ABSTRACT
Microbial exopolysaccharides (EPS) are the extracellular complex material, secreted outside of cells mainly comprised of carbohydrates, proteins, DNA, lipid material, etc. EPS has shown a wide range of industrial applications in food dressing, sauce, low-calorie food, emulsifier, coating agent, thickening, and stabilizer. Considering the wide range of applications and increasing market demand microorganisms offered a cost-effective and user-friendly source for EPS production in comparison to chemical, plant, and animal derived approaches. Various types of organic material can be used as feedstock for microbial fermentation and EPS production. Identification of microbes having high EPS production capability with unique composition and properties is very important. Various techniques can be used to study EPS monomeric composition and functional groups like high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), thin layer chromatography (TLC), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), etc. Structural properties are investigated using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), while thermal and crystallinity are studied using thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) and X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD), respectively. Applications of EPS are important, and in this chapter, various methods and protocols used for the evaluation of EPS potential are discussed in detail.
