Scilight Press

Alkaline proteases have received a lot of attention from industrial point of view because of their versatile applications in various industries such as food, detergent, pharmaceuticals, tannery and many others. The aim of the present study was to optimize the fermentation conditions for the production of alkaline protease from a previously isolated strain of Bacillus viz., Bacillus paramycoides using response surface methodology (RSM). The interaction between most significant factors (pH, temperature and production time) was analyzed using central composite design (CCD). After statistical optimization, there was a significant increase of alkaline protease activity (5.3-fold), compared to basal medium. It was found that the final optimized conditions of pH (9.29), temperature (40.63ºC) and production time of 78.96 h showed the maximum alkaline protease production with an activity of 2958.32 U/ml. The results showed the successful implementation of statistical tool for enhancing the production of alkaline protease. Moreover, the high activity of alkaline protease after optimization showed the potential of the isolated microorganism to be used as an industrial candidate for the production of enzyme.