Enzyme Production and Profile by <I>Aspergillus niger</I> During Solid Substrate Fermentation Using Palm Kernel Cake as Substrate

Abstract

The oil palm sector is one of the major plantation industries in Malaysia. Palm kernel cake is a byproduct of extracted palm kernel oil. Mostly palm kernel cake is wasted or is mixed with other nutrients and used as animal feed, especially for ruminant animals. Recently, palm kernel cake has been identified as an important ingredient for the formulation of animal feed, and it is also exported especially to Europe, South Korea, and Japan. It can barely be consumed by nonruminant (monogastric) animals owing to the high percentages of hemicellulose and cellulose contents. Palm kernel cake must undergo suitable pretreatment in order to decrease the percentage of hemicellulose and cellulose. One of the methods employed in this study is fermentation with microorganisms, particularly fungi, to partially degrade the hemicellulose and cellulose content. This work focused on the production of enzymes by Aspergillus niger and profiling using palm kernel cake as carbon source.

Production of Acetone, Butanol, and Ethanol (ABE) by Clostridium acetobutylicum YM1 from Pretreated Palm Kernel Cake in Batch Culture Fermentation

“…The study on the PKC structure has shown that it contains a high amount of polysaccharide (50%), with a high hemicellulose content (Cerveró et al 2010). Similar studies have shown that cellulose constitutes about 11.6% of PKC polysaccharide, and the hemicellulose composition of PKC includes a large amount of mannan (57.8%) with a lower quantity of xylan (3.7%) (Ong et al 2004). PKC also contains protein (22% w/w), fat (4.6% w/w), and many minerals such as, potassium (6190.9 mg/kg PKC), calcium (533.5 mg/kg PKC), sodium (382.5 mg/kg PKC), iron (310.4 mg/kg PKC), manganese (161.6 mg/kg PKC), and phosphorus (0.84 mg/kg PKC) (Shukor et al 2016).…”

β-Mannanase Production by Aspergillus flavus in Solid-State Fermentation of Palm Kernel Cake

“…Comparison on b-mannanase production between this study and other works on SSF of PKC; published works are limited and focused on Aspergillus niger in flasks SSF (Ong et al 2004) and SSF in a packed bed with axial flow of humidified air (Abdeshahian et al 2010). A. niger produced considerably higher enzyme at lower moisture level.…”

“…The substrates act as carbon sources and/or inert support for microbial growth and generation of primary and secondary metabolites (Krishna 2005;Pandey 2003). SSF has been exploited for various applications, such as productions of enzymes (Krishna 2005;Ong et al 2004), and substrates nutritional improvement for animal feed production. The choice of microorganisms has included fungi, yeast, and bacteria, while the substrates are generally crops and residues from agricultural sectors and agroindustries (Krishna 2005;Pandey 2003).…”

“…As a cheap commodity and a good source of hemicellulose in the form of mannan (Daud and Jarvis 1992), PKC has found use in SSF for the production of enzymes and animal feed with modified nutritional content. During SSF, the predominant enzyme secreted is b-mannanase; traces of cellulases, b-glucosidase, polygalacturonase, xylanase, amylase, and phytase are also present (Ong et al 2004). Through the enzymatic activities and hydrolysis of PKC hemicelluloses, reducing sugars are generated to support microbial growth, with mannose as a primary sugar (Dhawan and Kaur 2007).…”

Cellulase Production from Species of Fungi and Bacteria from Agricultural Wastes and Its Utilization in Industry: A Review

“…Because of the ability of fungi to consume cellulose for energy consumption, only certain species could be used practically for cellulose hydrolysis. Despite of T. reesai, other fungal species include Aspergillus, Penicillium and Humicola have practical implementation to produce high yields of cellulases [51]- [53].…”