Content area
Full text
Received Sep 21, 2017; Revised Jan 24, 2018; Accepted Feb 11, 2018
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Enzymes are biological molecules that accelerate biochemical reactions. Pectinases are the group of enzymes that prompt the degradation of pectic substances through depolymerization and deesterification reaction [1]. Pectinase is also a well-known term for commercial enzyme preparation during fruit juice clarification. This enzyme disunites polygalacturonic acid into mono-galacturonic acid by opening glycosidic linkages [2].
In the world market, it has been reported that pectinase accounts for 10% of global industrial enzymes produced [3]. Pectinolytic enzymes are produced by many organisms like bacteria, fungi, yeasts, insects, nematodes, protozoan, and plants. Among the various pectinases, bacterial pectinases take more advantages over other pectinases. With the passage of time, many reports have been published on the optimization of different microbiological parameters and fermentation strategies for the production of pectinases [4].
Pectinases have immense applications in fruit juice industries to improve fruit juice clarity and yield [5]. Pectinases also have other various industrial applications like scouring of cotton, degumming of plant fibers, waste water treatment, and vegetable oil extraction so used in various industries as pulp industry, textile industry, food industry, and so on. The application of pectinase enzyme to alter the texture or flavor of fruit juice, to increase extraction and clarification, and to reduce viscosity has also been described [6].
Keeping all the above advantages of pectinase enzymes in consideration, the aim of the present study was designed to isolate potential pectinolytic microorganisms, optimize their cultural conditions for maximum pectinase production, and investigate different factors involved in maximum pectinase activity and also to evaluate its potentiality in different fruit juice clarification.
2. Material and Methods
2.1. Sampling and Screening
Pectinase producing bacteria were isolated from vegetable dump waste soil. From the collected samples, 40 bacterial isolates were isolated and purified by following standard plate count techniques described by Dubey and Maheshwari [7]. Among 40 isolates, eight isolates were found to produce pectinase while grown on yeast extract pectin agar (YEP) medium during primary screening. Screening of pectinase producing bacteria was carried out in...