Innovative approaches in the production of low-glycemic index carbohydrates: structural and functional evaluation of pectin obtained from sunflower by-products

• Autores: Nerea Muñoz Almagro
• Directores de la Tesis: Mar Villamiel (dir. tes.), Antonia Montilla Corredera (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2019
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: José Vicente García Pérez (presid.), Mónica Rodríguez García-Risco (secret.), Giancarlo Cravotto (voc.), Francisco Javier Moreno Andújar (voc.), Virginia García-Cañas (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias de la Alimentación por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
• Materias:
  • Física
    • Química física
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• Resumen

  • The reformulation of sugar rich products has been widely demanded in the last decades, due to its correlation with numerous diseases. In this sense, there is a growing interest toward the use of low methyl esterified pectin to develop sugar free or low-sugar formulations, for its ability to form gel without sucrose. Although the addition of small amount of sugar is enough to improve the firmness and organoleptic properties of gels, in a huge number of reports at least a 40% of sucrose is added. Furthermore, artificial low methyl esterified pectins are obtained chemically or enzymatically from commercial high methyl esterified pectins. Moreover, at industry, pectins are produced under severe conditions from conventional sources such as citrus and apple by-products. Due to the emerging interest toward pectin, alternative sources are explored to provide new structural and functional characteristics, paying special attention to those with low degree of methyl esterification and different content of neutral monosaccharides. In this sense, sunflower heads can constitute an adequate and sustainable source of pectin. Therefore, in a first part of this PhD Thesis, natural low methyl esterified pectins from sunflower heads were obtained using different extracting agents techniques. Moreover, a more efficient and robust analytical methodology was validated for the estimation of molecular weight of pectins overcoming the limitations of general established methods. Likewise, considering the variability of structural features (molecular weight, methyl esterification degree, monosaccharide composition) of the sunflower pectins recovered, the gelation of these polysaccharides was studied.