Overcoming the production limitations of Photorhabdus temperata ssp. temperata strain K122 bioinsecticides in low-cost medium

For low-cost production of Photorhabdus temperata ssp. temperata strain K122 bioinsecticide, a cheap complex medium was optimized. Diluted seawater was used as the source of micronutrients, especially sodium chloride, involved in the improvement of cell density, culturability and oral toxicity of the bacterium P. temperata against Ephestia kuehniella larvae. Thus, the new formulated medium was composed only of 10 g/l of soya bean meal, used as the carbon and nitrogen main source, mixed in sevenfold diluted seawater. At such conditions, several limitations of P. temperata bioinsecticide productions were shown to be overcome. The appearance of variants small colony polymorphism was completely avoided. Thus, the strain K122 was maintained at the primary form even after prolonged incubation. Moreover, the viable but nonculturable state was partially overcome, since the ability of P. temperata cells to form colonies on the solid medium was prolonged until 78 h of incubation. In addition, when cultured in the complex medium, P. temperata cells were produced at high cell density of 12 × 10⁸ cells/ml and exhibited 81.48% improvement of oral toxicity compared to those produced in the optimized medium. With such medium, the large-scale bioinsecticides production into 3-l fully controlled fermenter improved the total cell counts, CFU counts and oral toxicity by 20, 5.81 and 16.73%, respectively. This should contribute to a significant reduction of production cost of highly potent P. temperata strain K122 cells, useful as a bioinsecticide.