Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Proceedings of 14 SLACA - Latin American Symposium on Food Science

Chicken meat is the most consumed animal protein source in the world, with an average of 14.9 kg/capita/year, and the largest producers of this product are USA, China and Brazil. The national production (Brazil) reached 13,845 thousand tons of chicken meat in 2020. Linked to high production is the respective waste generation that needs to be reused or properly disposed. The enzymatic hydrolysis of chicken wastes rich in proteins has gained great visibility, since the hydrolysates can have greater digestibility for use as animal feed, improving functional or even biological properties, through the release of bioactive peptides. Therefore, the objective of this work was to use a chicken viscera protein concentrate as substrate for enzymatic hydrolysis using a binary mixture, in equal proportions, of the commercial enzymes Alcalase and Flavourzyme. An experimental design was carried out to evaluate the effects of the independent variables: enzyme concentration (U/mL) and hydrolysis time (min) on the enzymatic hydrolysis of the protein concentrate. The evaluated response variables were: TCA-soluble protein, antioxidant properties measured by ABTS, DPPH, FRAP and total reducing capacity (TRC). Although significant effects (p < 0.10) of the variables on the responses were not verified, the different assays from the experimental design showed that protein hydrolysates obtained in a short time and at low enzyme concentration showed high antioxidant properties. Even with the increase in the degree of hydrolysis, estimated by the TCA-soluble protein, there was no increase in the antioxidant activity of the hydrolysates. Still, comparing the control assay (non-hydrolyzed), the hydrolysates showed an increase in antioxidant activity of up to 245% for ABTS, 353% for DPPH, 69% for FRAP and 146% for TRC. The results showed that the enzymatic hydrolysis was an efficient way to modify the chicken viscera proteins and to release of antioxidant peptides.