Long-stemmed wheat straw was already in serious decline even before last summer's wet weather.

This plant with the input of 30,000 t of wheat straw can produce 5.4 million litres of ethanol a year.

These would convert agricultural residues such as corn stover, wheat straw, and sugar cane bagasse and energy crops such as switchgrass into fermentable sugars.

Other plants produce second-generation bioethanol from a combination of corn stover, wheat straw, oat straw, barley straw, hardwood, switchgrass.

To access these sugars, scientists pretreated the wheat straw with alkaline peroxide, and then used specialized enzymes to break down the cell walls.