No abstract

Most of the freshwater systems in tropical countries are infested with one kind of aquatic weed or the other causing serious environmental problems. All efforts to control the growth and spread of these weeds have failed miserably and hence the concept of eradication through utilization is being adopted by many researchers. Solid state fermentation, the culturing of microorganisms on moist solid substrates in the absence or near absence of free water, has generated great deal of interest among researchers because of its various advantages over the submerged fermentation technique. Cellulase enzyme is used extensively in various industries, especially in textile, food and in the bioconversion of lignocellulosic wastes to alcohol. The extensive use of cellulase in industries depends on the cost of the enzyme and hence considerable research is being carried out to isolate better microbial strains and also to develop new fermentation processes with the aim to reduce the product cost. The objective of the present study is to determine whether water hyacinth, one of the commonly found aquatic weeds, can be used as a substrate for cellulase production, by three native bacterial isolates named WHB 3, WHB 4 and SMB 3, under the process of solid state fermentation. Results indicate that all the three isolates produced cellulase enzyme by using water hyacinth as the solid support. Under optimized conditions of moisture, pH, temperature, incubation time and inoculum concentration, the enzyme yield increased from 16.8 to 94.8 units for SMB 3, from 25.2 to 110.4 units for WHB 3 and from 18.0 to 127.2 units for WHB 4. The addition of nitrogen and carbon sources resulted in a significant increase in cellulase yield and WHB 3 produced the maximum amount of 216 units followed by SMB 3 and WHB 4.