Action of pancreatin for obtaining whey protein hydrolysates with high oligopeptide contents

Abstract

Several enzymatic hydrolysates of whey were prepared with the objective of increasing the oligopeptide content and reducing the cost of large scale production. Pancreatin was used and some hydrolytic parameters such as reaction time (5, 10 and 15h), enzyme:substrate ratio (E:S) (1:100, 2:100 and 4:100) and substrate concentration (10 and 15%) were tested. The hydrolysates were fractionated by size-exclusion-HPLC and the rapid corrected fraction area method was used for quantifying the chromatographic fractions. The beneficial effect on the peptide profile was observed in several cases, and it was mainly associated with higher oligopeptide (49%) and lower amino acid (22%) contents, which were obtained for a substrate concentration of 10%, E:S ratio of 4:100 and reaction time of 10h.