Optimization of culture media for enhancing gamma-linolenic acid production by Mucor hiemalis

g-linolenic acid is an essential fatty acid in human nutrition. In the present study, production of g-linolenic acid by Mucor hiemalis PTCC 5292 was evaluated in submerged fermentation.
The fermentation variables were chosen according to the fractional factorial design and further optimized via full factorial method. Four significant variables, glucose, peptone, ammonium nitrate and pH were selected for the optimization studies. The design consisted of total 16 runs consisting of runs at two levels for each factor with three replications of the center points.
The analysis of variance and three-dimensional response surface plot of effects indicated that variables were regarded to be significant for production of g-linolenic acid by Mucor hiemalis. Results indicated that fermentation at the optimum conditions (100 g/l glucose concentration; 1 g/l peptone; 1 g/l ammonium nitrate, and pH of 4.5) enhanced the g-linolenic acid production up to 709 mg/l.
Discussion and The results of this study indicated that higher g-linolenic acid yield can be achieved in a simple medium at high glucose and ammonium nitrate, low peptone concentrations and acidic pH by Mucor hiemalis PTCC 5292. This simple and low cost optimization condition of culture media can be applied for g-linolenic acid production at higher scale for pharmaceutical and nutritional industries.