Modification of Plant Biopolymers by Pulsed Electric Fields

Abstract

Modification of plant biopolymers was influenced by temperature in majority. Due to its unique characteristics, pulsed electric fields (PEF) has been considered as a novel, nonthermal technology and plays an important role on plant biopolymers in food industries. PEF shows great effects on modification of starch, enhancing reactions, improving properties, inducing changes in structures, enlarging applications of both starch and protein, and aggregating algae and sugar nuclei as well. The mechanism of starch modification synergized by PEF has been speculated. When handled with PEF treatment, electric potential difference was generated during the electrodes, which can accelerate the mobility rate of reaction ions and change their moving directions resulting in more effective collision. In addition, effective channels for intruding targeted groups and water molecules in starch granules based on electroporation theory were proposed. Other nonnegligible reason for enhancing reactions was due to sufficient energy imported to the reaction system. Meanwhile, particle deformation and properties improvement can be observed in starches treated by PEF with high pulse voltage. The applications of PEF technology on protein macromolecules induced structural changes in secondary and tertiary structure, which would greatly affect its texture and function. It is a better choice to apply PEF technology on the reactions which are sensitive to temperature and refer to polar molecules or physical/chemical reactions participated by ions resulting in higher reaction efficiency, modifying functional performance and increasing potential applications.