OBTAINING AN INNOVATIVE FERMENTED INGREDIENT FROM BABASSU AND BRAZIL NUT KERNELS: ADDING VALUE TO FOREST PRODUCTS

Forest products are of great economic importance to Northern Brazil. Notably, babassu (Attalea speciosa) and Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa) are two of the most important species to local communities from the Amazon region. This work aimed to evaluate the use of babassu mesocarp flour and Brazil nut flour as substrates to produce an innovative food ingredient, by a submerged fermentation process, using Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. boulardii. The fermentation was performed in 250 mL Erlenmeyer flasks containing 50 mL of each flour suspension at a concentration of 100 mg mL–1, inoculated with the yeast at a concentration of 108 cells mL–1 and incubated at 30°C under 150 rpm agitation. Samples were collected every 4 h over a 12-h process for a kinetic study. The number of viable cells was counted using the drop-plate technique to evaluate the fermented products as probiotic carrier ingredients. The antioxidant activity was assessed using the ABTS, DPPH and FRAP methods and the antidiabetic activity was evaluated by the inhibition of the enzymes α-amylase and α-glucosidase. The cell counting reached 7.75 and 8.03 log UFC mL-1, for babassu and Brazil nut respectively, after 12h of fermentation. The highest values for the antioxidant activities of the freeze-dried fermented products for ABTS, DPPH and FRAP methods, respectively, were 92.76, 105.07 and 181.77 µmol TE g-1 for babassu and 17.01, 6.48 and 11.77 µmol TE g-1 for Brazil nut. The highest inhibition of α-amylase was 65.11% for babassu and 23.34% for Brazil nut fermented products; 41.05% of the α-glucosidase activity was inhibited by the babassu fermented product, but no inhibition was observed for Brazil nut. This study showed that the incorporation of fermentation processes is an interesting tool for the development of new ingredients from the Amazon Biome with added-value for the food market.