Contemporary industrial developments, environmental concerns, and rapid pace of urbanization have called for eco-benign, sustainable energy sources, and high-value products for the betterment of human society. Lignocellulosic biomass (LB) is the most abundant natural resources on Earth which could be utilized for the production of many value-added products such as fuel ethanol, D-xylitol, specialty enzymes, organic acids, and so forth by microbial fermentation. Bioconversion of LB into such products offers several advantages over conventional chemical synthesis-based approaches.

Bioconversion of LB into these products broadly includes first pretreatment of LB to enable the carbohydrates to cellulases-mediated action followed by the microbial conversion of released sugars into the value-added products with utmost yields and productivities. Over the past few years, significant advancements have been made in biomass pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation which have paved the way for the commercialization of this technology in many critical facets of today's economic trends and perspectives. However, strong R&D initiatives with the long-term goal to design an ideal process are required primarily by bridging the gap between research laboratories to industries understanding the fundamental principles of commercialization of lignocellulose biotechnology.

We invite authors to submit original research and review articles that seek to define the sustainable production of value-added products harnessing LB. We are interested in articles that explore aspects of pretreatment methods, enzymatic hydrolysis, and the bioconversion of sugars into various products employing a battery of fermentation techniques. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Biomass and feedstocks utilization: bioconversion of agroindustrial residues, forestry waste, and other cellulosics materials
• Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass, enzymatic deconstruction into fermentable feedstock and clarification of sugar syrups
• Biofuels: liquid and gaseous biofuels production, modeling, and economics
• Bioprocesses and bioproducts: biocatalysis and types of fermentations
• Downstream recovery of bioproducts after fermentation

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jbb/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: