A new process for the physical refining of rice bran oil through combined degumming and dewaxing was developed on a laboratory scale and then demonstrated on a commercial scale. The simultaneous degumming and dewaxing of the crude oil with a solution of water and CaCl2, followed by crystallization at a low temperature (20°C), facilitated precipitation of the hydratable and nonhydratable phosphatides along with the wax, which enabled its separation and reduction to a greater extent. Bleaching and subsequent winterization (20°C) of this oil further reduced the phosphorus content to less than 5 ppm. Thus, these pretreatment steps enabled the physically refined rice bran oil to meet commercially acceptable levels for color, FFA content, and cloud point values (10–12 Lovibond units in a 1‐in, cell, <0.25%, and 4–5°C, respectively) with very low neutral oil loss; this has not been observed hitherto. Rice bran oil is known for its high levels of bioactive phytochemicals, such as oryzanol, tocols, and sterols. The process reported here could retain more than 80% of these micronutrients in the end product.
Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN) are well-known as biological control agents and are found to have associated bacteria which can produce a wide range of bioactive secondary metabolites. We report herewith isolation of six proline containing cyclic dipeptides cyclo(D-Pro-L-Leu), cyclo(L-Pro-L-Met), cyclo(D-Pro-L-Phe), cyclo(L-Pro-L-Phe), cyclo(L-Pro-L-Tyr) and cyclo(L-Pro-D-Tyr) from ethyl acetate extract of the Luria Broth (LB) cell free culture filtrate of Bacillus sp. strain N associated with a new EPN Rhabditis sp. from sweet potato weevil grubs collected from Central Tuber Crops Research Institute farm. Antimicrobial studies of these 2,5-diketopiperazines (DKPs) against both medicinally and agriculturally important bacterium and fungi showed potent inhibitory values in the range of μg/mL. Cyclic dipeptides showed significantly higher activity than the commercial fungicide bavistin against agriculturally important fungi, viz., Fusarium oxysporum, Rhizoctonia solani, and Pencillium expansum. The highest activity of 2 μg/mL by cyclo(L-Pro-L-Phe) was recorded against P. expansum, a plant pathogen responsible for causing post harvest decay of stored apples and oranges. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the isolation of these DKPs from Rhabditis EPN bacterial strain Bacillus sp.
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