Lignocellulosic biomass for the preparation of cellulose-based hydrogel and its use for optimizing water resources in agriculture.

ABSTRACT Recently, efforts have been devoted to find ways in utilizing biomass as feedstocks for the production of organic chemicals. This is because of its abundance, renewability and worldwide distribution. Lignocellulosic agricultural waste materials are regarded as abundant, inexpensive, and readily available natural resources for both chemical and paper industries. Hydrogels are polymeric materials that vary in their origin and composition and can absorb large amount of water without dissolving. In our study, cellulose-based acrylic acid hydrogel was synthesized starting from rice straw as a source for the lignocellulosic material, where cellulose was first isolated after alkaline-acid pulping treatment followed by bleaching step with sodium hypochlorite resulting of 90.8% holocellulose. The cellulose-based acrylic acid hydrogel was synthesized applying heterogeneous reaction and shows a swelling ratio more than 3000%. The resulting hydrogel was further characterized with FT-IR and SEM. On the other hand, comparison between the rice straw-based hydrogel and the commercially available acrylamide hydrogel was studied for improving maize production in salt affected soil as well as in the growth promoters of maize under water stress. The experimental results demonstrated that the yield parameters were increased with increasing irrigation rates. Both types of hydrogels introduce positive and significant effect compared to the one without adding hydrogels. Also, acrylamide hydrogel was effective for improving almost yield parameters more than applying rice straw-based hydrogel. Generally, the addition of hydrogel increases the nutrient concentration, uptake, and both of water and nutrients use efficiency. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 42652. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]