ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF LOCALLY ISOLATED LIGNIN DEGRADING BACTERIA

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is a renewable and abundant resource with great potential for bioconversion to value added bioproducts. In Malaysia, this biomass become a major problem to the environment since most of these materials come from the waste of palm oil industry. However, the conversion of the lignocellulosic material becomes a hurdle due to lacking of biocatalysts that can overcome the biorefning process. Therefore, this study is aimed to isolate and identify locally isolated bacteria that are able to degrade lignin. Twenty two bacterial strains were isolated from decayed plants in Agro Park, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Jeli Campus, Kelantan. Out of twenty two isolates, eight potential strains designated as ZA1, ZA2, ZA32, ZA42, ZA5, ZA71, ZA72 and ZA9 were found capable to effectively degrade the lignin through screening on selective agar plate contaning alkaline lignin as sole carbon source. Subsequently, partial sequence of 16S rRNA gene identifed strains ZA1, ZA32 and ZA72 as Klebsiella sp., isolates ZA2, ZA42, ZA5 and ZA9 as Enterobacter sp. and isolate ZA71 as Bacillus cereus. From phylogenetic tree analysis, isolate ZA1 was found to be closely related to isolate ZA72 and isolate ZA2 was found to be closely related to isolate ZA42.