BIOSCIENCES BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH ASIA, June 2021. Vol. 18(2), p. 337-345 Published by Oriental Scientific Publishing Company © 2021 This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY). *Corresponding author E-mail: hilpa.chapadgaonkar@mitwpu.edu.in Optimization of α-Amylase Production from Bacillus Amyloliquefaciens using Taguchi method Pankhuri Sharma 1 and Shilpa Chapadgaonkar 2 * 1 ManavRachna International Institute of Research and Studies,Faridabad, Haryana, India. 2 MIT World Peace University, Pune, Maharashtra, India. http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/2920 (Received: 07 April 2021; accepted: 27 July 2021) α-amylase, an enzyme of industrial importance is used extensively in food, pharmaceutical, textile and detergent industries. Since, a substantial quantity of α-amylase isderived from microbial sources, manipulation of bacterial strain, fermentation conditions and media composition has a major effect on yield of enzyme. Bacillus amyloliqifaciens, obtained from MTCC culture collection was used to study the enhancement of a-amylase production using media concentration manipulation. Taguchi’s orthogonal array was designed for maximization of α-amylase output. The different media components selected as parameters to be optimized were calcium chloride, starch, tryptone, ammonium sulphate and glucose. The concentration of starch and tryptone demonstrated to have maximum effect on amylase production. The optimization strategy was successful in obtaining substantial increase in amylase production of about 2 folds as compared to the unoptimized medium. Keywords: α-amylase; Bacillus amyloliquefaciens; Enzyme Production; Fermentation; Optimization; Taguchi method. á-amylase (E.C. 3.2.1.1.), derived from several sources, including plants, animals and microorganisms, accounts for approximately 30% of the world’s enzyme production. 1-3 Microbial á-amylase is of immense signifcance due to its distinct application in food, textile, detergents, paper and pharmaceutical industries as it is more stable as compared to plant or animal based enzymes. Today, microbial amylases are preferred over chemical hydrolysis of starch in most of the starch processing industries 4 . á-amylases are endo- amylases that cleave 1, 4-á- D-glycosidic linkages of adjacent glucose units in linear chain of amylose thus yield products retaining alpha- anomeric confguration. Many studies have examined the process of submerged fermentation for á-amylase synthesis. 5-8 Many species of Bacillus have been reported as excellent á-amylase producers. Because of their high-yielding capacity, wild-type strains of Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens are commercially utilized for the production of á-amylase 9-10 . Concentration of media components infuences the yield of the enzyme, whereas practicality and economic value of the process is infuenced