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New yeast strain may keep alcohol industry in high spirits

Scientists at the CCS Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar have isolated a new fast-fermenting and heat-tolerant strain of yeast which is set to give a boost to the alcohol industry.

The new strain, kluverommyces marxianusimb3, can be immensely beneficial to alcohol industries located in warmer parts of the country and the world.

The isolation of the new strain is the outcome of collaborative tudies by Dr Dalel Singh, a senior microbiologist at the CCSHAU and Professor Roger Merchant of Ulster university in Northern Ireland under a European Commission funded research project.

Dr Singh, the principal investigator of the project, said the new strain had been successfully tested at the Modinagar distillery where it produced 7.3 per cent alcohol in 16 hours without needing to maintain a low temperature. The commonly used yeast, saccharomyces cerevisia, on the other hand produced the same amount of alcohol in 26 hours.

Dean of College of Basic Sciences and Humanities Dr Kuldeep Singh Dhindsa said the new strain would benefit alcohol industries in warmer parts of India, Africa, and Southeast Asia where ethanol production from sugarcane molasses is considerably hampered by high temperatures, especially in hot seasons.

Distilleries traditionally use saccharomyces cerevisias, to produce alcohol from sugarcane molasses. It not only takes a long time, but also needs low temperature for the reaction, thereby increasing the running costs.

Dr Dhindsa also said the production of ethanol through this yeast would be economically viable due to reduced running costs for maintaining growth temperature, less risk of contamination, increased rate of productivity and the ease with which the product might be recovered.

In India, six million tonnes of molasses is generated every year which is processed at about 250 distilleries to produce nearly two billion litre of alcohol. The new yeast strain would be a boon for this industry, he said.

Dr Singh said tracing out of some new bacterial strains which have high potential to reduce the pollution load of digested mollases spent wash effluent, had been another achievement under the EC-funded project. These bacterial strains had been found to decolourise the digested spent wash to the tune of 30-40 per cent and reduce the chemical ozygen demand load upto 42 per cent.

UNI