Cane molasses, the most widely used carbon source for the industrial fermentation of L-lysine, usually contains a high concentration of calcium ions which tend to cause scaling problem in the recovery process. To remove the calcium ions, cane molasses was pretrea ted with sulfuric acid by adjusting the pH to 2.5-3.5. When the pretreated solution was directly heat-sterilized and used in the fermentation, a significant reduction in L-lysine production was observed. In this paper, we proved that sucrose is a superior substrate for L-lysine fermentation to that of glucose or fructose and that the above-mentioned decrease of L-lysine production was caused by the hydrolysis of sucrose in the molasses when the molasses was heat-sterilized at a low pH. The problem was overcome by adjusting the pH of molasses to neutral before sterilization.
