Microencapsulation of enzymes to accelerate cheese maturation process

Description of the technology

Researchers at the University of Burgos have developed a technology of microencapsulation of proteolitic enzymes in liposomes that reduces time cheese maturation process, maintaining their organoleptic characteristics. The addition of encapsulated enzymes eliminates the problems associated with the direct addition, reducing time maturation and therefore giving a quicker exit of the product to market.

Specifications

The cheese maturation process represents an important percentage of the total costs related to the cheese production. In order to reduce these costs, there have been numerous attempts to accelerate the process without taste or texture detriment (temperature rise of maturation, increasing population of starters and addition of exogenous enzymes ...). The initial success of the enzyme treatments is reduced both by the loss of the enzyme in the serum and early changes of aroma and flavor.

Main advantages of its use

• The technology of immobilized enzymes has been proposed as a tool which can overcome these difficulties. It aims to optimize the conditions of detention of proteases and lipases by microencapsulation in different media and to investigate the effect of encapsulated enzymes on cheese maturation process.

Applications

• This technique is aimed at the food industry, especially for companies producing cheese.