Abstract

This project was planned to study the production of cholesterol lowering drug mevastatin by Aspergillus terreus GCBL-03 on pretreated substrate bagasse in solid state fermentation. Bagasse was pretreated by potassium hydroxide to delignify the substrate to readily become available to microorganism. It was noticed that pretreated bagasse exhibited 13.69±0.64 mg/100mL yield of mevastatin and 6.63±0.48g dry cell mass as compared to nontreated substrate that showed 7.04±0.81 mg/100mL and 6.04±0.24g dry cell mass. The fermentation profile like pH (5.5), temperature (30°C), moisture contents (60%) inoculum size (2mL), and incubation time (72 h) showed the optimum production (30.63±1.24mg/100mL) of mevastatin. Furthermore, fermented drug showed noteworthy antifungal activity against battery of selected fungal strains assessed by disc diffusion and measurement of minimum inhibitory concentration by micro dilution method. It was concluded from the study that fermented mevastatin was effective against fungal strains.

Keywords: Antifungal activity, Aspergillus terreus, Bagasse, Mevastatin, Pretreatment, Solid State Fermentation.