Effect of temperature and pressure on the activity of purified tomato polygalacturonase in the presence of pectins with different patterns of methyl esterification

The presented research data clearly indicates that during thermal and high pressure processing the activity of tomato PG is always higher in the presence of blockwise deesterified pectin than in the presence of randomly deesterified pectin. Moreover, by the action of tomato PG the former substrate gives rise to more and smaller oligomers as compared to the latter substrate. Hence, as a fungal PME produces randomly deesterified pectins, it better protects the deesterified substrate to plant PG action breakdown than a plant PME, yielding blockwise deesterified pectins. So, concerning the need to preserve the texture/rheology of processed fruit- and vegetable-based products, it is better to use a fungal PME.