Krishpa Shah
Abstract
Phytic acid was discovered in 1903, and is found to be nearly ubiquitous component in cereals and grains. It is found to be 80% or more in plants, especially in legumes. Monogastric animals feeding on plants or grains are unable to utilize the phosphate which is bounded to phytic acid. Thus, there are number of phytate degrading enzymes which have been reported and studied, one of them is phytase enzyme. Phytase is also found to be used in the area of nutrition, environment and biotechnology. It has capability to hydrolysed phytate to myoinositol and inorganic phosphate. It releases phosphorus, making its availability for absorption and utilization by monogastric animals (hens, chickens, pigs, swines, etc.) and thereby reducing bounded phosphorus excretion which is in unusable form in environment. Dietary addition of phytase in monogastric animals have shown that it can decrease total phosphorus level in the manure. In several trails, it becomes apparent that manure from chickens fed phytase contained more soluble phosphorus than manure from chickens fed control diet. It was found that microorganisms having ability to produce phytase enzyme and hence can be utilized by monogastric animals as additional supplement in feed. Thus phytase producing bacteria were isolated from the different samples of poultry farm soil available in Valsad and nearby areaon PSM (phytase screening medium). Enzyme activity and optimization of enzyme production was studied followed by partial purification and SDS PAGE for its estimation of molecular weight. Application of phytase enzyme was studied on poultry as the isolated enzyme was found to be extracellular in nature and showed the conversion of phytate to inorganic phosphorus and a positive step towards the problem of eutrophication.