What is Flavor enzyme?
Flavor enzymes are specialized preparations (often proteases, lipases, or amylases) used to break down proteins, fats, and carbohydrates to create, enhance, or restore savory, dairy, and fruity flavors. They are essential in food processing to improve taste, tenderize meat, speed up fermentation, and reduce off-flavors, primarily derived from microorganisms
Everything You Need to Know
What is the Flavourzyme enzyme?
Flavourzyme is sold as a peptidase preparation from Aspergillus oryzae. The enzyme preparation is widely and diversely used for protein hydrolysis in industrial and research applications. However, detailed information about the composition of this mixture is still missing due to the complexity.
What is a flavoenzyme?
Flavoenzymes are colourful oxidoreductases that catalyze a large variety of different types of reactions. Flavoenzymes have been extensively studied for their structural and mechanistic properties and are gaining momentum in industrial biocatalytic applications.
Main Details:
Flavor Enhancement: Increases the content of free amino acids and small peptides, providing savory or umami notes.
Debittering: Exopeptidases can reduce bitterness in protein hydrolysates.
Meat Tenderization: Enzymes like papain and bromelain improve texture and aroma.
Natural Processing: Allows for "natural" labeling compared to synthetic flavor additives
Functionality: It breaks down proteins into small peptides and free amino acids, specifically targeting bitter peptides to improve taste.
Applications:
Flavor Enhancement: Used to produce savory, brothy, or meat-like notes in soups, sauces, and snacks.
Debittering: Reduces bitterness in protein hydrolysates (e.g., soy, fish).
Dairy/Plant-Based: Used in maturation of cheese and production of plant-based protein hydrolysates.
ANALYTICAL RESULTS
| Test Item | Method (Ref. & No.) | Specification (Client / Internal) | Result | LOD/LOQ | Uncertainty | Conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identification | Enzyme activity profile (AOAC 2001.11 / Internal SOP ENZ-ID-01) | Conforms to declared enzyme type | Conforms | - | - | Pass |
| Appearance | Visual (USP <790>) | Light yellow to brown powder/liquid | Light brown powder | - | - | Pass |
| Odor | Organoleptic (Internal SOP ORG-02) | Characteristic fermentation odor | Conforms | - | - | Pass |
| pH (1% solution) | USP <791> | 4.0 – 7.5 | 5.6 | - | ±0.1 | Pass |
| Enzyme Activity (e.g., Amylase / Protease / Lipase)* | AOAC / FCC Method (e.g., FCC 11, ENZ-ACT-XX) | ≥ 10,000 U/g (example) | 12,450 U/g | 50 U/g | ±3.5% | Pass |
| Loss on Drying | USP <731> | ≤ 8.0% | 5.2% | 0.1% | ±0.3% | Pass |
| Ash Content | USP <281> | ≤ 10.0% | 6.7% | 0.1% | ±0.4% | Pass |
| Heavy Metals (Total) | ICP-MS (USP <233>, ISO 17294-2) | ≤ 20 ppm | 6.3 ppm | 0.01 ppm | ±10% | Pass |
| Lead (Pb) | ICP-MS | ≤ 5.0 ppm | 0.42 ppm | 0.01 ppm | ±10% | Pass |
| Arsenic (As) | ICP-MS | ≤ 3.0 ppm | 0.28 ppm | 0.01 ppm | ±10% | Pass |
| Cadmium (Cd) | ICP-MS | ≤ 1.0 ppm | 0.05 ppm | 0.005 ppm | ±10% | Pass |
| Mercury (Hg) | ICP-MS | ≤ 0.1 ppm | <0.02 ppm | 0.02 ppm | - | Pass |
| Microbial Limits | USP <61>/<62> | |||||
| Total Plate Count | USP <61> | ≤ 1.0×10⁵ CFU/g | 2.1×10³ CFU/g | 10 CFU/g | - | Pass |
| Yeast & Mold | USP <61> | ≤ 1.0×10³ CFU/g | 120 CFU/g | 10 CFU/g | - | Pass |
| E. coli | USP <62> | Absent / g | Not Detected | - | - | Pass |
| Salmonella | USP <62> | Absent / 25g | Not Detected | - | - | Pass |
| Residual Solvents | GC-HS (ICH Q3C, USP <467>) | Ethanol ≤ 5000 ppm | 320 ppm | 10 ppm | ±8% | Pass |
| Mycotoxins (if applicable) | LC-MS/MS (AOAC 991.31) | Aflatoxins ≤ 5 ppb | <1.0 ppb | 0.5 ppb | ±15% | Pass |
Production Process
