Naturally occurring surface active compounds drived from microorganism also called Biosurfactant. They offer several advantages over the chemical surfactants. Such as low toxicity, inherent good biodegradability and ecological acceptability. Biosurfactant which are revealed to be produced by bacteria, yeast and fungi can serve as green surfactants. The biosurfactant synthesizes by environmental isolates also has promising role in the agricultural industry. Based on the above assets, selected two oil degrading fungal species from the laboratory for the further studies. The selected microbes Aspergillus oryzae and Penicillium chrysogenum play major role in oil recovery, environmental bioremediation and pharmaceuticals owing to their unique properties such as biodegradability. The ability of oil degrading fungal species utilize neem cake to produce biomass and biosurfactant. Neem cake as it is the cheapest carbon source as compared to glucose, fructose, and other petroleum based substrate for the production of biosurfactant. The energy sources of neem cake contain different biological active compounds which undergoes by the microbial activity can provide added benefits. This will be helpful for environmental safe agricultural development. Fungal species such as Aspergillus oryzae and Penicillium chrysogenum could grow well in stone medium using water and hexane soluble fraction of neem cake in the presence of (NH4)2HPO4 seemed to be important for better production of biomass and biosurfactant under laboratory and neutral pH conditions. Hence, the present study aims to find out, oil degrading microbes for maximizing biosurfactant productivity using neem cake as an energy source.

Keywords: Biomass; Biosurfactant; Oil degradation; Neem press cake; Hydrocarbon-degradation.