A comparative study on surfactin production from various fruit juices for diverse applications

The ample interesting properties of lipopeptide biosurfactants- to name a few- hemolytic, antiviral, antifungal, and antibacterial properties are of significant interest to the research community. Surfactin, one of the most potent microbial surfactants, is a biosurfactant of the lipopeptide type with interesting physicochemical characteristics and biological functions. However, commercial applications of surfactin are severely constrained by its high price and limited productivity. This is primarily due to the increased production cost associated with using a chemically defined medium for cultivating the biosurfactant-producing microorganisms and the purification costs. It is crucial to highlight that despite many advancements in microbial surfactant industries, the large-scale manufacture of many biosurfactants remains economically unviable. To understand the role of substrate and carbon source in surfactin production, fruit juices rich in carbon sources (grape, pineapple, cashew apple) and pre-optimized Glucose mineral salt medium (GMSM) were compared for the production of surfactin in our study. We observed that surfactin production is high when cashew apple juice (maximum surfactin concentraiton =3.65 g/L) and grape juice (maximum surfactin concentration = 3.16 g/L) are used as the carbon sources. We believe that the results of the current study will give further impetus to the research on biosurfactants synthesis using cheaper and renewable substrates towards improving their economic viability to make a successful foray into various applications. Because of their unique properties, microbial surfactants are useful in many fields, such as environmental remediation, microbial degradation, enhanced oil recovery, drug research, food manufacturing, and more.