Screening of kojic acid producing fungi from Unimas fungal collection and production of kojic acid

• Main Author: Siti Aisha Na'illa, Binti Che Musa
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, UNIMAS 2013
• Subjects: Q Science (General); QC Physics; QD Chemistry
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/7587/4/Siti%20Aisha%20Na%27illa%28full%20text%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/7587/

Kojic acid is a secondary metabolite produced mainly by Aspergillus species. Due to high demand and wide applications of this product, many research has been done in order to produce higher yield of this product. In this present work, via submerged fermentation, the result of screening process showed only one strain out of eight strains being tested produced kojic acid which is Aspergillus flavus NSH9. Kojic acid production by A. favus NSH9 was optimized under glucose concentration which is 110 g/L, pH 4 and 107 spore concentration and the highest kojic acid yield obtained are 15.38 g/L, 30.44 g/L, and 34.06 g/L respectively. Other than that, the incubation time for the kojic acid production at inoculums size namely 105 and 107 spores/mL were at day 22 and 26 respectively were also determined in this study. This result indicates the potential of A. flavus NSH9 as one of the producing fungi in this field.