The objective of this work was to apply low cost materials, agricultural residues, to the purification of xylanase. The results showed that crude extracellular, cellulase-free xylanase of an alkaliphilic Bacillus sp. strain K-8 could be purified in a single step by affinity adsorption-desorption on a corn husk column using a high flow rate, under the conditions 25 mM acetate buffer, pH 4.0, 4 degrees C, which prevented the hydrolysis of xylan by xylanase. After adsorption, the xylanase was eluted from the enzyme-corn husk complex with 500 mM Urea. The enzyme was purified 5.3-fold to homogeneity from culture supernatant. The molecular weight of the purified enzyme was 24 kDa as determined by sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). The specific activity and recovery yield after purification were 25.4 U/mg protein and 42.3%, respectively. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.