Preparation and Compositional Analysis of Lignocellulosic Plant Biomass as a Precursor for Food Production During Food Crises

In the event of a sunlight-blocking, temperature-lowering global catastrophe, such as a global nuclear war, super-volcano eruption or large asteroid strike, normal agricultural practices would be severely disrupted with a devastating impact on the global food supply. Despite the improbability of such an occurrence, it is prudent to consider how to sustain the surviving population following a global catastrophe until normal weather and climate patterns resume. Additionally, the ongoing challenges posed by climate change, droughts, flooding, soil salinization, and famine highlight the importance of developing food systems with resilient inputs such as lignocellulosic biomass. With its high proportion of cellulose, the abundant lignocellulosic biomass found across the Earth's land surfaces could be a source of energy and nutrition, but it would first need to be converted into foods. To understand the potential of lignocellulosic biomass to provide energy and nutrition to humans in post-catastrophic and other food crisis scenarios, compositional analyses should be completed to gauge the amount of energy (soluble sugars) and other macronutrients (protein and lipids) that might be available and the level of difficulty in extracting them. Suitable preparation of the lignocellulosic biomass is critical to achieve consistent and comparable results from these analyses. Here we describe a compilation of protocols to prepare lignocellulosic biomass and analyze its composition to understand its potential as a precursor to produce post-catastrophic foods which are those that could be foraged, grown, or produced under the new climate conditions to supplement reduced availability of traditional foods. These foods have sometimes been referred to in the literature as emergency, alternate, or resilient foods.