Prodigiosin: A Better and Cost Effective Production Approaches

Abstract

Pigments have been used in industrial production process of food to improve the product quality, acceptability as well as marketability. Synthetic pigments are the commonly used ones in food production, they were however later found to have negative health effect the man. Therefore, the search for natural pigments with replacement potential to the synthetic ones began. Prodigiosin is a natural red pigmenting compound produced by the bacterial species Serratia marcescens. It was established to have no toxic effect to human as a result; there is great interest to its industrial production and commercialization. Industrial production of prodigiosin is however challenging due to low yield and high cost of production notably; the high cost associated with the commonly used submerged fermentation and high cost of commercially synthetic medium. This review is aimed at providing several approaches utilized in prodigiosin production, while revealing the production medium, production optimization, extraction and purification as well as the fermentation methods. It will further highlight the best production media, optimization approaches, fermentation methods as well as the extraction and purification methods.