The effect of citrus pulp type on pectinase production in solid-state fermentation: Process evaluation and optimization by Taguchi design of experimental (DOE) methodology

Abstract

Pectinase is an important enzyme that finds application in many food processing industries and solid state fermentation (SSF) is an attractive technology for enzyme production. In this work, design of experimental (DOE) methodology using Taguchi orthogonal array (OA) was applied to evaluate the influence of five factors (different levels of citrus pulp, initial pH of the medium, C/N ratio, type of solid substrate and citrus pulp) on the pectinase production by Aspergillus niger under solid-state fermentation. The results showed that citrus pulp concentration, type of solid substrate and citrus pulp were found to be the most effective factor for promoting enzyme production and the supplementation of the medium with citrus pulp caused a 23% increase in the pectinase production when compared with the basal medium. The study shows that the Taguchi's method is suitable to optimize the experiments for the production of pectinase (R2 = 0.946).

Keywords

• pectinase production
• citrus pulp
• design of experiment; Taguchi orthogonal array
• solid-state fermentation
• design of experiment
• Taguchi orthogonal array
• solid-state fermentation