Chapter Number Soybean Oil and Meal as Substrates for Lipase Production by Botryosphaeria ribis, and Soybean Oil to Enhance the Production of Botryosphaeran by Botryosphaeria rhodina Aneli M. Barbosa 1 , Josana M. Messias 1 , Milena M. Andrade 1 , Robert F. H. Dekker 2 and Balaji Venkatesagowda 2 , 1 Universidade Estadual de Londrina 2 Lakehead University 1 Brazil 2 Canada 1. Introduction Soybean oil, a common vegetable (plant seed) oil, has traditionally been used as a food in cooking and salad dressings, and more recently, as a feedstock for the production of biodiesel fuels (Bajaj et al., 2010; Ghaly et al., 2010). After extracting the oil from soybean seeds, the residue constitutes an important by-product called soybean meal, or oil-seed cake. This edible by-product, a rich source of proteins and amino acids, especially tryptophan, threonine and lysine (Ramachandran et al., 2007), has been used as a livestock feed, as well as a nutrient source and fermentable substrate for producing microbial lipases (Ul-Haq et al., 2002), and other enzymes (Singhania et al., 2009). The fatty acid composition of soybean oil is typically: 53.8 % linoleic (C 18:2 ), 20.8 % oleic (C 18:1 ), 11.4 % palmitic (C 16:1 ), 9.3 % linolenic (C 18:3 ), 4.4 % stearic (C 18:0 ), and 0.3 % arachidic acids (C 20:0 ) (Ghaly et al., 2010). Besides the applications cited above, soybean oil was demonstrated an effective inducer for the production of fungal enzymes (lipases) that degrade plant seed oils (Messias et al., 2009). It has also been reported to enhance the synthesis of pleuromutilin by Pleurotus mutilis, an antibiotic effective against gram-positive bacterial pathogens (Hu et al., 2009), and promoted the production of laccases by Botryosphaeria rhodina MAMB-05 when added to nutrient medium (Dekker et al., 2007). Lipases (EC 3.1.1.3; triacylglycerol acylhydrolases) are hydrolytic enzymes, which catalyse the hydrolysis of the ester linkages of long-chain acylglycerols to glycerol and free fatty acids. These enzymes also conduct interesterification, transesterification and ammonolysis reactions. Lipases are ubiquitous among microorganisms being produced by bacteria, actinomycetes, filamentous fungi and yeasts, and have found applications in various sectors of commerce (Li & Zong, 2010). The main industrial application of lipase is still restricted to their use in laundry detergents to remove fats and oil stains (Hasan et al., 2010). They are also used in various food and agro-chemical industries, e.g., processing foods, treatment of fatty effluents, synthesis of biosurfactants, removal of resins (pitch) in processing paper from wood cellulose pulps, and as