Optimization of Physico-chemical Properties for Production of Alkaline Protease from Fusarium graminearum

Alkaline proteases of microbial origin possess considerable industrial potential due to their biochemical diversity and wide applications in tannery and food industries, medicinal formulations, detergents and processes like waste treatment, silver recovery and resolution of amino acid mixtures. Discovering such species, producing proteases with novel characteristics will be of great value to the enzyme industry for different applications. Fusarium graminearum is potentially a good host for the production of proteins. The advantage of growing Fusarium graminearum in continuous flow culture is that theoretically, greater productivity can be achieved. Newly isolated Fusarium graminearum was grown with glucose as the sole carbon source. The Fungi isolates yielded maximum enzyme at pH 6.6 and 37°C temperature. Sucrose was found as the best source of carbon as the enzyme yield was found highest and the biomass turn over was also good. Of all the inorganic nitrogen sources ammonium nitrate was found to be best and of all the organic nitrogen sources Yeast extract was found to be best source of nitrogen for the mold to synthesize the enzyme. The inoculum level of 4.0% (v/v) was found optimum for production. Fe (NH3)2 SO3 is found essential for the enzyme synthesis. The objectives of this investigation, therefore is to isolate strains of filamentous fungi, which would produce significant quantities of extra cellular alkaline proteases and to determinate the values of their proteolytic activities