Food color production from fungi: Biology of cassava utilizing Monascus kaoliang KB9 and its color mutants
1997
Busaba Yongsmahith | Somchai Krairka (King Mongkut's Inst. of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok (Thailand). Faculty of Science. Dept. of Applied Biology)
Cassava and their products are always Thai major exporting products of economic importance. Many microbial processings of cassava substrates such as amylolytic enzymes, alcohols, single cell proteins, organic acids, including citric acid, lactic acids, and aminoacids has long been known. Our group have investigated and developed a new and effective utilization of cassava into coloring agents (red or yellow) by Monascus fermentation since 1982. Monascus kaoliang KB9 was selected, as a red pigment producer, among 200 isolates. Strain improvement in order to enhance fungal ability to obtain high yield of colors and to search for other kinds of fungal products has been undertaken. The red, yellow and albino mutants have been subsequently selected morphological, cultural, enzymological and pigment characteristics were compared and described. In addition, we initiated the work on molecular genetics of Monascus spp. by investigating its genome using molecular karyotyping and RAPD assay. The conditions on preparation of protoplasts, using as the source of intact chromosomal DNA for molecular karyotyping, were reported. We anticipate to present the complete molecular data on both techniques in the next future.
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