Biosurfactant are attractive attention in recent year because they offer several advantages over chemical surfactants. Such as low toxicity, good biodegradability and ecological friendliness. In this respect, selected two oil degrading bacteria and two oil degrading fungal species. The selected microbes play major role in oil recovery, environmental bioremediation, food processing and pharmaceuticals owing to their unique properties such as higher biodegradability. The ability of oil degrading bacteria’s such as Pseudomonas putida, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and fungal species Aspergillus oryzae, Penicillium chrysogenum to utilize Neem oil to produce biomass. The energy sources of neem contain different biologically active compounds undergoes into simpler compounds by the microbial activity. This will be helpful for environmental safe agricultural development. Bacterial species such as Pseudomonas putida and Pseudomonas aeruginosa could grow well in stone medium using water and hexane soluble fractions of neem oil and the presence of (NH4)2 HPO4 seemed to be important for better production of biomass and Biosurfactant under the laboratory and neutral PH conditions than the fungal species. The composition of water and hexane soluble fractions of neem oil, non-degraded and degraded neem oil by microbes were analysed by using gas chromatography. The result suggested most of the components in hexane soluble extract were degraded by Pseudomonas putida. Hence, the present study aims to find out, oil degrading microbes for maximizing Biosurfactant productivity using Neem oil as an energy source.

Keywords: Biomass; Biosurfactant; Oil degrading; Neem oil; Hydrocarbon-degrading.