The modern forest industry is striving to combine sustainability with productivity and profi tability. Presently, one of the aims is to increase the value of fi ber products through research and development, in order to create new products and to increase applications and new fi elds of use for the raw materials. The general challenges of the industry are related to the decline of the traditional forest industry and paper -making businesses, calling for new growth opportunities and higher return of investments. Since the 1980s, pressure from environmental impacts because of the need to improve process performances and decrease discharges to the environment has been directed towards improving the quality and availability of raw materials, cost of energy, and value -adding production chains. The present chains include the fi ber and the bioenergy chains, to be complemented in future with new ones, such as the chemical and biofuels chains.
Research on biotechnology in the pulp and paper industry has been active for many decades. During the last 20 years, basic discoveries in the fi eld include initial reports on lignin -degrading enzymes, the application of xylanases in bleaching, lipases for pitch removal, enzymatic deinking, modifi cation of fi ber surfaces, and the combination of laccase with mediators for lignin removal. The development of microbial treatments of wood chips for biopulping purposes or for the management of pitch problems are currently interesting options for improving the raw material quality. In more recent years, the fi eld has also used biotechnology to modify the structure of wood and other plant materials, for example, by altering the structure of lignin. Genetic engineering has opened up a wide range of possibilities to improve the growth and properties of the forest raw materials, both directly by introducing new genes or by enhancing the understanding of the plant functions through genomic research combined with conventional breeding. Fastgrowing trees with, for example, lower lignin content or altered lignin structural properties, could provide signifi cant practical benefi ts. The removal of lignin from the wood cell walls is the most capital intensive and environmentally problematic Industrial Biotechnology.