Cell Walls: Structure and Biogenesis

The cell walls of grasses including sugarcane have distinctive biochemical features, most notably a high abundance of arabinoxylan, which is cross-linked by ferulate residues esterified to arabinose side chains on the xylan backbone. This chapter provides a concise summary of the structure, formation, and properties of plant cell walls and point out some of the distinguishing features of cell walls of grasses, including sugarcane. Although the chapter concentrates on cell walls of other plant species, with a bias toward grasses (species in the Poaceae), the information should be generally applicable to sugarcane as well. With just a few building blocks (cellulose microfibrils, hemicelluloses, pectins, and lignin), plants assemble a diverse set of cell walls of differing properties to match the physical and developmental needs of the many cell types in the plant body.