tRice straw, one of the most abundant and mainly unused lignocellulosic wastes, is a promising substratefor ethanol production. To improve ethanol production yield from the straw, pretreatment with sodiumcarbonate at mild conditions followed by fermentation using zygomycetes fungus Mucor hiemalis wasperformed. The sodium carbonate treatment was conducted at different concentrations, time intervals,and solid loadings. The highest glucose and ethanol production yields were obtained after the pretreat-ment with 0.5 M sodium carbonate at 100◦C and 1:20 g/g solid loading for 3 h. This pretreatment removedmore than 90% of silica from the straw and improved the enzymatic hydrolysis yield from 35% to 100%.Afterward, ethanol was produced by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) from the pre-treated straw at 37◦C using M. hiemalis, and the results were compared with SSF using Saccharomycescerevisiae. The results showed that ethanol yield was improved by more than 40% under the optimumconditions and the yield was higher using M. hiemalis. Thus, the fungus could be a suitable alternative toS. cerevisiae for ethanol production from lignocellulosic wastes.