Production of fermentable sugars by Oil Palm Fronds (OPF) through fungal solid state bioconversion

Oil palm fronds (OPF) are an abundant lignocellulosic waste generated from the oil palm field. In this study, efficient saccharification processes of oil palm fronds (OPF) through fungi bioconversion were explored. The objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of Aspergillus niger (A.niger), Phanerochaete chrysosporium (P. chrysosporium) and Aspergillus terreus (A. terreus) UniMAP AA-1 in producing fermentable sugar as well as the important parameters that can affects the bioconversion process. Solid-state fermentation process was carried out with the total working volume of 20 g at 30°C for 7 days. Throughout this study, A. terreus UniMAP AA-1 was found as the most potential microorganisms in converting cellulose into glucose compared to the other microorganisms, which were A. niger and P. chrysosporium. Optimization experiment of fermentable production from Aspergillus terreus UniMAP AA-1 was designed using Central Composite Design (CCD). CCD identified optimum condition for inoculum size, which was 4 % (w/v) and pH 8 in optimization study using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and maximum fermentable sugar produced was 3.6732 mg/mL. The data obtained from this study may applicable for scale-up process of fermentable sugars production from OPF in the future.