Red Yeast Rice production - Functional Food

Solid State Fermentation (SSF) is a fermentation method used by several industries like the pharmaceuticals, food, textile etc., to produce metabolites of microorganisms using a solid support in place of liquid medium. The main advantage of such methods is that it produces a minimum amount of waste and liquid effluent thus not very damaging to the environment. Solid-state fermentation (SSF) has emerged as a potential technology for the production of microbial products such as feed, fuel, food, industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical products, organic acids, flavors, colors, etc., Among various metabolites, biopigments produced by fermentation present a great potential for food and therapeutical applications, because they are natural, produced quickly and at any time of the year. Utilisation of agro-industrial residues as substrates in SSF processes provides an alternative avenue and value-addition to these otherwise under- or non-utilised residues. Agro industrial residues and crop such as coconut oil cake, corn cob, rice bran, jack fruit seed, groundnut oil cake, wheat bran can be used as substrates. Commercial biopigments produced by fermentation from Monascus are widely used in Asia, specially China, Japan, Thailand and Indonesia. Monascus is a filamentous fungus belonging to the genus Monascus, family monascaceae and class ascomyceta. This has the power to synthesis secondary metabolites as the bio pigments with connected polyketide structure. Monascus sp produces yellow, orange and red pigments. Monascus pigments are structurally related, for example red pigment is derivative of orange pigment. Monascus pigments have been used in food and therapeutic applications. Recent analyses account that Monascus metabolites lessened blood level of cholesterol, antioxidant activity, antimicrobial activity, antimalarial and antifungal.