Experimental mixture design as a tool to optimize the growth of various species cultivated on media with different sugars.

The influence of different medium components (glucose, sucrose, and fructose) on the growth of different isolates and species was investigated using mixture design. Ten sugar combinations based on three simple sugars were generated with two different concentrations, namely 3.3% and 16.7%, which represented low and high sugar levels, respectively. The media were adjusted to either pH 5 or 8. isolates (two from oil palm, one species from coconut palm, , and from tower tree) grew faster at pH 8. proliferated at the slowest rate compared to all other tested species in all the media studied. However, isolates grew the fastest. Different species were found to have different sugar preferences. This study illustrated that the mixture design can be used to determine the optimal combinations of sugar or other nutrient/chemical components of media for fungal growth.