THE PRODUCTION OF SINGLE-CELL PROTEIN FROM MOLASSES RELEASED AS A RESULT OF SUGAR PRODUCTION IN THE FACTORY

Abstract

Proteins are the most important nutrients required in daily life for the healthy nutrition of humans and animals. In countries with relatively weak economies and developing countries, health problems due to inadequate and unbalanced nutrition are exacerbated by the rapidly increasing population. As a result of the desire to use alternative protein sources containing protein close to animal sources in food and feed, it has been focused on the production of single-cell protein (SCP). SCP is a biomass product formed by microorganisms grown under optimal conditions in the medium. Some of the microorganisms, used as an SCP source, can grow using waste materials as carbon or energy source. At the end of this bioprocess, the SCP is obtained by eliminating the environmental pollutant. The SCP may be originated from algae, bacteria, or fungi. SCP prepared by the large-scale production of yeasts or fungi are called mycoproteins. This study aims to investigate the possibility of economically producing SCP (mycoprotein) using molasses, which is sugar beet factory waste. For this purpose, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a wild species, and molasses produced by sugar mill production were used. The effect of parameters such as pH, amount of sucrose, temperature, and amount of inoculum required for mycoprotein production was examined. According to the results of this study, the necessary conditions for the best mycoprotein production in molasses medium were determined as pH 6 at 30°C, and single-cell protein production was provided in a low-cost way. The augmentation in the microbial SCP production was calculated as 100% at determining optimal conditions. The results obtained from this study contribute to the solution of the increasing nutritional need problem, which is one of the most important problems of our world.