Solid state fermentation of pomegranate seed for lovastatin production: a bioprocessing approach

This study reports lovastatin production by solid state fermentation using pomegranate seeds as a substrate. Six different fungal strains and several agro-industrial wastes were selected and screened. Various physico-chemical parameters were optimized to improve lovastatin. Moreover, chemical mutation was systematically employed to enhance lovastatin yield on selected strains. Productivity of 3 ± 0.06 mg lovastatin/gm dfm was obtained prior to optimization. One factor a time followed by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) gave 4.2 ± 0.10 mg lovastatin/gm dfm yield in an optimized setup with pomegranate seed powder (5 gms), KH2PO4 (0.1% w/v), glucose (5% w/v), moisture (60% w/w), pH 5 in a 15 days fermentation cycle. The production was further increased to 6.5 ± 0.08 mg lovastatin/gm dfm through chemical mutation of the strain. This process is simple and reproducible for the production of lovastatin using pomegranate seed as an agro-industrial waste.