Pectinase production by Aspergillus niger using banana (Musa balbisiana) peel as substrate and its effect on clarification of banana juice

J Food Sci Technol (June 2015) 52(6):35793589 DOI 10.1007/s13197-014-1413-8

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Pectinase production by Aspergillus niger using banana(Musa balbisiana) peel as substrate and its effect on clarification of banana juice

Sumi Barman & Nandan Sit & Laxmikant S. Badwaik &

Sankar C. Deka

Revised: 6 May 2014 /Accepted: 19 May 2014 /Published online: 4 June 2014 # Association of Food Scientists & Technologists (India) 2014

Abstract Optimization of substrate concentration, time of incubation and temperature for crude pectinase production from A. niger was carried out using Bhimkol banana (Musa balbisiana) peel as substrate. The crude pectinase produced was partially purified using ethanol and effectiveness of crude and partially purified pectinase was studied for banana juice clarification. The optimum substrate concentration, incubation time and temperature of incubation were 8.07 %, 65.82 h and32.37 C respectively, and the polygalacturonase (PG) activity achieved was 6.6 U/ml for crude pectinase. The partially purified enzyme showed more than 3 times of polygalacturonase activity as compared to the crude enzyme. The SDS-PAGE profile showed that the molecular weight of proteins present in the different pectinases varied from 34 to 42 kDa. The study further revealed that highest clarification was achieved when raw banana juice was incubated for 60 min with 2 % concentration of partially purified pectinase and the absorbance obtained was 0.10.

Keywords Pectinase . Banana peel . Aspergillus niger . Banana juice . Clarification

Introduction

Pectinase is a general term for enzymes, such as pectin lyase, pectin methylesterase and polygalacturonase, commonly referred to as pectic enzymes. These break down pectin, a polysaccharide substrate that is found in the cell walls of plants.

Most pectic enzyme preparations are used in the fruit processing industry and pectic enzymes alone account for about one quarter of the worlds food enzyme production (Patil and Dayanand 2006). Bacteria, fungi and yeast produce and secrete pectinases (Rombouts and Pilnik 1980). Enzymes produced from the fungi Aspergillus, Rhizopus and Penicillium are generally regarded as safe (GRAS) and produces extracellular enzymes which can be easily recovered (Mrudula and Anitharaj 2011). The increasing energy demand has attracted worldwide attention on the renewable agricultural and industrial wastes (Martin et al. 2004), as their disposal pose environmental problems. Various fruit and vegetable processing waste have been used for the production...