Chitosan production by psychrotolerant Rhizopus oryzae in non-sterile open fermentation conditions.

A new chitosan producing fungus was locally isolated from soil samples collected around Erzurum, Turkey and identified as Rhizopus oryzae PAS 17 (GenBank accession number KU318422.1). Cultivation in low cost non-sterile conditions was achieved by exploiting its ability to grow at low temperature and pH, thus, undesired microbial contamination could be eliminated when appropriate culture conditions (incubation temperature as 15°C and initial pH of the medium as 4.5) were selected. Medium composition and culture conditions were optimized using Taguchi orthogonal array (OA) design of experiment (DOE). An OA layout of L16 (4(5)) was constructed with five most influensive factors at four levels on chitosan production like, carbon source (molasses), metal ion (Mg(2+)), inoculum amount, agitation speed and incubation time. The optimal combinations of factors (molasses, 70ml/l; MgSO4·7H2O, 0.5g/l; inoculum, 6.7×10(6) spores/disc; agitation speed, 150rpm and incubation time, 8days) obtained from the proposed DOE methodology was further validated by analysis of variance (ANOVA) test and the results revealed the increment of chitosan and biomass yields of 14.45 and 8.58 folds from its unoptimized condition, respectively.

Utilization of Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. porrum) for inulinase production.

Inulinase production by Rhodotorula glutinis was carried out in this study, using leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. porrum) as an alternative carbon source due to its high inulin content and easy availability. Taguchi orthogonal array (OA) design of experiment (DOE) was used to optimize fermentation conditions. For this purpose, five influential factors (leek concentration, pH, incubation temperature, agitation speed, and fermentation time) related to inulinase production were selected at four convenient levels. The results showed that maximum inulinase activity was obtained as 30.89 U/mL, which was close to the predicted result (30.24 U/mL). To validate the obtained results, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed. Consequently, leek has a great potential as an effective and economical carbon source for inulinase production, and the use of Taguchi DOE enhanced enzyme activity about 2.87-fold when compared with the unoptimized condition.