Degradation of empty fruit Bunch by locally Isolated Pectin Degrading Bacteria.

Empty fruit bunch (EFB) was one of the major waste product produced from the processing of palm oil. Improper method of handling empty fruit bunch biomass had cause major environmental issue such as air pollution caused by the incineration of empty fruit bunch. In this study, pectinolytic microorganism isolated from palm oil mill effluent (POME) sediment and kenaf retting effluent were used to degrade pectin in empty fruit bunch. S 1,S2,S3 and S4 were bacterial isolates from (POME) sediment while KS strain was isolated from kenaf retting effluent. EFB was undergone alkaline pretreatment prior to degradation analysis. The degradation of untreated and pretreated EFB were then carried out using the pectinolytic bacteria. The amount of reducing sugar (glucose) was determined by DNS assay. DNS assay was used to measure the reducing sugar present such as glucose, fructose and galactose. It was observed that, concentration of glucose produced from untreated empty fruit was higher than treated empty fruit bunch. This observation might contributed by the alkaline pretreatment undergoes by EFB prior to degradation.Alkaline pretreatment will cause an increase in delignification process and thus reduced sugar degradation. The degradation of untreated EFB by S1 strain produced the highest concentration of glucose compared to other strains which is 0.3739 mg/ml glucose. Besides that, S2 strain had the highest cell density yet it was the second lowest strain that produce glucose. This showed that the increase in cell density will not affect the amount reducing sugar produced