exhibited complete enzymatic hydrolysis under 4% NaOH pretreatment. Furthermore, the G-rich samples showed more effective extraction of lignin–hemicellulose complexes than the S- and H-rich samples upon NaOH pretreatment, resulting in large removal of lignin inhibitors to yeast fermentation. Therefore, this study proposes an optimal approach for minor genetic lignin modification towards cost-effective biomass process in Miscanthus.