Ethanol is being blended with petrol or diesel @ 20% in order to conserve the natural resource and to decrease the pollution. Due to the high price of molasses it is necessary to search an alternate source that is available abundantly. Agro residues such as paddy, wheat and sugarcane which are the major crops in India could be the potential substrates for ethanol production. The crop residues were initially subjected to microbiological pretreatment for obtaining reducing sugars. Such treated substrates with and without obtaining the filtrate were further subjected to fermentation. Among these, filtrate fermentation showed maximum production of ethanol (820.80 mg L-1) and Zymomonas mobilis was efficient in conversion to ethanol from all the substrates.  Among the substrates, bagasse recorded maximum release of ethanol compared to paddy straw and wheat straw.