Isolation and Identification of Yellow Pigment Producing Rod-Shaped Bacterium from Farm Soil in Alimosho Local Government Area, Lagos State, Nigeria

Microbial pigments are generally preferred to other natural pigments due to their easy scaling up, quick pigment extraction methods and simple culturing processes. Hence, the objective of this paper was to isolate and identify yellow pigment producing rod-shaped bacterium from farm soil in Alimosho Local Government Area, Lagos State, Nigeria using appropriate microbial and analytical standard procedures. The identification of the isolate revealed a Gram positive yellow pigment producing rod-shaped bacterium as Brevibacterium iodinum. The optimal conditions for pigment production by the B. iodinum was achieved in nutrient broth at pH7, 35°C under shaking condition (120rpm) using 5% inoculum of 0.4 OD (600nm). At these optimal conditions, 1.2g/L of biomass produced a total of 0.225g/L of crude pigment. The yellow pigment showed maximum absorption at 455nm. The GC-MS analysis of the crude pigment revealed major compounds such as methenamine; cis-10-Heptadecenoic acid, methyl ester; acetic acid, 2-[bis(methylthio)methylene]-1-phenylhydrazide and 4-Methyl-2-trimethylsilyloxy-acetophenone. This study has shown that B. iodinum produces a bacterial pigment which can be explored for different industrial applications.