Pectinase is an enzyme having a broad industrial and commercial application. However, higher production costs may be the major constraint for the wide-scale application of pectinase. Therefore, researchers are trying to reduce the pectinase production cost for subsequent application in the industrial processes by using a unique substrate and optimizing the fermentation medium components and process conditions. The main purpose of the current study was to optimize medium composition for pectinase production using
Aspergillus niger
-ATCC 1640 in the solid-state fermentation.
The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was performed to evaluate the effects of variables, specifically the concentrations of Satkara peel, urea, (NH
4
)
2
PO
4
, NH
4
NO
3
, KH
2
PO
4
, ZnSO
4
, and MgSO
4
.7H
2
O on pectinase production in the solid substrate. Firstly, a two-factorial design, Plackett-Burman design (PBD) was applied to screen the variables that significantly influenced the pectinase production. After finding the critical variables, 15 experimental runs were carried out using a Box-Behnken design (BBD) to derive a statistical model for optimizing the concentrations of the selected variables.
The PBD model revealed that Satkara peel, urea, and (NH
4
)
2
SO
4
significantly affected the pectinase production. RSM results indicated that the predicted response for pectinase production was in good agreement with experimental data (R
2
= 0.9836). Under the optimized condition of Satkara peel (8.4 g/L), urea (0.5 g/L), and (NH
4
)
2
SO4 (2.7 g/L), the pectinase activity was predicted to be 0.6178 μmol/mL. In the present study, the experimental pectinase production achieved 0.6045 μmol/mL. The study revealed that optimization through RSM could improve the pectinase production from Satkara peel.