Microbial Production of Extracellular Polysaccharides from Biomass

The interest in polysaccharides has increased considerably in recent years, as they are candidates for many commercial applications in different industrial sectors like food, petroleum, and pharmaceuticals. Because of their costly production processes, industrial microbial polysaccharides like xanthan, dextran, curdlan, gellan, and pullulan constitute only a minor fraction of the current polymer market. Therefore, much effort has been devoted to the development of cost-effective and environmentally friendly production processes by switching to cheaper fermentation substrates. In this chapter, various microbial polysaccharide production processes utilizing cheap biomass resources like syrups and molasses, olive mill wastewater, cheese whey, various vegetable and fruit pomace, pulp and kernels as well as carbon dioxide and lignocellulosic biomass like rice hull and bran, sawdust, and fibers are discussed with a special focus on the employed pretreatment methods.