Screening and Characterization of Aspergillus and Penicillium Species for the Production of Amylase

• Main Author: Afiq Nasri, Abdullah
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2018
• Subjects: Q Science (General); S Agriculture (General); SB Plant culture
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/35024/1/Afiq%20Nasri%20Bin%20abdullah%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/35024/2/Afiq%20Nasri%20Bin%20abdullah%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/35024/
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

Fungi nowadays have been widely use in industrial sectors for enzymes production. The most common enzyme secreted from fungi is amylase. This enzyme has contributes a lot of advance development to the world especially in medical field. Thus, the aim of the study is to characterise and screen Aspergillus and Penicillium species for the production of amylase. Five type of fungi are used in this experiment namely Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus furnigatus, Penicillium citrinum and Penicillium pinophilum. A method such as solid-based technique was used to stain the fungi on the agar with iodine solution, thus forming two regions of colour. The dark bluish colour indicates that amylase is absent on the region, whereas the clear region formed on the on the agar shows amylase is produced and hydrolysis occurs. The diameter of halo and colony is measured and recorded for its amylase degrading potential index. Once the calculation of index for each species has been carried out, their amylase activity can be compared to one another. P. citrinum is seen to have the best amylase activity as the index was the highest among others meanwhile amylase activity for A. furnigatus is seen to be the least. Statistical analysis known as ANOVA test was also been conducted to see the variances among the fungi species. The F value of the analysis was 40.6517 which were greater than 2.61. Hence, the null hypothesis was rejected, showing that the five fungi species differed significantly with one anthers in term of it amylase activity.