A study on Lactic Acid fermentation of Sugar Palm (Arenga Pinnata) sap by Lactobacillus Casei

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of various factors on the yield of lactic acid fermentation using sap from sugar palm and Lactobacillus casei. The sugar palm sap after harvesting, pretreatment was added with ammonium sulphate, calcium carbonate and microbial culture at density of 109 cells/ml and let fermented for acid lactic production. The results of the experiments showed that the culture size, amount of added ammonium sulphate and calcium carbonate had significant effect on lactic acid production. The most appropriate parameters determined were culture size of 5%, ammonium sulphate of 3.0 g/l and calcium carbonate of 4.0 g/l. Meanwhile, the optimum period of fermentation was 100 h, which gave the yield of lactic acid production of 22.30 g. Lactobacillus casei was considered to have lower ability to effectively produce lactic acid from sugar palm sap compared to Lactobacillus plantarum