Knowing that in nature fungi or actinomycetes grow almost exclusively on solid supports, solid-state fermentation has been widely investigated and has shown some improvement in enzyme and bioactive metabolite production. However, although this technique has been exploited for enzyme and secondary metabolite production, the available fermentation technologies failed to overcome major scale-up bottlenecks. Subsequently, solid cultivation is widely substituted by liquid state fermentation in scale-up procedures. In order to solve this limitation, we recently focused on agar-supported fermentation (Ag-SF) and built up a fully automated scale-up device called Platotex. This prototype offers 2 m2 of cultivation surface in highly controlled conditions. Platotex use was also extended to solid state fermentation on agricultural by-products, leading to the valorisation of biomass waste.
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