South Asian Journal of Research in Microbiology

Agricultural waste is recorded to be approximately 625 million tons in India annually  including sugarcane bagasse, ground nut cake, rice bran, rice straw, wheat bran, cotton leaf scraps, fruits and vegetable wastes, etc. The management of these wastes effectively and economically must be given a prime priority ensuring not only in reducing the detrimental impact of the wastes to environment, but most importantly in the transformation of these wastes into useful raw materials or the production of value-added products of industrial and commercial potential. Xylan is used in different ways as part of our daily lives. Xylan is one of the foremost anti-nutritional factors in common use feedstuff raw materials. Xylo-oligosaccharides produced from Xylan are considered as "functional food" or dietary fibers due their potential prebiotic properties. The main aim of this research work was to optimize the physio-chemical parameter for xylan production from wheat straw, rice husk, rice bran, and sugarcane bagasse. It was found that under the optimizing conditions, maximum xylan obtained from rice husk was 747.8±3.16 g on treating with 25% w/v NaOH followed by 50 minutes of heat explosion. Rice husk was the potent producer of xylan followed by rice bran with maximum Xylan 347.32±2.63g, sugarcane bagasse with maximum Xylan 25.53±1.23g and wheat straw with maximum Xylan 130.72±3.80g, under selected optimizing conditions of physico-chemical pretreatment 25% w/v NaOH and 50 minutes, 15% NaOH w/v and 15 minutes of, 10% NaOH and 30 minutes, and 20% w/v and 40 minutes of respectively.