A Functionality Study of Mycoprotein

Sammanfattning: The mycoprotein was obtained from the company, Mycorena. The mycoprotein is a potential source of alternative protein of the animal origin used as the functional ingredients in the food industry. In this project, mycoprotein concentrate (MC) and mycoprotein isolate (MI) were produced by freeze-drying the biomass and pH-shift processing together with freeze-drying, respectively. Moreover, the functionality study was focused on the foaming properties, emulsifying properties, and gelling ability of mycoprotein. This project was primarily focused on three parts: the mycoprotein isolation, the functionality impacted by factors such as salt, pH, pre-thermal treatment, and protein powder concentration, and benchmarking of the MC and MI with other plant-based proteins. MI was isolated using the pH-shift process which allowed the protein to solubilize at pH 10 and recover (precipitated) at pH 4 to reach the overall extraction yield of 37\% from biomass (dry matter basis). The soluble protein content of MC and MI did not show any significant difference at pH 7. It was found that the salt concentration could affect the foaming capacity of MC. After a pre-heat treatment at 70$^{\circ}$C of MC solution, the foaming capacity was significantly improved while the foaming stability was significantly decreased. At pH 5, 7, and the original pH (5.7), the emulsifying properties (capacity and stability) did not show any significant difference. Different salt and pH treatments lead to the different gelling performance of MC. As for benchmarking the functionality of MC and MI to other plant-based proteins, the foaming stability and emulsifying capacity of MC displayed the best performance, whereas the MI observed a relatively poor functionality in all foaming, emulsifying, and gelling experiments. It was suggested that such poor functionality of MI could result from proteolytic hydrolysis. In conclusion, the pH-shift processing conducted in this project was not a promising approach to studying the functionality of mycoprotein. However, the native protein in MC observed a greater emulsifying capacity which has the potential for further application. Further research surrounding the optimal protein isolation method without compromising the functionality of mycoprotein is worth studying.