Feasibility of oleaginous fungi isolated from soil samples of Saudi Arabia for mycodiesel production

Resumo

As the demand for biofuels for transportation is increasing, it is necessary to acquire technologies that will allow affordable production of biodiesel. Conventional biodiesel is mainly produced from vegetable oil by chemical transesterification, but this product has relatively low yield and is competing with agricultural land that can be used for food production. In the present study, 14 filamentous fungi were isolated from different types of soil from Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia. Nile red staining revealed that lipid bodies were present in 6 of the 14 fungal isolates. Lipid extraction showed that 3 fungi were able to accumulate lipid >20% (wt/wt) of their dry cell mass (0.59–2.40 g/L). The profile of fatty acids revealed a high content of oleic (C18:1, n9), palmitic (C16:0) and linoleic (C18:2) acids similar to conventional vegetable oils used for biodiesel production. Isolate RY4, with the highest lipid yield was identified as Mucor circinelloides based on morphological characteristics confirmed with 18S rRNA gene sequencing. Sequence data of nucleotides were obtained from DNA sequencing submitted to GenBank [GenBank: AB916546.1]. Certain oil compounds were determined by FTIR spectroscopy.