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.
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