Bioenergy and Biomass from Industrial Crops on Marginal Lands

Efthymia Alexopoulou is an agriculture engineer with a PhD on adaptability and biomass productivity of the non-food crop Kenaf in Greece. She is responsible for the Energy Crops Unit of the Biomass Department at the Center for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving. She has several years of RTD experience on energy crops such as kenaf, switchgrass, giant reed, miscanthus, sweet sorghum, cardoon, rapeseed, castor etc. She was also the coordinator of three EU research projects: BIOKENAF (“Biomass production chains and growth simulation model for kenaf”, 4FCROPS (“Future Crops for Food, Feed, Fiber and Fuel”) and FIBRA (“Fibre Crops as a sustainable source of biobased material for industrial products in Europe and China”). Dr. Alexopoulou has been Involved in several R&D projects for CRES, the most recent being the OPTIMA project, an EU research project dedicated to perennial grasses research, a sister project with two other EU projects working on the same subject (OPTIMISC and GRASS MARGINS). She was co-editor of a book on Kenaf, has presented in several international conferences and published many papers on international journals. She was guest editor in two special issues of Industrial Crops and Products (Volume 68 and Volume 75), in which presented part of the findings of FIBRA project.

1. Industrial crops and the biobased economy
2. Industrial crops suitable for marginal lands
3. Mapping of marginal and contaminated land for industrial crop production
4. Oilseed
5. Perennial lignocellulosic crops
6. Woody species
7. Fiber Crops
8. Carbohydrate crops
9. Specialty crops
10. Industrial crops for phytomanagement of contaminated lands