A Statistical Design Approach for Xylanase Production by Aspergillus niger Using Soybean Hulls: Optimization and Determining the Synergistic Effects of Medium Components on the Enzyme Production

Xylanases are hydrolytic enzymes produced by different microorganisms which convert xylooligomers to its constituent xylose units. The growing interests in xylanase production could be linked to its diverse industrial applications. The use of agricultural residues contributed in overcoming one of the major challenges of enzyme production, which is the production cost. This study involves the use of Face centered central composite design (FCCCD) under Response surface methodology (RSM) to optimize the medium components for enhanced xylanase production using soybean hulls as renewable substrate by solid state fermentation. The optimum components that led to maximum xylanase activity of 139.73 U/g were 0.58% w/w of urea, 0.03% w/w of K2HPO4 and 0.04% w/w of Na2CO3. Coefficient of determination (R2) used to check the fitness of the model showed the correlation between the experimental and predicted responses with a value of 0.8981. Thus, this study showed the potential use of soybean hulls for xylanase production