Uso de desechos de banano para la producción biotecnológica de ácido láctico

Abstract

CONDITION FOR PROJECT PUBLICATION. Banana peel is an agro-waste generated in large volumes and often underutilized. This work develops and evaluates an integrated biotechnological process to produce lactic acid (LA) from this substrate, under the hypothesis that prior enzymatic saccharification increases fermentation yield and represents a more sustainable alternative for applications in bioplastics and packaging. Solid-state fermentation was carried out using five fungal strains, enzymatic extracts were obtained, and saccharification was performed by comparing, as a physical pretreatment, dryed and milled peel (flour) versus a blended peel substrate. Subsequently, lactic fermentation was conducted with Lactiplantibacillus plantarum. Trametes sanguinea stood out for its glucoamylase (33.631 U/mL), laccase (8.096 U/mL), and cellulase activities (6.464 FPU/mL). The flour-form substrate produced 25.973 g/L of fermentable sugars, higher than the blended substrate (1.358 g/L). LA production using the flour reached 2.6 g/L (7.8 g LA/kg substrate), equivalent to a 39.3% increase compared to the enzyme-free control. It is concluded that the integrated approach is technically feasible and that the drying and milling pretreatment combined with enzymatic saccharification improves process conversion. Keywords: Agro-wastes, enzymatic saccharification, solid-state fermentation, lactic acid, bioplastics.