Indian mustard brassica juncea l. mediated phytoremediation of lead.

The contamination from heavy metals has risen during the last decade due to increase in Industrialization. This has led to a significant increase in health problems. Many of the known remediation techniques to remove heavy metal from soil are expensive, time consuming and environmentally destructive. Phytoremediation is an emerging technology for removal of heavy metals which is cost effective, and has aesthetic advantages and long term applicability. The present study aims at efficiently utilizing Brassica juncea L. to remove lead (Pb). The result of our study indicate that amount of lead in Indian mustard is increased with the amount of EDTA applied to the soil and maximum accumulation was achieved with 5mmol/kg of EDTA. On further increase in EDTA resulted in leaf necrosis and early shedding of leaves. Therefore EDTA at a concentration of 5mmol/kg was considered optimum for lead accumulation by Brassica juncea L.

Effect of freeze drying process on some properties of Streptococcus thermophilus isolated from dairy products

The present investigation represents the effect of freeze drying on some properties as acid and bile tolerance of Streptococcus thermophilus MTCC 1938 culture isolated from dairy products. The cell paste obtained from milk based medium was freeze dried with a pressure of 50-100 mtorr for 24h at -40ºC. Acid and bile tolerance test exhibited 3.8-4.9 and 3.2-3.8 log counts reduction after freeze drying respectively.

Tannase production by Penicillium atramentosum KM under SSF and its applications in wine clarification and tea cream solubilization

Tannin acyl hydrolase commonly known as tannase is an industrially important enzyme having a wide range of applications, so there is always a scope for novel tannase with better characteristics. A newly isolated tannase-yielding fungal strain identified as Penicillium atramentosum KM was used for tannase production under solid-state fermentation (SSF) using different agro residues like amla (Phyllanthus emblica), ber (Zyzyphus mauritiana), jamun (Syzygium cumini), Jamoa (Eugenia cuspidate) and keekar (Acacia nilotica) leaves. Among these substrates, maximal extracellular tannase production i.e. 170.75 U/gds and 165.56 U/gds was obtained with jamun and keekar leaves respectively at 28ºC after 96 h. A substrate to distilled water ratio of 1:2 (w/v) was found to be the best for tannase production. Supplementation of sodium nitrate (NaNO3) as nitrogen source had enhanced tannase production both in jamun and keekar leaves. Applications of the enzyme were studied in wine clarification and tea cream solubilization. It resulted in 38.05 percent reduction of tannic acid content in case of jamun wine, 43.59 percent reduction in case of grape wine and 74 percent reduction in the tea extract after 3 h at 35ºC.