Sources, production and commercial applications of fungal chitosan: A review

Chitosan is a type of biopolymer that can be obtained from animal/marine sources, and it can also be extracted or produced from agriculture waste products like mushroom or different fungal sources after the chitin deacetylation. Depending on the size of mushroom farm, the amount of waste ranges between 5% and 20% of the production volume. The cell wall of the filamentous fungi, a good source of chitin, offers an easy way to extract chitin. The physicochemical characteristics such as molecular weight and degree of deacetylation of fungal chitosan can be controlled compared to chitosan obtained from crustacean sources. Fungal sourced chitosan can be used in food, pharmaceutical or biomedical applications for different applications, for example, as an antimicrobial agent, coating material, water purification or bio-pesticide. This review mainly focused on the extraction of chitin from mushroom or different fungal sources and also showed some applications of commercial chitosan products.