Fermentation behavior of an osmotolerant yeast D. hansenii for Xylitol production

Realizing the importance of xylitol as a high‐valued compound that serves as a sugar substitute, a new, one step thin layer chromatographic procedure for quick, reliable, and efficient determination of xylose and xylitol from their mixture was developed. Two hundred and twenty microorganisms from the laboratory stock cultures were screened for their ability to produce xylitol from D‐xylose. Amongst these, an indigenous yeast isolate no.139 (SM‐139) was selected and identified as Debaryomyces hansenii on the basis of morphological and biochemical characteristics and (26S) D1/D2 r DNA region sequencing. Debaryomyces hansenii produced 9.33 gL−1 of xylitol in presence of 50.0 gL−1 of xylose in 84 h at pH 5.5, 30°C, 200 rpm. In order to utilize even higher concentrations of xylose for maximum xylitol production, a xylose enrichment technique was developed. The strain of Debaryomyces hansenii was obtained through xylose enrichment technique in a statistically optimized medium containing 0.3% yeast extract, 0.2% peptone, 0.03% MgSO4.7H2O along with 1% methanol. The culture was inoculated with 6% inoculum and incubated at 30°C and 250 rpm. A yield of 0.6 gg−1 was obtained with a xylitol volumetric productivity of 0.65 g/L h−1 in the presence of 200 gL−1 of xylose although up to 300 gL−1 of xylose could be tolerated through batch fermentation. Through this technique, even higher concentrations of xylose as substrate could be potentially utilized for maximum xylitol production. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2012