Saswata Sahoo

Matching Crops for Selected Bioproducts

Throughout human history, crops have been used for various purposes such as for making food, fuel and industrial products. Agricultural crops such as rice, wheat, beans, and others have been supplying food to humanity, which is considered as most significant contribution of crops. People have been using agricultural fibers for other applications such as producing materials and bioproducts for many years. In the past two decades, there have been rapid developments in composite materials and these developments have influenced the usage of the agricultural fibers in the polymeric materials in the form of composites. The use of agricultural fibers in polymeric matrices creates new biobased products for various applications such as in automotive, construction, packaging, and consumer products. These are manufactured from renewable resources and some of these bioproducts are compostable under certain specific conditions. The recent developments in biotechnology helped to create new biopolymers from agricultural feedstocks such as corn, wheat, and soybeans. The new application from crops is the production of biopolymers in the transgenic plants with the advancement of genetic engineering. The advancement in the nanotechnology also helps to process better composite materials from agricultural fibers.