Optimisation of Environmental Conditions for Enhanced Production of Fungal Exopectinase Using Agro-industrial Wastes

Management of household solid waste and agro industrial residues generated from various sources is a serious problem due to huge ever increasing population and pollution. Application of these worthless agro waste materials to generate a commercially valuable product, pectinase enzyme, using locally isolated fungal strain, Aspergillus flavipes, was the main motive of this study. Physiological characterisation and enzyme profile determination were done along with formulation of production media. Fruit skins, rags were used as C source and oil cakes were used for N source. Various combinations of these C and N sources were applied for revised production of pectinase enzyme compared to YEP basal media (29 U/ml). A huge increase in pectinase production of 40 U/ml was obtained with Citrus peel - Sesame oil cake (CS) media. The enzyme had its maximum activity at 500C, 4.5 pH. This was achieved at 45 min in 1.5% substrate concentration.