Journal of Natural Sciences Research www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3186 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0921 (Online) Vol.6, No.4, 2016 131 Screening for Lignocellulolytic Fungi From Biowastes Show Fungi with Hyper-Cellulase Producing Capability Baturh Yarkwan 1 * and Chukwudi U. Anyanwu 2 1. Dept. Of Biochemistry, Federal University of Agriculture, P.M.B. 2373, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria. 2. Dept. Of Microbiology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu state, Nigeria Abstract The decomposition of organic wastes, such as lignocellulosics to release the energy trapped therein has been remarked as one of the most important events of the carbon cycle. The organisms involved in these processes, if harnessed could be useful bio-resources for the production of value added products, such as cellulase. To screen for these organisms, decomposing waste materials were collected from different places in the environment. Screening was done following established methods. Four fungi species were obtained. These were Aspergillus niger, Fusarium spp, Spadicoides spp and Aspergillus spp. Of all these, Aspergillus niger had the highest (0.085 mg/ml) extracellular cellulase secreting ability, when cultivated on sodium carboxy-methyl cellulose (Na-CMC). All the organisms grew were on sugar cane bagasse (SCB) sore carbon sourced media. These organisms have been implicated in cellulase production previously, while Spadicoides spp has rarely, if at all ever been reported for having high extracellular cellulase secreting ability and is hereby reported for further studies. Key words: Aspergillus niger, Spadicoides spp, cellulase, Sugar cane bagasse (SCB) 1.0 Introduction Lignocellulose is the world’s most abundant biomass (Pomeranz and Meloan, 1994, Perez et al., 2002). It is the major component of woody and non-woody plants such as grass and represents the greatest source of renewable organic matter. It is produced chiefly by photosynthesis (Perez et al., 2002; Howard et al., 2003). Therefore, agricultural wastes (e.g. rice husks, corn stover, sugar cane bagasse, among others), forestry wastes (e.g. saw dust, mill wastes), municipal solid wastes (e.g. human excreta, paper waste) and several other industrial waste products contain essentially lignocellulose. Lignocellulosics are composed of three basic components namely: lignin, hemicellulose and cellulose which are strongly intermeshed and chemically bonded together by non-covalent forces and covalent cross linkages, hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces, thereby making them recalcitrant to enzymatic degradation (Perez et al., 2002; Hetti, 2004; Kirubahar et al., 2008). By means of chemical, biological, and thermochemical processes, it is possible to transform this insoluble polymer to glucose (a major starting material for several industrial processes). Chemical hydrolysis basically involves the use of acids in degrading lignocellulosics. In this method, lignin has little or no effect on the rate of acid hydrolysis (Seaman, 1981). Acid hydrolysis is probably the oldest and most studied method of lignocellulosics degradation. There are two types, dilute acid and concentrated acid (Seaman 1981; Conner et al., 1985; Badger 2002). The thermochemical method employs basically two approaches. Thermochemical and Biological Hybrid Systems: biomass are thermochemically gassified and the resultant synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbondioxide passed through specially designed fermenters loaded with microorganism(s) which have the capability of fermenting the gases, under defined conditions (Badger, 2002). In the second thermochemical ethanol production process, biomass materials are thermochemically gasified and passed through a reactor containing catalysts, which cause the gas to be converted to ethanol (Badger, 2002). The natural decomposition of lignocellulosics employ microbial enzymes in the exhaustive degradation of these materials (Kuwahara, 2000, Stepanova et al., 2002). This process is one of the most important events of the carbon cycle (Bennet et al., 2002). Lignocellulolytic enzymes are obtained from fungi and bacteria (Kader et al., 1999; Perez et al., 2002; Lee et al., 2006; Okafoagu and Nzelibe, 2006). However, filamentous fungi are the principal degraders of lignocellulose (Hammel, 2007). Of the microorganisms capable of producing cellulase, only a few produce significant amounts of extracellular cellulase, secreted in the growth medium (Kotchoni et al., 2003). Several families of extracellular enzymes have been implicated in lignocellulose breakdown. These include lignases (Biers 2003, Howard et al., 2003), hemicellulases (Bennet et al., 2002, Perez et al., 2002) and cellulases (Kleman-layer et al., 1996; Periera Junior et al., 2003). The hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose requires three enzyme components which function synergistically and co-ordinately to produce glucose and these are exocellulases, endocellulases, and β-glucosidases (Han et al., 1995; Kleman-layer et al., 1996; Periera Junior et al., 2003; Ray et al., 2007). Microorganisms capable of degrading cellulose include fungi, bacteria, eubacteria and actinomycetes (Kurasawa et al., 1992; Bhat and Bhat 1997; Cai et al., 1999; Howard et al 2003). Among these, fungal