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Abstract

Microbial consortium represents an important new frontier for biotechnology. It has been employed in many fields of biotechnology but its application for the production of β-glucosidase is yet to be explored. Therefore, present work has been aimed for the selection of co-culture of Aspergillus sp., and optimization of cultural conditions for the biosynthesis of β-glucosidase by solid state fermentation. For this purpose, mono and co-cultures of Aspergillus niger, A. awamori and A. oryzae were tested and co-culture of A. niger and A. oryzae gave comparatively better production of β-glucosidase. The enzyme production was optimal when agricultural by-product wheat bran (10 g) was used as solid substrate for fungal growth. Among 10 different diluents tested, M-2 containing (g/l, w/v) KH2PO4 2.0, (NH4)2SO4 1.4, urea 0.3, MgSO4.7H2O 0.3, ZnSO4.7H2O 0.0014, FeSO4.7H2O 0.005, MnSO4 0.0016, CoCl2 0.002, CaCl2 0.002, polypeptone 1.0 and Tween-80 2.0 ml gave relatively higher enzyme production. The maximum production of β-glucosidase (2975±5.3 U/g/min) was obtained after optimization of cultural conditions such as incubation period (72 h), initial pH (5.5), substrate to diluent ratio (1:1) and inoculum size (2 ml of spore suspension i.e., 3:1 ratio of A. niger and A. oryzae).

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