Abstract
Herein, we systematically reported the capability of T. harzianum RY44 for decolorization of Mordant orange-1. The fungi strains were isolated from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia tropical rain forest. For initial screening, the decolorization was conducted using 50 strains of the fungi for 20 days incubation time and the best performance was selected. Then, the decolorization capability and fungal biomass were evaluated using different dye concentrations, namely, 0, 50, 75 and 100 ppm. Effects of the carbon sources (fructose, glucose, and galactose), nitrogen sources (ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate and yeast extract), surfactant (tween 80), aromatic compounds (benzoic acid, catechol and salicylic acid), and pH on the decolorization efficiency were examined. This study has found that the employed carbon sources, nitrogen sources, and aromatic compounds strongly enhance the decolorization efficiency. In addition, increasing the surfactant volume and pH generally decreased the decolorization efficiencies from 19.5 to 9.0% and 81.7 to 60.5%, respectively. In the mechanism philosophy, the present work has found that Mordant orange-1 were initially degraded by T. harzianum RY44 to benzoic acid and finally transformed into salicylic acid.