Isolation of Pectinolytic Bacteria from Decayed Orange Peel (Citrus sinensis) in Clarification of Tea Extract

The production of microbial enzymes at the industrial scale and their commercialization has attained a lot of value and public focus. The usage of microorganisms as bio-reactors begins due to the evolution of enzymes produced by microorganisms. There are so many industrially significant enzymes are originated from microbes, that include pectinases, lipases, amylases, proteases, xylanases, etc.

The actual work involved the use of microbes isolated from the decaying orange peel and tomato pulp for the extraction of the pectinase enzyme. The organisms were isolated and screened from the samples and were cultured onto a pectin agar plate. Morphological and microscopic identification revealed that the bacteria isolated were Bacillus sp. Pectinase production media was later used for the lab-scale production of pectinase enzyme by inoculating the bacteria and incubating them for 48 hours. The enzyme thus produced was purified by Various methods. The pectinase enzymes isolated from Bacillus sp. were used for the improvement of tea leaves quality and clarification. The enzymes were characterized and purified.

The outcome of both purified pectinase enzymes and crude enzyme preparation on the improvement of tea extracts were determined in terms of flavonoids (310 mg/gm), DPPH (49 mg/gm), caffeine content (0.56-0.95), moisture content (7.2-6.7%), ash (4.1-4.6%), total phenol content (285 mg/gm) and pH (6) and the shelf life analysis of the tea produced. The results thus obtained can conclude that the use of Bacillus sp. in the industrial production of pectinase is highly beneficial. According to the findings obtained from the study, the enzyme-treated tea extract improves its various quality parameters more than the tea extracts which are non-enzyme treated. And the utilization of microbial pectinase produced from bio-waste was the most cost-effective and yielded good results for industrial use.