Synthetic dyes are extensively used in different industries. Dyes have adverse impacts such as visual effects, chemical oxygen demand, toxicity, mutagenicity and carcinogenicity characteristics. White rot fungi, due to extracellular enzyme system, are capable to degrade dyes and various xenobiotics. The aim of this study was to optimize decolorization of reactive blue 19 (RB19) dye using
Ganoderma
sp. fungus. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to study the effect of independent variables, namely glycerol concentration (15, 20 and 25 g/L), temperature (27, 30 and 33 oC) and pH (5.5, 6.0 and 6.5) on color removal efficiency in aqueous solution. From RSM-generated model, the optimum conditions for RB19 decolorization were identified to be at temperature of 27oC, glycerol concentration of 19.14 mg/L and pH=6.3. At the optimum conditions, predicted decolorization was 95.3 percent. The confirmatory experiments were conducted and confirmed the results by 94.89% color removal. Thus, this statistical approach enabled to improve reactive blue 19 decolorization process by
Ganoderma sp. up to 1.27 times higher than non-optimized conditions.
