Sugarcane bagasse is the residual material left after the stems have been crushed for sugar and is one of the most abundant agricultural wastes around the world. In Australia, it is usually incinerated to generate electricity at the mill or for the grid. However, it also has the potential to be used as a low cost feed for livestock and/or as a substrate in solid state fermentation to generate whole cell animal feed supplements. As bagasse is stored in the open for long periods in very large (usually uncovered) piles, these develop unique ecological niches, with interacting/competing populations of bacteria, yeast and filamentous fungi thriving in the lignocellulose-rich environment. These organisms originated from the sugarcane or colonised the pile from either the soil nearby or spores in the environment. Due to the microbial activity and the structure of the pile, it also develops into a variable environment with oxygen, temperature and pH gradients from the surface to the deeper layers. The gradient means that microorganisms will have location-specific features that allow growth in different environments. Such features may include a tolerance to low pH, high temperature, or low oxygen levels. The microbial community in bagasse piles is thus a potential resource for the discovery of useful and novel microbes and industrial enzymes. We are targeting existing and new enzyme activities with relevance to the inclusion of sugarcane products in feed such as cellulases and other carbohydrases as well as proteases, lipases and phosphatases. We are using traditional culturing and metagenomics to understand the diversity of microorganisms found in bagasse piles and developing a pipeline for the discovery and optimisation of new enzymes. Preliminary results have revealed a variety of microorganisms displaying cellulase, xylanase, mannanase, lipase and protease activities.