A B S T R A C T The main objective of the study is to enhance the mevastatin production using Plackett–Burman (PB) and central composite design (CCD) by Aspergillus terreus in submerged fermentation (SmF). Eight nutrients were chosen for a PB design with 12 experimental runs. A maximum mevastatin production of 170.4 mg L À1 was obtained in PB design. Response surface methodology (RSM) is a sequential procedure with an initial objective to lead the experimenter rapidly and efficiently along a path of improvement toward the general vicinity of the optimum. The individual and interactive effects of these variables were studied by conducting the fermentation run at randomly selected and different levels of all five factors. Experiments were conducted to optimize the medium constituents like glycerol, CuCl 2 Á2H 2 O, FeSO 4 Á7H 2 O, KH 2 PO 4 and MgSO 4 Á7H 2 O. At the optimum condition, a maximum mevastatin production of 701 mg L À1 was obtained. ã 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).