Recent Advances on Efficient Methods for ?-Amylase Production by Solid State Fermentation (SSF)

Enzymes are biological catalysts which regulates biochemical reactions. They are now being used in various sectors of industry preferred than chemical catalysts because of some advantages they have: can act under- mild conditions, preventing the formation of undesirable by products, highly specific and catalyze reactions faster than chemical catalysts. Among the various industrially important enzymes, ?-amylase ranks first in terms of commercial exploitation. Although amylases can be derived from several sources, production using microorganisms is economical in bulk production capacity and microbes are also easy to manipulate to obtain enzymes of desired characteristics. There are mainly two methods which are used for production of ?-Amylase on a commercial scale: Submerged fermentation and Solid State fermentation. However, SSF has advantages for the production of ?-amlylase over submerged fermentation (SmF), due to, superior productivity, simple technique, low capital investment, low energy requirement and less water output, better product recovery and lack of foam build-up. In addition, the use of agro-industrial waste makes solid--state fermentation (SSF) an attractive alternative method as support and carbon source for production of industrial enzymes and for various value added products(organic acids, flavor compounds, biofuels, secondary metabolites, etc).