Utilisation of sugar beet bagasse for the biosynthesis of yeast SCP

• Search for cheap substrates for feed yeast cultivation.
• Evaluation of sugar beet pulp hydrolysate for fodder yeast production.
• Results show the possibility of utilisation of sugar beet pulp for single cell protein production.

The possibility of using sugar beet pulp to produce yeast biomass was evaluated in this study. Viscozyme and Ultraflo Max preparations were used for hydrolysis, which was performed on a semi-industrial scale. Out of 250 kg of wet beet pulp, 375 dm3 of hydrolysate was obtained. After being enriched with mineral salts (N, P, K, Mg), the medium was inoculated with Trichosporon cutaneum LOCK 0254, Candida tropicalis LOCK 0007 Pichia stipitis LOCK 0047, Candida guilliermondii ATCC 6260 and Saccharomyces cerevisiae LOCK 0132 yeast strains.Shaken cultivations were carried out for 48 h at 30 ± 1 °C. The highest biomass yield was observed for the C. tropicalis strain – 12.1(±0.42) g DM dm−3 medium. The protein content in this biomass was 52.3% of DM. Up to 54.7 g DM of the yeast biomass was obtained after 10 h of cultivation in the bioreactor. Sugar beet pulp can thus successfully be used for the production of yeast biomass containing considerable amounts of single cell protein.