Paper Title
Evaluation of Polyesters Production in Submerged Cultivation of Cupriavidus Necator and Burkholderia Cepacia Strains Using Sunflower Seed as Substrate
Abstract
Microbiologically produced polyesters are known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) which are an alternative to
reduce the amount of non-degradable plastics discarded on the environment. The PHA can be produced from renewable raw
materials such as glucose and sucrose, however, these sugars represent a high cost in the production chain and the use of
cheaper substrates has been largely studied and broadcasted. In this paper, we proposed the evaluation of
polyhydroxyalkanoates production using sunflower seed as an alternative substrate for the submerged cultivation of the strains
Cupriavidus necator IPT 026 and 027, and Burkholderia cepacia IPT 119 and 400. All microorganisms tested were able to
utilize sunflower seed to synthetize PHA, the highest polymer production was achieved using C. necator IPT 026 which
exhibited 4.38 ± 0.17 g l-1 of PHA with a concentration of 15 g l-1 of substrate in the fermentation medium. All PHA produced
showed the bands of the characteristic functional groups of polyesters in the FTIR spectra.
Index Terms- PHA, biopolymer, biosynthesis, sunflower seed, alternative substrate.