Production of Isomalto-Oligosaccharides from Available Economic Starchy Materials

ABSTRACT:
Isomalto-oligosaccharides have a great potential to improve the physiochemical quality of many foods as anti-fading agent for food pigments, as prebiotic, food antioxidant and as a sweetener. Solid-state fermentation (SSF) has been applied in the production of many fermented foods (Couto and Sanroman, 2006). Various fungi have been used in order to produce amylolytic enzymes for starch degradation. Many fungal amylolytic enzymes are used to advantage in prebiotic oligosaccharide production. Isomaltooligosaccharides which are known as prebiotic branched-oligosaccharides have been synthesized from starchy grains (Kuriki et al, 1993; Pan and Lee, 2005). The effects of agricultural substrate and fungal strain were studied to maximize the isomalto- oligosaccharides yield. The production of Isomalto-oligosaccharides by fungal fermentation using available economic starchy materials as wheat, white corn, and starch was investigated. This study was designed to investigate the potential use of economic crops of Egypt to produce prebiotic isomalto-oligosaccharides using the process of solid state fungal fermentation. Solid state fermentation with Aspergillus Oryzae EMCC 126 was studied to increase the isomalto-oligosaccharides yield. Results show that the fermentation of wheat with A. Oryzae produced the highest concentrations of total reducing sugar (460.8 mg/g) and free amino nitrogen (20.3 mg/g) with the highest levels of amylolytic activity (87.0 U/g), α-amylase (32.5 U/g) and α-glucosidase (1.2 U/g) compared with that produced from fermentation of white corn or starch. The appropriate fermentation time for 5 days, the fermented wheat slurry was experimented on further in mashing for syrup production. The obtained wheat syrup contained the highest amounts of isomaltose, panose, and isomaltotriose, which were detected by very small amounts in the syrup of corn and starch.