Ismat Karim1 and Surachai Pornpakakul2This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
1Green Chemistry and Sustainability, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
2Research Centre for Bioorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Received: February 18, 2025 Accepted: April 19, 2025 Publication Date: May 9, 2025
Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.
Indigo, a natural dye traditionally extracted from plants, faces challenges in its conventional fermentation process, including low yield, poor quality, and long processing time. This study proposed an enzymatic process using Trichoderma cellulase to enhance indigo production from Indigofera tinctoria leaves powder. Indican is the main precursor for indigo production. Dried leaves powder treated with cellulase showed higher indican content compared to fresh leaves and it might not be fully released during conventional fermentation process. The indigo production with dried leaves powder by enzymatic process provided yield of 12.61 mg/g which was 1.96 times higher than the fresh leaves conventional fermentation process (on dry basis). This was owing to simultaneous cellulase action for cell wall breaking to release indican and hydrolyzing indican to indigo. The purity of obtained crude indigo was also improved from 7.15% to 43.14% for conventional and enzymatic process, respectively. The optimum enzymatic process conditions were experimentally explored in triplicate and found reproducible. The enzyme stability and reusability were also improved by adding Ca2+. This enhancement accompanied efficient use of bio-feedstock and sustainable approach to natural dye.
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