Lignocellulose, an abundant renewable resource, presents a promising alternative for sustainable energy and industrial applications. However, large-scale adoption of lignocellulosic feedstocks faces considerable obstacles, including scalability, bioprocessing efficiency, and resilience to climate change. This Review examines current efforts and future opportunities for leveraging lignocellulosic feedstocks in bio-based energy and products, with a focus on enhancing conversion efficiency and scalability. It also explores emerging biotechnologies such as CRISPR-based genome editing informed by machine learning, aimed at improving feedstock traits and reducing the environmental impact of fossil fuel dependence.

The domestication of forest trees for a more sustainable fiber bioeconomy has long been hindered by the complexity and plasticity of lignin, a biopolymer in wood that is recalcitrant to chemical and enzymatic degradation. Here, we show that multiplex CRISPR editing enables precise woody feedstock design for combinatorial improvement of lignin composition and wood properties. By assessing every possible combination of 69,123 multigenic editing strategies for 21 lignin biosynthesis genes, we deduced seven different genome editing strategies targeting the concurrent alteration of up to six genes and produced 174 edited poplar variants. CRISPR editing increased the wood carbohydrate-to-lignin ratio up to 228% that of wild type, leading to more-efficient fiber pulping. The edited wood alleviates a major fiber-production bottleneck regardless of changes in tree growth rate and could bring unprecedented operational efficiencies, bioeconomic opportunities, and environmental benefits.

Climate change profoundly impacts the health, productivity, and resilience of forest ecosystems and threatens the sustainability of forest products and wood-based industries. Innovations to enhance tree growth, development, and adaptation offer unprecedented opportunities to strengthen ecosystem resilience and mitigate the effects of climate change. Here, we established a method for protoplast isolation, purification, and CRISPR-Cas ribonucleoprotein (RNP) delivery in Pinus taeda and Abies fraseri as a step towards accelerating the genetic improvement of these coniferous tree species. In this system, purified protoplasts could be isolated from somatic embryos with up to 2 × 10⁶ protoplasts/g of tissue and transfected with proteins and nucleotides, achieving delivery efficiencies up to 13.5%. The delivery of functional RNPs targeting phenylalanine ammonia lyase in P. taeda and phytoene desaturase in A. fraseri yielded gene editing efficiencies that reached 2.1% and 0.3%, respectively. This demonstration of RNP delivery for DNA-free genome editing in the protoplasts of P. taeda and A. fraseri illustrates the potential of CRISPR-Cas to enhance the traits of value in ecologically and economically important tree species. The editing system provides a foundation for future efforts to regenerate genome-edited forest trees to improve ecosystem health and natural resource sustainability.