Preparation and Comparative Study of Chitosan from Shells of Different Marine and Freshwater Prawns

Ujwala Jadhav and Archana Pillai

Department of Life sciences, University of Mumbai, Kalina, Santacruz (E), Mumbai- 400 098 India.   Corresponding Author E-mail: uja_life@yahoo.com          

ABSTRACT: Chitin is the main constituent of the exoskeleton or shells of the crustaceans which is treated as a waste but if it is purified we get chitosan which is useful for various industrial and agricultural purposes and used as biomedical agent. Among the various crustaceans, prawns are known to have a higher amount of chitosan. Various species of prawns contains different amounts of chitosan in their shells. The shells of prawns are treated by Deproteinization, demineralization, decolouration and deacetylation methods. Present experiment deals with purification of chitin into chitosan and determining their chitosan content in prawn species Penaeus indicus, Penaeus monodon, Peneaus aztecus, Macrobranchium rosenbergii and Macrobranchium semisulcatus which are locally available in Mumbai region. This gives us a detail comparison of the amount of extractable chitosan available in each of these prawn species to know the high content of chitosan present among these species. Hence it can be used commercially for mass production for various applications.

KEYWORDS: Chitin; Penaeus; exoskeleton; treatment; extraction; Chitosan

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