Comparison of bee pollen antioxidant profile after enzymatic hydrolysis and lactic acid fermentation

Abstract

Bee pollen is one of the most popular product of natural origin, which is known and is used for thousand years for its nutritional and medicinal properties. Recently, this natural product gain a huge attention of the due to its chemical composition, therapeutic properties and possibilities of uses. However, pollen wall structure is resistant to the human digestion system and limited bioavailability is determined. New tendencies in food biotechnology induce to use fermentation or enzymatic treatments due to make products more usable. Also, these processes help to increase amount of nutrients, peptides, amino acids, probiotics and vitamins [1]. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of fermentation with lactic acid bacteria and enzymatic hydrolysis on bee pollen antioxidant activity. Nine samples of bee pollen from Sweden, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, Malta and Slovakia were fermented and hydrolyzed using lactic acid fermentation and enzymes, respectively. Three types of bee pollen treatment were performed: spontaneous fermentation, bacterial fermentation with L. rhamnosus and enzymatic hydrolysis (using Viscozyme L, Clara-diastase, lipase, protease, amyloglucosidase and cellulase enzymes). Total phenolic compound content, total ßavonoid content and antioxidant activity were determined in the bee pollen extracts by spectrophotometric methods in order to evaluate amount of bioactive compounds [2, 3, 4]. The total content of phenolic compounds was measured using Folin–Ciocalteu reagent. The total ßavonoid content analysis was carried out performing colorimetric reaction with aluminum chloride. Antiradical activity, characterized by the total radical scavenging activity, was measured using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical. Also, the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) was measured with platinum electrode using a standard multimeter [5]. Additionally, the fermentation process or enzymatic treatment [...]