Utilization of bottle gourd vegetable peel waste biomass in cellulase production by Trichoderma reesei and Neurospora crassa

Enormous waste has been generated from the vegetable and fruit processing industries, which are a good source of carbohydrates. Such unused remnant imposes huge disposal and severe pollution problems. Due to the presence of cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin, minerals, and vitamins, these waste materials have a great prospective for its bioconversion into useful products, viz., acids, enzymes, fuels, and value-added products. To reveal their possible potential, separate sets of experiments have been conducted by using bottle gourd peel waste biomass as a carbon source for cellulase production. It was observed from experimental findings that 30 °C temperature and 0.56 g/l of inoculum dosages are the most promising situations for cellulase production by both the fungal strains. FPase and CMCase activity considerably increases by the inclusion of whey as well as starch hydrolysates in the media used in the production study. The present study portrays the utility of bottle gourd peel waste, whey, and starch-based hydrolysates in cellulase production by Trichoderma reesei and Neurospora crassa. The exploitation of cost-effective, cheap, bottle gourd vegetable peel waste for cellulase production could be an innovative, effective, sustainable, and green approach in cellulase production.