Woody biomass can be used as a feed-stock for the production of sugars which can be converted to biofuels and bio-chemicals (Zhu and Pan 2010). Enzymes can be used to break down wood into sugars but this is an expensive step due to the cost of enzymes (Berlin et al. 2007). An alternative strategy is to decrease the cost of enzymes by producing a crude enzyme extract on-site, rather than using a commercial enzyme. Moreover, commercially available enzymes are limited in number and composition and have generally been optimized for non-woody herbaceous biomass (Banerjee et al. 2010; Berlin et al. 2007). In the case of herbaceous and hardwood plant species, the hemicellulose is xylan rich whereas for softwood it is mannan rich (Juturu and Wu 2013). In softwood, the presence of hemicellulose may limit the hydrolysis of cellulose in the absence of accessory enzymes (Várnai et al. 2011).