Dados do Trabalho

Título

USE OF PHYSICAL PROCESSES TO ENHANCE PEA PROTEIN EXTRACTION: IMPACT ON YIELD AND MACRO STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS

Introdução

The demand for plant proteins has increased and the development of new
strategies is crucial to enhance extraction yield. Therefore, this work evaluated the effect
of physical processes (high shear dispersion (HSD), ultrasound (US) and roasting) on the
extraction yield of pea proteins, as well as the effects on the protein macrostructure.

Material e Métodos

For this, the pea grains were divided into non-roasted and roasted (200 °C/10 min), and
subsequently ground. The obtained flours underwent protein extraction through
isoelectric precipitation, with the application of HSD (15,000 rpm/20 min/25°C) and US
(38W.L-1/20 min/25°C) processes during the alkaline solubilization stage (pH=10/120
min). The control was processed under the same extraction conditions, without applying
physical processes. The samples were lyophilized and analyzed for protein content (%),
total and protein yield (%), mean particle size (MPS) (d.nm), ζ potential (mV) and
polydispersity index (PDI).

Resultados e Discussão

As a result, it was observed that the controls, with or without
roasting, showed higher protein contents (82.5% and 84.1%, respectively) when
compared to samples processed by HSD (non-roasted: 77.1% and roasted: 77.2%) and by
US (non-roasted: 75.7% and roasted: 77.3%) (p<0.05). However, the yields (total and
protein) were higher for samples subjected to HSD (increase of up to 10%) (p<0.05). This
indicates that the application of the technologies reduced the purity of the samples, but
HSD increased protein recovery. The MPS was reduced after the roasting (≤66.2%),
sonication (≤42%), and HSD (≤25%) (p<0.05), demonstrating that the thermal effect
surpassed the effect of technologies. Consequently, roasting had a great impact on the
reduction of PDI (≤47.0%) (p<0.05), indicating an increase in particle uniformity.
Additionally, there was an increase in the ζ potential after roasting (≤32.6%) (p<0.05),
indicating greater repulsion and colloidal stability of the samples in solution.

Conclusão

It is concluded that the physical processes, especially HSD and roasting, had a significant
impact on the yield and macro structural characteristics of the proteins, respectively.
Future studies are needed to evaluate these effects on the biological and technicalfunctional properties of the extracted proteins.