Utilização de resíduos agroindustriais para a produção de enzimas

Abstract

Brazil, especially the Northeast, has an economy based on agricultural production, which results in the generation of large volumes of waste. Such waste, if not disposed properly, generate problems of environmental impact due to the volume and difficulty of decomposition, leading to the loss of resources, with significant contribution to the problem of recycling and conservation of biomass. Because of this, the biotechnological processes have been presented as an alternative to use these materials, aggregating high-value products from disposal with the formation of products of commercial interest, such as enzymes and organic acids, thus fulfilling an environmental and social. The application of solid-state fermentation (SSF) is one of these alternatives, especially because it is a simple process and low cost. It was evaluated in this work, the use of agro-industrial wastes as substrate for the production of hydrolytic enzymes by solid state fermentation from the fungus Aspergillus niger conducted in 250 mL Erlenmeyer flasks with medium supplemented mineral in order to have a final moisture content of around 60%. The kinetics of growth was accompanied by measurement of enzyme activities, acidity, pH, reducing sugars (RS) and total reducing sugars (TRS). Were used as substrates in fermentations green coconut husk, bagasse lime orange, pineapple pulp and corn cob. Due to the decrease in pH during the fermentation, we studied the influence of the same residue of green coconut shell, changing the pH of the mineral. A mixture of flour, coconut husk and corncob for presenting the greatest enzymatic activity in relation to other waste was used in a study in which there was a 22 factorial design, evaluating the influence of humidity and proportion mixing the waste in the production of enzymes of interest. It was observed that the enzyme production was greater than those obtained in earlier experiments and found the conditions for 48h of cultivation, moisture content and proportion of 90% coconut shell flour, corncob and 0,5:1,5, respectively. The principal components analysis (PCA) allowed us to understand more clearly the influence of variables over time of fermentation, 24 to 48h, being represented by two major components in the two fermentations could explain more than 80% of the variance of the results obtained.