_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: E-mail: marc.beauregard@uqtr.ca; British Biotechnology Journal 15(2): 1-8, 2016, Article no.BBJ.27841 ISSN: 2231–2927, NLM ID: 101616695 SCIENCEDOMAIN international www.sciencedomain.org Recovery of Biomass Energy on the Farm: Identification of Cellulolytic Bacteria in Agricultural Residues for On-Site Bioethanol Production F. Laframboise 1 , F. Meddeb-Mouelhi 1 , S. Barnabé 1,2 and M. Beauregard 1,3* 1 Centre de Recherche sur les Matériaux Ligno-Cellulosiques, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada. 2 Industrial Research Chair on Environment and Biotechnology, University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, C.P. 500, Trois-Rivières, Québec, G9A 5H7, Canada. 3 Proteo, Université Laval, Québec (Québec) G1V 4G2, Canada. Authors’ contributions This work was carried out in collaboration between all authors. Authors FMM, SB and MB contributed to the design of the study and wrote the manuscript. Author FL carried out the experiments and their analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Article Information DOI: 10.9734/BBJ/2016/27841 Editor(s): (1) P. Mary Anupama, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Anil Neerukonda Institute of Technology and Sciences, India. Reviewers: (1) Matheus Poletto, Universidade de Caxias do Sul, Brazil. (2) Edward Calt, Integrated BioChem, LLC, North Carolina, USA. (3) Siriluk Teeradakorn, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. Complete Peer review History: http://www.sciencedomain.org/review-history/15781 Received 21 st June 2016 Accepted 28 th July 2016 Published 13 th August 2016 ABSTRACT Farms are significant sources of unused biomass, conversion of which into energy would contribute to decreasing the environmental footprint associated with farming activities. A promising alternative for energy conversion involves bioethanol production. Bioethanol can be fermented from simple sugars that in turn must be extracted from biomass. To this end cocktails of enzymes may be used to deconstruct lignocellulosic biomass, but their cost and efficiency are often prohibitive. One could circumvent these drawbacks by finding locally-established, well adapted bacteria that produce enzymes with relevant specificities. Here we identified such bacteria and compared their ability to hydrolyse cellulose from agricultural and industrial biomass residues. By collecting environmental samples at a local farm we identified 54 strains, of which 12 exhibited cellulolytic activity. Based on 16S rDNA sequence analyses, we found that these strains were relatives of Bacillus aryabhattai, B. Original Research Article