With the yearly accumulation of agro-industrial waste-material generated by the milling, brewing and sugar
industries in Europe, the importance of extracting high value residues must be considered to offset the cost of treating
and disposing of the residues. This work reviews the identification, purification and characterisation of novel
microbial esterases capable of releasing the bioactive phenolic compound, ferulic acid, from cereal cell-walls and
agro-industrial waste. These phenolic residues restrict the extent of hydrolysis of cell-wall carbohydrates. Potential
applications for the esterases in the food and pharmaceutical industries are described. Enzymic removal of ferulic acid
is very mild, allowing further treatment:processing of the residue and removes the need for environmentally-unfriendly
chemical clean-up processes. We now report the hydrolysis, on a laboratory scale, of wheat bran (1 kg) by
a Trichoderma xylanase preparation and an Aspergillus niger ferulic acid esterase (FAE-III) to produce free ferulic
acid (5.7 g).