Turion, an innovative duckweed-based starch production system for economical biofuel manufacture

Turion is a kind of dormant tissue from Spirodela polyrrhiza (L) Schleid and represents another duckweed-based starch production system, which owns several potential technical merits than the conventional one. This paper systematically investigated the physiological, biochemical and production characteristics of turion and preliminarily evaluate its feasibility for bioethanol production. Turion productivity of 3.78 g/m2/d and starch productivity of 2.90 g/m2/d was achieved in strain 0196. Full-component analysis revealed that turion is high-quality substrate as it contained high starch content (65.63%) and low lignocellulose content (12.82%). Besides, turion can be continuously produced by strain 0196 up to 6 weeks, indicating a sustainable manufacture of them is possible. Finally, harvested turion was used for ethanol fermentation for the first time with an ethanol yield of 0.34 g g−1(turion), resulted in an annual yield of 4.69 t/ha. This research elucidated that turion from duckweed is a novel biomass for biofuel production.