Enzymatic preparation of mushroom dietary fibre: A comparison between analytical and industrial enzymes

A comparative study on preparing dietary fibres (DFs) from three mushroom sclerotia, namely, Pleurotus tuber-regium (PTR), Polyporus rhinocerus (PR) and Wolfiporia cocos (WC), using analytical or industrial enzymes (including α-amylase, protease and amyloglucosidase), was conducted. Apart from enzyme activity and purity, their effects on the yield of sclerotial DF as well as its major components, such as β-glucans, chitin and resistant glycogen (RG), were investigated and compared. The activities of all industrial enzymes were significantly lower than those of their corresponding analytical ones, except for the Fungamyl® Super MA, which had the highest α-amylase activity (6395 U/g). However, this fungal α-amylase was less able to digest the three sclerotial glycogens when compared with the bacterial alternatives. Amongst all tested enzymes, only analytical and industrial amyloglucosidases were found to have significant amount of contaminating cellulase (7.05–7.07 U/ml) and lichenase (4.62–4.67 U/ml) activities, which would cause endo-depolymerization of the β-glucan-type cell wall components (3.39% reduction in glucose residue after RG correction) of the PTR, leading to a marked α-amylase hydrolysis of its otherwise physically-inaccessible cytoplasmic glycogen (20.3% reduction in RG content). Commercial production of the three novel sclerotial DFs, using the industrial enzymes, would be feasible since, in addition to their economic advantage, both the yield (PTR: 81.2%; PR: 86.5%; WC: 96.2% of sample DM) and total non-starch polysaccharide contents (PTR: 88.0%; PR: 92.5%; WC: 91.1% DF-rich materials of DM) of their resulting sclerotial DFs were comparable to the levels of those prepared using analytical enzymes.