Production Immobilization and Characterization of Fungal Phytase and its Utilization in Food and Feed Industry

Abstract

The phytases hydrolyze the phytic acid to release the bound phosphorus and other vital nutrients in the feed of domestic animals, plummeting the requirement for extra subjection to feed. However, its short half-life owing to less stability and the high production cost due to the unavailability of cheaper sources for phytase production limited its application in developing countries. Also, fewer studies have been reported on phytases usage in humans. The use of phytase as a food additive can overcome the issue of malnutrition and silent hunger in developing countries. Besides this, using phytase in the animal feed not only reduces the cost of the livestock industry but also deals with the concern of phosphorus pollution (eutrophication) up to a level. Therefore, in the current study, a fungal culture, Aspergillus niger NT7, was isolated from the soil sample of the agriculture field and identified as a potential phytase producer. The A. niger NT7 phytase production was done using an economical substrate, wheat bran, an agricultural waste, via solid-state fermentation (SSF). The enhanced phytase production was obtained through optimizing different physiochemical parameters by two approaches; one variable at a time (OVAT) and statistical Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The optimized parameters obtained by the OVAT are the moistening agent (distilled water), inoculum age (3-days) and level (15×107 spores/ml), pH (5.0), temperature (30 °C) and different supplements of biochemical such as nitrogen (ammonium sulphate), sugar (mannitol), phosphorous (potassium dihydrogen phosphate) and detergent (Tween 80) source. The optimization procedures through OVAT (208 ± 0.22 U/gds) enhanced the overall output by around 2.7-fold compared to unoptimized culture conditions (76.34 ± 0.99 U/gds). newline