Preliminary study on rice straw degradation using microbial inoculant under shake flask condition

Abundance and unmanaged agriculture residues lead to unutilized resource waste and environmental pollution. Application of microbial technology to manage agriculture waste could produce value-added product. A preliminary study on biodegradation of rice straw using different potential microorganisms was tested under controlled environment. Three different inoculant cultures were used to observe their efficiency in rice straw degradation. Combination cultures microorganisms coding AMB1 shows the potential degrading activity, which reduces the hemicellulose of rice straw by 50% from the raw material. The highest cellulase activity at 1.5 U/mL was also observed in rice straw treatment with AMB1 than single inoculant fungi and commercial microbial product. Overall, the results suggested that the biodegradation of rice straw could be improved by using combination culture. The ability of these cultures to enhance biodegradation shows potential to fasten the decomposing period and may be used to manage agriculture waste.   Key words: Cellulase, lignin, agriculture waste, biodegradation.