Vol. 9, Issue 5, Part G (2025)

Diet given to the poultry mainly consists of plant based ingredients which has certain anti nutritional factors such as phytin, non starch polysaccharides (NSP), proteinacious anti nutrients. To overcome these anti nutritional factors exogenous enzymes are added to the poultry feed. Our focus is to develop protease for poultry from fungal source. The objective of this project is to develop cheap commercial protease by solid state fermentation (SSF) using Aspergillus niger and an inexpensive and readily available agro-industrial substrates such as wheat bran and rice bran etc. Earlier studies using acid fungal protease proved to be effective in improving the bird weight (BW) gain and feed conversion ratio (FCR).

In the present study, we found wheat bran is most suitable for SSF using A. Niger and we optimized various parameters such as pH, temperature, moisture content, effect of mineral salt solution etc. for efficient protease production. During the course of study we analyzed thryrosine standard curve and casein hydrolysis is used to measure protease activity in vitro. In conclusion we isolated protease suitable for formulation in poultry application.

In summary there is a potential for protease supplementation in poultry diet, however interaction with other supplemented enzymes, dietary proteins and digestive architecture of the chicken required further investigation.