Abstract

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE PHB PRODUCTION BY BACILLUS SPECIES UNDER SOLID STATE FERMENTATION BY AGRICULTURAL WASTES

N. Uma Maheswari* and A. Stella Mary

Abstract

Polyhydroxy butyrate (PHB) is an organic polymer with commercial potential as a bioplastic and a biomaterial. PHB is well known as a carbon and energy reserve produced by a variety of microorganisms. The present study was aimed to isolate, identify the PHB producing Bacillus species from the soil, Mannargudi, Thiruvarur, (Dt), Tamil Nadu, India. Totally three species of Bacillus was screened for PHB production, namely Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis. All the isolated Bacillus was subjected to solid state fermentation (SSF) using agriculture waste namely rice bran wheat bran and saw dust. From the SSF high yielding Bacillus species with best agriculture waste as a substrates was under taken for optimization such as physical parameters pH, temperature and chemical parameters, carbon and nitrogen sources. Overall productivity of PHB was noticed in Bacillus megaterium(0.082g/l) with rice bran as a substrate, at the pH7, temperature 37°C, and sucrose (0.653 g/l) calcium chloride(0.46 g/l) as carbon and nitrogen sources, was given better result for optimization. Characterization of PHB was also done by using FT-IR analysis.

Keywords: Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate, Bacillus megaterium, solid state fermentation, agricultural wastes.