4. Conclusions
The marine-derived, alkalophilic and salt tolerant fungus A. terreus, isolated from marine decayed wood, showed the ability to produce maximal yield of inulinase enzyme on low cost substrate (artichoke leaves) under SSF. After the optimization by using Plackett–Burman and Taguchi methods, the optimal medium composition for the inulinase production by A. terreus during the solidstate fermentation was found to be, initial pH 8.5, incubation temperature 30◦ C, 0.8% KH2 PO4 and 6 mM Ca2+ in the presence of 1% glucose and 1%sucrose as additional carbon sources, 1% NH4 H2 PO4 as nitrogen source and 5 mM Mg2+ by employing 3 g of artichoke leaves (moistened with 15 ml of trismaleate buffer, 0.1 M, pH 8.5). Under the optimized conditions, the maximum yield of inulinase achieved was 21.058 U/gds, which increased about 4.79-folds the initial production medium. In the present work, obtained results indicated the scope for economic production of inulinase by a new marinederived source using solidstate process and the applied statistical tools proved to be efficient for optimizing inulinase enzyme production in stead of the com-monly used methods, Box–Behnken design. Fructose producing capacity of the A. terreus inulinase enzyme, make it an attrac-tive source for industrial application. However, further studies on its Properties were also evaluated to predict its end applications which may provide other unexplored information regarding this enzyme.