Industrially relevant pectinase production from Aspergillus parvisclerotigenus KX928754 using apple pomace as the promising substrate

The present study was focused on the potentiality of agro-based residues for the production of pectinase to meet the growing market demand by improving the yield with low cost of production. Among the agro-based residues used for the production of pectinase, apple pomace was able to produce the maximum of 1366.30 +/- 36.71 U/ml using Aspergillus parvisclerotigenus KX928754 in liquid static surface fermentation, followed by sugarcane bagasse (973.12 +/- 22.43 U/ml) and used tea (686.7 +/- 45.06 U/ml). The process parameters optimization using a single variable at a time affirmed that pH 7.0, incubation period of 168 h, 30 degrees C temperature, sucrose 2% as carbon source and peptone 3% as nitrogen source was found to be optimum for better production. The crude filtrate was purified by precipitation, dialyzed, eluted on Sephadex G-100 column followed by lyophilization and stored at -20 degrees C. A. parvisclerotigenus KX928754 pectinase was purified to 2.10-fold, 2.91% of yield rate and having a specific activity of 1081.66 U/mg. Moreover, the electrophoretic analysis through sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) revealed 37.4 kDa of protein from the purified pectinase. Thus, the use of apple pomace as a substrate for scaling up pectinase with efficient recovery could reduce the price of the enzyme and increase its avenue for different industrial exploitation.