Colour in sugar industry consists in a complex mixture of different types of colouranfs .
The most important being: (1) phenolic compounds coming from the cane plant, (2)
caramels which are produced by thermal degradation and condensation reactions of
sugars and (3) melanoidins formed from sugar-amino acid reactions via the Maillard
reaction. During refining process colourants are removed, at least in part, from the
"Iugar liquor by anion-exchange resins. The regeneration of the resins produces an
effluent containing those colourants. In order to study the ability of P. chrysosporium
to degrade each family of colourant, different culture media specifically enriched with
each colourant type were assayed. The results showed that the organism was able to
degrade all kinds of tested colourants
