Solid-State Fermentation of Banana Peels Potential Study for Feed Additive

. Agricultural solid wastes present abundantly on earth as crops harvesting as well as processing are countinuesly run. Banana peels are one of agricultural solid wastes produced anywhere the banana processing presents. The peels present abundantly in tropical countries such as Indonesia. The carbohydrate content of banana peels make it useful for the production of many chemicals, including feed. Meanwhile the large need in feed in farming including fish farming could prevent farmer to obtain substantial profit. This research studied the possibility of banana peel as one of abundant Indonesian agricultural solid waste to be utilized as fish feed which is known requiring certain level of protein content. This was done by fermenting the peels in fixed bed reaction mode using surface aeration and non-aeration. The fermentation was conducted using yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y1536 and Rhizopus Oryzae FNCC 6157. The reaction time was varied for 1, 3, and 5 days. The important parameters studied were protein contents, and amylase activity of the fermented banana peels. Despite aeration indicated more operational cost, it showed significant impact on the fermentation of banana peels. The best condition for fermentation using Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y1536 were 5 day fermentation with surface aeration which result in the increase of protein content up to 4.05%, the decrease of fiber content up to 1.08%, and amylase activity of 9.99 DP. Whilst the fermentation using Rhizopus Oryzae FNCC 6157 obtained its best result at 1 day fermentation with aeration, which are protein content increase up to 4.04% and fiber content decrease up to 0.69%. However, the fermentation using this mold showed its best amylase activity result of 12.75 DP at 5 day surface aerated fermentation.