Dioscorea alata (purple yam) is a tuber crop that contains plenty of nutrients. It is widely cultivated in Thailand, but it is underutilized. In this study, the suitability of purple yam to replace potato dextrose media for fungal growth was investigated. Mushrooms and molds were grown on purple yam dextrose agar (PYDA), whereas yeasts were cultured in purple yam dextrose broth (PYDB). Response surface methodology (RSM) with Box-Behnken design (BBD) was used to optimize the culture conditions for Saccharomyces cerevisiae biomass production. The growth profile of S. cerevisiae in PYDB under optimized culture conditions was also studied. All test mushrooms and molds recorded the highest colony diameter and mycelial dry weight on PYDA containing 40% purple yam. Similar to mushrooms and molds, yeasts in PYDB with 40% purple yam showed the highest number of cells. The growth of fungi on purple yam dextrose media was significantly higher than those on potato dextrose media under standard conditions. The optimal conditions from the RSM results for the biomass production of S. cerevisiae in PYDB were purple yam concentration of 49.61%, dextrose concentration of 4.87%, pH value of 5.74, and inoculum size of 7.00%. The biomass of S. cerevisiae in PYDB under the optimal conditions obtained from the results of the optimization by RSM was thirty times higher than S. cerevisiae biomass in potato dextrose broth under standard conditions. Our results suggest that purple yam could be an alternative to potato dextrose media for fungal cultivation.

Polylactic acid (PLA) is increasingly used in food-packaging production. The screening of PLA-food-packaging-degrading bacteria and optimisation of culture conditions for the PLA-food-packaging degradation by PLA-food-packaging-degrading bacteria were investigated for bioplastic waste management purposes. Only bacterial strain SNRUSA4 exhibited an increase in optical density (OD) in Basal Medium (BM) supplemented with 1.0 g/L of PLA-food-packaging as sole carbon source after 4 weeks of incubation. A weight loss of 7.3% and the rough and porous surface of PLA-food-packaging indicated that SNRUSA4 was a PLA-food-packaging-degrading bacterium. SNRUSA4 was able to degrade pure PLA which was confirmed from the clear zone formation around its colony on emulsified pure PLA agar plate. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of SNRUSA4 showed the similarity with thirteen Bacillus species. Hence, the strain SNRUSA4 was assigned as Bacillus sp. SNRUSA4. Response surface methodology with Box-Behnken Design was used to optimise the culture conditions including yeast extract concentration, initial pH value, temperature and agitation speed for growth and PLA-food-packaging degradation of Bacillus sp. SNRUSA4. The optimal conditions of Bacillus sp. SNRUSA4 was discovered in BM at initial pH value 7.02 with yeast extract concentration of 2.56% and agitated at 205.28 rpm at 31.68°C. Under optimal conditions, the OD of Bacillus sp. SNRUSA4 was up to 1.955, and the different OD between before and after optimisation was up to 1.752. Furthermore, the PLA-food-packaging weight loss also increased from 7.30% to 87.10% indicating that the PLA-food-packaging degradation under optimal conditions was higher than the unoptimised conditions. Therefore, Bacillus sp. SNRUSA4 is an efficient strain for degradation of PLA and PLA-food-packaging.