Abstract
Renewable biomass-derived fuels are essential to meet the blend mandates and the sustainability goals. In our first-to-date study, we investigated individual and synergistic consortia of fungal cultures comprising Pycnoporous sanguineus (PS) in combination with Aspergillus oryzae (AO) and Trichoderma harzianum (TH) for production of cellulolytic enzymes using groundnut shell under solid state and submerged liquid fermentation conditions. The innovative consortia closely align with the microbial ecosystems found in nature; consequently, we anticipate a potent and effective cellulolytic enzyme system, which maximises the breakdown of biomass polymers to sugars. Under ternary combination of cultures, cellulase production was highest at 123.0 ± 1 FPU/gds; β-glucosidase production at 875.6 ± 26.4 IU/g dry substrate (gds); and CMCase at 474.95 ± 45.5 IU/gds. β-glucosidase production was highest on the 2nd day at 987.03 ± 64.2 IU/gds while CMCase peaked at 514.97 ± 21.4 IU/gds on 2nd day for PS, maximum cellulase enzyme production was observed on the 6th day at 192.2 ± 0.96 FPU/gds (AO + PS). Present work showed that synergistic combination of fungal cultures for releasing balanced enzyme activities that can efficiently saccharify biomass, such as groundnut shell to sugars, which can subsequently be fermented to various bioproducts and biomaterial monomers. Elaborate characterization studies of enzyme treated groundnut shell revealed prominent physicochemical changes in the hydrolysate, which indicates the changes in biomass are due to the enzymatic action and the growth effects of the consortia; thereby, leading to promising applications for the microbial fortified biomass.
Highlights
Large-scale substitution of petroleum based fuels by renewable alternatives is imperative to tackle climate changes and energy security [1]
In our first-to-date study, we investigated individual and synergistic consortia of fungal cultures comprising Pycnoporous sanguineus (PS) in combination with Aspergillus oryzae (AO) and Trichoderma harzianum (TH) for production of cellulolytic enzymes using groundnut shell under solid state and submerged liquid fermentation conditions
The reason behind this trend could be attributed to the exhausting of available monosaccharide sugars, which are released by fungi during saccharification of oligosaccharides derived from cellulose
Summary
Large-scale substitution of petroleum based fuels by renewable alternatives is imperative to tackle climate changes and energy security [1]. The fluctuating costs of fuel over the high demand in the past decade have inspired the research to generate fuel from renewable resources, ethanol from biomass [2]. Critics have raised the potential increase in food costs [4] along with food shortages globally if utilization of food based resources is diverted to produce biofuels [5]. Non-food based sources such as wheat straw [8], wheat bran [9], rice straw [10], corn stover [11], maize [5], sorghum, kinnow mandarin [12], and bagasse have high potential. India is the second largest groundnut producer in the world after China with production of 8.22 million tons in 2017-18 [13]. GNS has created interest among researchers for application in energy production due to its composition, but cellulose is in the form of lignocellulose, the conversion to sugars [14]
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