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A multiscale characterization approach performed on poplar wood samples pretreated by dilute acid has led to the quantification of several chemical, spectral and structural markers which have been correlated to the enzymatic hydrolysis yield (which produces monosaccharides) of the same samples, in order to show that:

- measurement of autofluorescence and Raman spectroscopy band intensity can efficiently predict hydrolysis: such analysis can be done easily and in a short time, potentially giving access to the result of hydrolysis just by using ab initio data;

- cell sphericity, determined for the first time in a quantitative way on pretreated substrates thanks to the development of original methods, is also strongly correlated to hydrolysis, but negatively.

Overall, we were able to show that some markers at different scales (nm and µm) are strongly correlated together and indicate that the modifications occurring during enzymatic hydrolysis on polysaccharides have a direct impact on cell shape. This work needs to be extended to other biomass species and to other pretreatments in order to be generalised.

Read: Zoghlami A, Refahi Y, Terryn C, Paës G (2019) Multimodal characterization of acid-pretreated poplar reveals spectral and structural parameters strongly correlate with saccharification. Bioresource Technology 293, 122015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2019.122015

Contact: Dr Gabriel Paës, gabriel.paes@inra.fr