Culture medium improvement for Isaria fumosorosea submerged conidia production

Submerged conidia and blastospores of the entomopathogenic fungus Isaria fumosorosea are produced in several liquid culture media. However, yields and the ecological fitness of these propagules vary according to culture media composition. In most culture media, hyphae, blastospores and submerged conidia are white but we found that in some media they develop a brown pigmentation. A dark pigment was extracted from brown-pigmented propagules and analyzed by IR spectroscopy. Adsorption bands coincided to those characteristics of melanins.Hadamard's matrices were employed in order to increase submerged conidia yields and brown pigmentation of fungal propagules. Media containing 20–30 mg/l of FeSO₄·7H₂O and 6–12 mg/l of CuSO₄·5H₂O allowed reaching the highest pigmentation (9 in a hedonic scale). A maximal concentration of submerged conidia of 1.0 (±1.2) × 10¹² cell/l was achieved after 120 h of liquid culture in a improved culture medium, containing 25 ml/l of Polyethylene glycol (MW 200), substance which enhanced submerged conidia production, reducing free mycelia or mycelial pellets formation. In the improved medium, it was estimated that more than 60% of produced biomass corresponded to submerged conidia and blastospores, while in other media, mycelia were the main product (80–97%).