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This work aims to study the production of the biomass of S. cerevisiae on an optimized medium using date extract as the only carbon source in order to obtain a good yield of the biomass. The biomass production was carried out according to the central composite experimental design (CCD) as a response surface methodology using Minitab 16 software. Indeed, under optimal biomass production conditions, temperature (32.9 °C), pH (5.35) and the total reducing sugar extracted from dates (70.93 g/L), S. cerevisiae produced 40 g/L of their biomass in an Erlenmeyer after only 16 h of fermentation. The kinetic performance of the S. cerevisiae strain was investigated with three unstructured models i.e., Monod, Verhulst, and Tessier. The conformity of the experimental data fitted showed a good consistency with Monod and Tessier models with R2 = 0.945 and 0.979, respectively. An excellent adequacy was noted in the case of the Verhulst model (R2 = 0.981). The values of kinetic parameters (Ks, Xm, μm, p and q) calculated by the Excel software, confirmed that Monod and Verhulst were suitable models, in contrast, the Tessier model was inappropriately fitted with the experimental data due to the illogical value of Ks (−9.434). The profiles prediction of the biomass production with the Verhulst model, and that of the substrate consumption using Leudeking Piret model over time, demonstrated a good agreement between the simulation models and the experimental data.

The phenotypic and genotypic diversity of the plant growth promoting Bacillus genus have been widely investigated in the rhizosphere of various agricultural crops. However, to our knowledge this is the first report on the Bacillus species isolated from the rhizosphere of Calendula officinalis. 15 % of the isolated bacteria were screened for their important antifungal activity against Fusarium oxysporum, Botrytis cinerea, Aspergillus niger, Cladosporium cucumerinium and Alternaria alternata. The bacteria identification based on 16S r-RNA and gyrase-A genes analysis, revealed strains closely related to Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, B. velezensis, B. subtilis sub sp spizezenii and Paenibacillus polymyxa species. The electro-spray mass spectrometry coupled to liquid chromatography (ESI-LC MS) analysis showed that most of the Bacillus isolates produced the three lipopeptides families. However, the P. polymyxa (18SRTS) didn't produce any type of lipopeptides. All the tested Bacillus isolates produced cellulase but the protease activity was observed only in the B. amyloliquefaciens species (9SRTS). The Salkowsky colorimetric test showed that the screened bacteria synthesized 6-52 lg/ml of indole 3 acetic acid. These bacteria produced siderophores with more than 10 mm wide orange zones on chromazurol S. The greenhouse experiment using a naturally infested soil with Sclerotonia sclerotiorum showed that the B. amyloliquefaciens (9SRTS) had no significant (P [ 0.05) effect on the pre-germination of the chickpea seeds. However, it increased the size of the chickpea plants and reduced the stem rot disease (P \ 0.05).These results suggested that the Bacillus strains isolated in this work may be further used as bioinoculants to improve the production of C. officinalis and other crop systems.

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