Rice is one of the major foods, with consumption per capita of 65 kg per year, accounting for 20% of global ingested calories. Rice production is expected to increase signifi cantly in the near future in order to feed the rising human population. Today, paddy rice culture produces 660 million tons of rice, along with 800 million dry tons of agricultural residues, mainly straw. This biomass is managed predominantly through rice straw burning (RSB) and soil incorporation strategies. RSB leads to signifi cant air pollution and has been banned in some regions, whereas stubble and straw incorporation into wet soil during land preparation is associated with enhanced methane emissions. Therefore, both strategies have important deleterious environmental effects and fail to take advantage of the huge energy potential of rice straw. Using rice straw as lignocellulosic biomass to produce bioethanol would appear to be a promising and ambitious goal to both manage this agricultural waste and to produce environmentally friendly biofuel. Technical diffi culties, however, associated with the conversion of lignocellulose into simple, fermentable sugars, have hampered the massive development of rice-straw-derived bioethanol. Recent technical advances in straw pre-treatment, hydrolysis and fermentation may, however, overcome these limitations and facilitate a dramatic turnover in biofuels production in the near future. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd