Published Paper Details:

In past few years, the world has experienced a high rise in the market of poultry industry. This industry has added a non degradable feather waste to the environment on very large scale. This feather is even not degraded by the enzymes such as Trypsin and Pepsin and has become a global issue. Use of microorganisms in feather degradation is a trending and eco-friendly solution. The ultimate aim of the current study was to degrade feather using keratinolytic bacteria. Bacteria were isolated and screened from the soil samples collected from the dumping yards of chicken shops, poultry farm and feather waste collected areas. Total 68 different bacterial isolates were isolated and checked for their potential to degrade feather waste. Among them isolate C1B is gram positive, rod shaped, endospore forming bacterial species , morphological and biochemical identification showed that isolate C1B was Bacillus species. It was found that the bacterium had the efficiency of degrading 84.5% of feather within 72h. The bacteria used feather keratin as a principal source of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and energy. The present study would highlight the degradation of feather waste using bacteria.