Abstract
The present work models the fermentation process parameters of the newly isolated, Meyerozyma caribbica CP02 for enhanced xylitol production and its fermentability study on rice straw hydrolysate. The study examined the impact of each of the process variables by one variable at a time optimization followed by statistical validation. Temperature of 32 °C, pH of 3.5, agitation of 200 rpm, 1.5% (v/v) inoculum, 80 gL(-1) initial xylose was optimized. Subsequently, a sequential two-stage agitation approach was adopted for fermentation. At these optimized conditions, xylitol yield of 0.77 gg(-1) and 0.64 gg(-1) was achieved using media containing commercial and rice straw derived xylose, respectively. For scale up, in 3L batch bioreactor, the highest xylitol yield (0.63 gg(-1)) was attained at 72 h with rice straw hydrolysate media containing initial xylose (59.48 ± 0.82 gL(-1)) along with inhibitors (1.55 ± 0.10 gL(-1) aliphatic acids, 0.0.048 ± 0.11 gL(-1) furans, 0.64 ± 0.23 gL(-1) total phenols). The results imply that even under circumstances characterized by an acidic pH and elevated initial xylose level, M. caribbica CP02, as an isolate, displays robustness and shows favorable fermentability of rice straw hydrolysate. Therefore, isolate CP02 has potential to be used in bio-refineries for high yield xylitol production with minimal hydrolysate processing requirements.