Castor cake is a by product from castor seed but remains as a substance with restricted application potential due to its allergenic and toxic properties.People traditionally have treated the castor cake by wild fermentation for the catalytic transformation of anti-metabolites into their corresponding non-toxic forms for improving its utility.

This age-old practice was scientifically approached by the Brazilian researchers where they subjected castor cake to solid state fermentation.Penicillium simplicissimum fungus was chosen as the catalytic factor because of its potency to manipulate in castor cake substrate and generate lipid metabolizing lipase enzymes.Solid state fermentation(dessicated fermentation) was performed for the cultivation of fungus and the products, enzyme and fermented castor cake were partitioned by solid-liquid phase differential extraction.Enzyme lipase magnitude in crude isolated fraction was determined from its activity against synthetic substrate while the debris cake fermented was evaluated for its toxic protein contents and functional activities by immunoassays and immuno sensitive cell culture assays respectively.The results proved to be promising as the toxin titre and allergens induced cell degranulation were seen to be minimum and the microbial enzyme production was noticed to a significant extent as well from specific activity studies.

Results turn out to be promising but the experiment would have been better if an utility for the fermented castor cake in biology was defined.The solid state technology by fungus seems to be a viable one on commodities like castor cake to generate high value products when time factor is not signified to a greater extent.

For referencehttp://www.scribd.com/doc/14281716/Use-of-a-Lowcost-Methodology-for-Bio-Detoxification-of-Castor-Bean-Waste