Cellulose, the main component of rice straw, can be enzymatically converted to glucose and fermented to bioethanol (Salehiet al., 2012). However, like many other lignocelluloses, the straw has a recalcitrant structure for enzymatic attacks which subsequently causes low hydrolysis yield. Therefore, a pretreatment step prior to enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation is required to increase the yield of hydrolysis and consequently fermentation (da Costa Sousa et al., 2009; Vandenbossche et al., 2014).