Novel innovative biorefinery no-waste technologies for processing of berry pomaces (raspberry, aronia, black currant and European cranberry bush) into high values functional food ingredients will be developed and investigated. Novel extraction and fractionation processes by using supercritical dioxide and subcritical water (or a mixture of ethanol and other organic solvents ) of berry pomaces will be optimized. Berry pomaces will be fractionated into lipophilic fraction by supercritical carbon dioxide, polyphenolic compounds will be isolated by subcritical water and their mixtures with organic solvents, while remaining insoluble carbohydrate and protein components will be subjected to subcritical water fractionation after biotechnological processing. In order to increase the yield of active substances, to convert some pomace ingredients (e.g. polysaccharides) into higher value funcional components (e.g. prebiotic oligosaccharides) berry press-cakes will be subjected to an enzymatic treatment using different enzymes. Processes will be optimized using mathematical methods, composition and properties of the developed fractions will be analyzed and evaluated by modern chromatographic, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and other methods. Antioxidant properties of functional components will be comprehensively evaluated. Developed functional components will be tested in various food matrices to assess their impact on the various indicators and particulalry on biopotential (antioxidant capacity) of foods produced with such components. For this purpose the dynamics of the release of active substances into liquid phase during digestion will be evaluated by the in vitro simulation of the pH and enzymatic environment in different digestive tract parts. Innovation: scarcely studied berry processing by-products (pomaces) and new complex of high -pressure technologies using sub – and supercritical fluids and biotechnological methods.
Project funding:
Research Council of Lithuania, National Research Programme „Healthy and Safe Food“
Project results:
By applying the concept of zero-waste biorefining, innovative technologies for complex processing of selected berry pomace into high-value functional food ingredients were developed and researched. Extraction and fractionation processes of pomace with supercritical carbon dioxide and subcritical water (or its mixtures with ethanol or other organic solvents) were optimized. The pomace was successively fractionated into a lipophilic fraction with supercritical carbon dioxide and a fraction of polyphenolic compounds with subcritical water and its mixtures with organic solvents. In order to increase the yield of active substances, enzymatic processing methods (treatment of chokeberry pomace with Viscozyme enzyme) were applied to change some components of pomace into functional components of higher value. The processes were optimized using mathematical methods, the composition and properties of the obtained fractions were analyzed and evaluated using modern chromatography, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and other methods. In addition, the antioxidant properties of the obtained functional components were evaluated in detail, these components were tested in various food matrices, and their influence on various indicators was evaluated, especially on the antioxidant properties of food products made with them.
Project coordinator: Kaunas University of Technology
