Determination of Pectinase Activity of Selected Bacterial and Fungal Strains
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2021
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Enzymes have been utilized to speed up the biological reactions in industrial productions. Enzymatic
methods are environmentally friendly, low cost in production and disposal but the limitation of
sources to extract different enzymes is an issue. Therefore, the current research aimed in order to
determine the pectinase activity of selected bacterial and fungal strains isolated from a municipal
garbage dump. Thirty-four bacterial (B1–B34) and five fungal (F1-F5) strains taken from the culture
collection were activated in Nutrient Agar (NA) and Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) respectively. For
the enzymatic assay, the bacterial and fungal strains were re-cultured in NutrientBroth (NB) and
Potato Dextrose Broth (PDB) respectively. The culture medium collected on day four was
centrifuged and cell free supernatants were then tested for pectinase activity by well diffusion assay
conducted in Pectinase Screening Agar medium (PSA) by following the Complete Randomized
Design with three replicates. The NB alone was the control. Diameters of halo zones formed around
the wells were measured at day four as the data. Data were analyzed by one way ANOVA. The
bacterial culture, B16 showed the highest pectinase activity among bacterial strains. F3 showed
significant (p ≤ 0.05) pectinase activity among fungal strains. The study was further elaborated to
find out the optimal maturity stage of B16 and F3 with the highest pectinase activity. For that, B16
were re-cultured in NB and F3 was re-cultured in PDB. The crude enzyme was extracted from the
subsamples collected from each medium within 6 hr time intervals and used to digest pectine and the
amounts of sugar formation after the pectine digestion was evaluated by DNSA method. The B16
showed highest pectinase activity (2.95 AU) at 72 and 78 hours of inoculation whereas F3 showed
the highest pectinase activity (1.43 AU) between 54 and 78 hours of inoculation. Thus, the pectinase
activity of B16 is higher than that of F3. Therefore, B16 of present study can be introduced as an
efficient culture to extract pectinase enzyme in bulk for industrial applications.
Keywords: Bacteria; Fungi; Pectinase
Description
Keywords
Environment Science, Fungal-bacterial biofilms, Fungal, Garbage Disposal