PRODUCTION OF THEOBROMINE FROM PSUEDOMONAS SP.

Theobromine is a colourless and odourless compound with a slightly bitter taste naturally present in the cacao tree and its seeds. It has a similar, but lesser, effect than caffeine in the human nervous system, making it a lesser homologue. Theobromine plays an important role in vasodilator (a blood vessel widener), a diuretic (urination aid) and heart stimulant and as a skin moisturant. Therefore it is preferred as a potential therapeutic supplement to many critical diseases besides being used as dietary supplement in the confectionary industries. The large number of clinical trails is being conducted to evaluate its potential for therapies in neurodegenerative diseases, cardiac diseases; cancer etc and overall results are very much positive and optimistic. This has driven the demand for Theobromine supply to meet the market requirements. Theobromine can be produced either by synthetic or natural route. The Theobromine production by natural route is preferred over synthetic method due to low production cost, safe environmental issue. At present there two methods of producing theobromine by natural route are extracting from the plants sources and microbial fermentation. Currently an attempt is made to develop a process for the production of this molecule from a microbial species. Bacterial culture, Psuedomonas putida was utilized for this study. In the present work, this strain was taken for production of Theobromine in shake flask fermentation. The optimization of media for better yield during shake flask fermentation and the results obtained are presented and discussed.