%0 Journal Article
%T Sugarcane Bagasse: A Potential Medium for Fungal Cultures
%A Arushdeep Sidana
%A Umar Farooq
%J Chinese Journal of Biology
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/840505
%X Worldwide, sugarcane industries produce tons of sugarcane bagasse as residual/waste material. This residual material is rich in complex lignocellulosic substances and may be used as a low cost carbon and energy source for the growth of fungal species. The present work was aimed at designing a sugarcane waste-based medium as a substitute for expensive commercial media for growing fungal cultures. Eight species of fungi, namely, Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Fusarium sp., and four unidentified species F1, F2, F3, and F5, were grown on the sugarcane bagasse medium which produced remarkable results and competed with standard media like potato dextrose agar, Sabouraud dextrose agar, and cornmeal agar. The designed medium was able to provide nourishment to the fungi as well as prevent the growth of any bacterial or fungal contaminant. The production of spores was more in the sugarcane medium as compared with standard media. Hence, this study led to the discovery of a new and efficient medium for fungal cultures as well as decrease in the waste disposal expenses and efforts. 1. Introduction The cost of all the microbiological media is rising at a fast pace. To tackle this problem some new microbiological media should be designed which are efficient as well as cost effective. This may be achieved by using agricultural wastes as raw materials for microbial media. Utilization of agricultural waste as a substrate for fungal cultures for the production of value added products has been reported which includes cellulase production by some fungi cultured on pineapple waste [1]; carotenoids production is carried out on agricultural waste using Blakeslea trispora [2] and cellulase enzyme production on agricultural waste by Aspergillus niger [3]. Sugarcane bagasse has been also reported as an energy source for the production of lipase by Aspergillus fumigatus [4]. Sugarcane bagasse could be a material of choice for designing a new medium as it is easily available in large volumes. Sugarcane is one of the plants having the highest bioconversion efficiency of capturing sunlight through photosynthesis and is able to fix around 55 tons of dry matter per hectare of land annually. There are thousands of small and large scale industries worldwide which use sugarcane as raw material and produce tons of bagasse every year [5]. The sugarcane stalk consists of two parts, an inner pith containing most of the sucrose and an outer rind with lignocellulosic fibres. During sugar processing, the sugarcane stalk is crushed to extract sucrose [6]. This
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cjb/2014/840505/