One step selection strategy for optimization of media to enhance arachidonic acid production under solid state fermentation

Abstract

Mortierella alpina is the most researched fungus for production of arachidonic acid. Arachidonic acid inclusion in diet is gaining prominence due to its potential role in brain development and age-related disease conditions. The production mainly focuses on submerged fermentation with extensive use of gas chromatography which increases the cost of optimization. The present study focuses on the optimization of arachidonic acid production by M. alpina under solid-state fermentation and developing an effective mycelial staining method as an analytical tool to replace gas chromatography. The optimization method increased the Arachidonic acid yield (41.29 mg/gds) with the supplementation of 3.0% corn gluten, 3.0% flax seed oil and 0.625% of mineral mix-3 in a soybean meal based substrate at an optimum temperature of 25 °C and initial substrate moisture content of 70.0%. For deriving an effective analytical tool, correlation was made between the responses of statistically designed submerged fermentation and solid-state fermentation trials. The comparative regression analysis of the responses i.e., the mycelial Triphenyl tetrazolium chloride staining data and the arachidonic acid values revealed a 98.0% correlation. The submerged fermentation based mycelial staining was thus devised as an effective media optimization strategy for solid state fermentation based arachidonic acid production.