The cell wall composition and the degradability vary with different plant organs and tissues. In wheat straw, leaf material has much higher hemicellulose and lower lignin content compared to the stem. We have investigated the recalcitrant nature of different organs of wheat straw by enzymatic saccharification. Moderate condition was applied to a series of leaf/stem ratio defined samples in enzymatic saccharification which showed that higher leaf content would release more glucose and xylose.
We used a microarrays based approach to assess the relative abundance of specific polymers found in individual tissues and organs. The method integrates the sequential extraction of carbohydrate polymers from lignocellulosic material followed by microarray plotting and probing by monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with specificities for cell wall components. These studies indicated that, for example, leaf samples had higher levels of homogalacturonan (HG) and arabinogalactan proteins (AGPs) than both stem and whole plant samples. Our initial findings suggest that such an array based technique has the potential to rapidly provide diagnostic polysaccharide profiles that can be used to determine the relative contributions of specific tissues/organs to biomass. This information will assist the optimisation of saccharification protocols.