(593l) Industrial Production of Hendersonia Sp: A Potential Biocontrol Agent Against Ganodermal Oil Palm Disease

Azman,M.D¹, Malek,R.A^1*, Othman,N.Z¹, Peng,T², Idris,A³, Then,C², Chang, H.W², Sukumaran,S², Wan Mustapha,W.A², Ramli,S¹, Sarmidi, M.R¹, Aziz, R¹, El Enshasy, H.A^1,4

¹Institute of Bioproduct Development (IBD), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, (UTM), 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.

²All Cosmos Industries Sdn Bhd, Pasir Gudang, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

³Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities, Malaysia

⁴Bioprocess Development Departments, City for Scientific Research (CSAT), New Burg Al Arab, Alexandria, Egypt.

Corresponding author: roslinda@ibd.utm.my

Abstract

Oil palm (Elaeis guinensis) is one of the important commercial commodities and considered as a Malaysian national treasure grown in Malaysia.  Being one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of palm oil products, Malaysia exported 23.06 million tonnes of palm oil products in 2010. Oil palm suffers from many diseases caused by fungi, bacteria and viruses. These diseases pose a serious threat to the cultivation, which leads to severe economic losses. One of the major fungal diseases of oil palm is known as Basal Stem Rot (BSR) caused by pathogenic Ganoderma. Biological control by antagonistic microorganisms is widely recognized as a promising and potential method for controlling plant diseases and to replace the use of chemical fungicide. Hendersonia sp., a novel strain successfully isolated from the root of oil palm tree, is effective in controlling Ganoderma infection. Resulting from this, there is a growing need of this microorganism in oil palm cultivations across Malaysia and other oil palm producing countries.  In this study, we establish a Hendersonia cultivation process platform for the industrialization of Hendersonia cultivation process. To improve the efficiency of the cultivation system, Response Surface Methodology was applied for medium optimization. After a few series of optimizations, the new formulation was composed of (gL^-1): Sucrose, 40; KH₂PO₄, 1.75; MgSO₄.7H₂0, 1.0; KCI, 0.5, FeSO₄.7H₂O, 0.01; Yeast Extract, 3.0.  The cultivation was fully optimized using 16-L bioreactor in batch mode, and followed by scaling up to 150-L bioreactor. In pH controlled culture at 5.5, the maximal cell mass of 12.65 g/L biomass was obtained. On the other hand, when cells cultivated under uncontrolled pH condition, the maximal cell dry weight of 13.55 g/L was obtained in this culture. In addition, the effects of agitation speed on the cell mass during the 150-L bioreactor cultivation were studied. According to the obtained results, the cell dry weight increased with the increase in of agitation speed. The highest cell dry weight of 15.6 g/L was obtained with agitation speed of 250 rpm after 70 h. In conclusion, the present study offers a promising strategy for high cell mass production of Hendersonia sp. in semi-industrial scale by using a combination of medium optimization and cultivation condition optimization.