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To face global warming and fossil fuel depletion crisis, plant biomass will provide a renewable source of energy, materials and chemicals. Accordingly, agriculture will have to adapt not only to avoid competition between food-feed and non-food non-feed uses but also to ensure the economical and environmental sustainability of these productions. In this context, we are developing an integrative strategy merging genetics, breeding, material sciences, energy production, animal nutrition and socio economic analyses to accelerate the development of multipurpose sorghum value chains for both Mediterranean and tropical semi-arid conditions (West Africa). As a first step, new products (biocomposites) and uses (biomethane production) are being developed. Then the plant traits impacting the production and quality of the different end-products and uses are being identified taking advantage of the genetic diversity of sorghum. As a third step, the set-up of these key traits in the plant is being analyzed in order to describe their patterns of development / accumulation, their susceptibility to environmental constraints and provide some insights regarding their molecular determinism. Taking advantage of these functional information, the genomic regions impacting the key traits are being deciphered and used to develop new breeding tools and breeding strategies. In parallel, to maximize the probability to convert scientific results in local impacts, the different stakeholders of the value chains are being mobilized and territorial analyses aiming to assess the relevance of the different value chains are performed.

Le CIRAD et ses partenaires s'impliquent sur le développement du sorgho pour alimenter les filières de valorisation de la biomasse. Ces activités sont financées par différentes projets nationaux (ANR PIA Biomass For the Future) et internationaux (Agropolis Cariplo Biosorg, EU FP7 Sweetfuel) et mobilisent différents outils de caractérisation des propriétés de la biomasse et de biotechnologie afin de développer des procédés de transformation optimisés et des variétés adaptées à ces filières. Ces activités dont plusieurs sont ancrées sur la région Région Languedoc Roussillon constituent des vecteurs d'interactions avec les autres acteurs du domaine des biotechnologies ancrés dans la région.