Abstract

Gelatin is a gelling protein, which has widely been applied in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Most commercial gelatins are derived from mammalian sources, mainly pigskin and cowhide but for many socio-cultural reasons alternative sources are increasingly demanded. Fish skin forms a major portion of the fishery waste and this can be processed into gelatin which solve the problem of waste disposal and also create value added products. In this study, fish skin wastes of both marine and fresh water fishes were collected from various localities and gelatin extraction was done by using Grossman and Bergman method. The gelatin content obtained from both types of fishes was compared and marine fish waste found to have higher content of gelatin. The plant leaves of Psidium gaujava (Guava), Portulaca olaraceae (Common Purslane), Annona muricata (Soursop) were taken to analyze their antimicrobial activity by standard disc diffusion method against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Klebsiella sp., Salmonella sp. and from the result P. gaujava plant leaf extract is found to have highest antimicrobial activity. The plant leaf with highest antimicrobial activity is then incorporated to the marine fish gelatin for the preparation of gelatin beads by emulsion cross linking method. Gelatin beads thus obtained has potential application in pharmaceutical, medical and food industry.