Development and process optimization of modified aloe polysaccharide juice

Aloe vera is widely recognized for its medicinal properties, but the aloe polysaccharide has limited medicinal effectiveness in the human body due to its high molecular weight. Therefore, the present study aimed to reduce the molecular weight of aloe polysaccharides using enzymatic treatment utilizing process optimization technique. A Box-Behnken design was applied to optimize the enzymatic process parameters for developing modified aloe polysaccharide (MAP) juice using the following independent parameters: cellulase enzyme concentration (6–12 mg/L), exposure time (60–120 min), and solution temperature (30–50 ºC). The modified juice properties were evaluated by analyzing moisture content (MC), total soluble solid (TSS), colour, optical density (OD), refractive index (RI), Turbidity, pH, viscosity, fibre content (FC), polysaccharide content (PC), and molecular weight (Mw). The optimized conditions for achieving a minimum molecular weight and higher polysaccharide content were as follows: cellulase enzyme concentration (EC) of 6.0 mg/L, exposure time (ET) of 60 min, and solution temperature (ST) of 35.97 ºC. Under these optimized conditions, the following results were achieved: TSS of 0.86 ºBrix, colour value (L) of 30.04, viscosity of 1.07 cP, PC of 56.87% (w/w), and MW of 50.67 kDa, respectively. The developed MAP may be used for the development of polysaccharide-based functional food products.