Comparative study of some analytical methods to quantify lignin concentration in tropical grasses.

OBJECTIVE: Lignin plays a relevant role in the inhibition of cell wall (CW) structural carbohydrate degradation. Thus, obtaining accurate estimates of the lignin content in tropical plants is important in order to properly characterize the mechanism of lignin action on cell wall degradation. Comparing conflicting results between the different methods available for commercial use will bring insight on the subject. This way, providing data to better understand the relationship between lignin concentration and implications with tropical forage degradation. METHODS: Five grass species, Brachiaria brizantha cv Marandú, Brachiaria brizantha cv Xaraés (MG-5), Panicum maximum cv Mombaça, Pennisetum purpureum cv Cameroon and Pennisetum purpureum cv Napier, were harvested at five maturity stages. Acid detergent lignin (ADL), Klason lignin (KL), acetyl bromide lignin (ABL) and permanganate lignin (PerL) were measured on all species. Lignin concentration was correlated with in vitro degradability. RESULTS: Highly significant effects for maturity, lignin method and their interaction on lignin content were observed. The ADL, KL and ABL methods had similar negative correlations with degradability. The PerL method failed to reliably estimate the degradability of tropical grasses, possibly due to interference of other substances potentially soluble in the KMnO4 solution. CONCLUSION: ADL and KL methods use strong acid (H2SO4) and require determination of ash and N content in the lignin residues, therefore, increasing time and cost of analysis. The ABL method has no need for such corrections and is a fast and a convenient method for determination of total lignin content in plants, thus, it may be a good option for routine laboratory analysis.

Use of lignin extracted from different plant sources as standards in the spectrophotometric acetyl bromide lignin method.

A nongravimetric acetyl bromide lignin (ABL) method was evaluated to quantify lignin concentration in a variety of plant materials. The traditional approach to lignin quantification required extraction of lignin with acidic dioxane and its isolation from each plant sample to construct a standard curve via spectrophotometric analysis. Lignin concentration was then measured in pre-extracted plant cell walls. However, this presented a methodological complexity because extraction and isolation procedures are lengthy and tedious, particularly if there are many samples involved. This work was targeted to simplify lignin quantification. Our hypothesis was that any lignin, regardless of its botanical origin, could be used to construct a standard curve for the purpose of determining lignin concentration in a variety of plants. To test our hypothesis, lignins were isolated from a range of diverse plants and, along with three commercial lignins, standard curves were built and compared among them. Slopes and intercepts derived from these standard curves were close enough to allow utilization of a mean extinction coefficient in the regression equation to estimate lignin concentration in any plant, independent of its botanical origin. Lignin quantification by use of a common regression equation obviates the steps of lignin extraction, isolation, and standard curve construction, which substantially expedites the ABL method. Acetyl bromide lignin method is a fast, convenient analytical procedure that may routinely be used to quantify lignin.

Comparison of the acetyl bromide spectrophotometric method with other analytical lignin methods for determining lignin concentration in forage samples.

Present analytical methods to quantify lignin in herbaceous plants are not totally satisfactory. A spectrophotometric method, acetyl bromide soluble lignin (ABSL), has been employed to determine lignin concentration in a range of plant materials. In this work, lignin extracted with acidic dioxane was used to develop standard curves and to calculate the derived linear regression equation (slope equals absorptivity value or extinction coefficient) for determining the lignin concentration of respective cell wall samples. This procedure yielded lignin values that were different from those obtained with Klason lignin, acid detergent acid insoluble lignin, or permanganate lignin procedures. Correlations with in vitro dry matter or cell wall digestibility of samples were highest with data from the spectrophotometric technique. The ABSL method employing as standard lignin extracted with acidic dioxane has the potential to be employed as an analytical method to determine lignin concentration in a range of forage materials. It may be useful in developing a quick and easy method to predict in vitro digestibility on the basis of the total lignin content of a sample.

Use of photocatalytic reduction to hasten preparation of culture media for saccharolytic Clostridium species

Cysteine is the preferred reducing agent used in the preparation of culture media for the growth of many strictly anaerobic microorganisms; however, redox potential reduction of cysteine is very slow, making it inconvenient if the medium is needed immediately or in large quantity. The time required to reduce culture medium containing resazurin (an indicator of reducing conditions) was dramatically shortened when the medium, after being injected with the reducing agent cysteine, was irradiated with incandescent light from a halogen lamp. Light intensity had an effect upon reduction time: tubes kept in the dark took more than 12 h to achieve the desired degree of anaerobiosis (measured spectrophotometrically by the bleaching of the indicator, resazurin) while tubes subjected to ordinary laboratory illumination were reduced in about 2 h. When exposed to maximum light intensity (equivalent to a regular 100 watt bulb lamp) tubes could be made anaerobic in less than 20 min. Cysteine was essential for the bleaching of resazurin. Evidence that adequate anaerobiosis was achieved by light irradiation was provided by the fact that four Clostridium strains and one Thermoanaerobacter strain displayed similar growth (measured by lag time, growth rate, and extent of growth) in media reduced under high intensity light or under normal laboratory illumination.