Abstract

In a previous report [Zúñiga, M.E., J. Concha, C. Soto, and R. Chamy, Effect of the Rose Hip (Rosa aff. rubiginosa) Oil Extraction Cold-Pressed Process, in Proceedings of the World Conference and Exhibition on Oilseed Processing and Utilization, edited by R.F. Wilson, AOCS Press, Champaign, 2001, pp. 210-213], the authors showed that an enzymatic pretreatment of rose-hip seeds, prior to oil extraction by cold pressing, improves the oil yield. In this work, we studied the effects of temperature and moisture during the enzymatic hydrolysis stage using two previously selected mixtures of commercial enzymes: (i) Olivex (mainly pectinase) plus Cellubrix (mainly cellulase), and (ii) Finizym (mainly ?-glucanase) plus Cellubrix (mainly cellulase) (all from Novozymes A/S, Madrid, Spain). In addition, we evaluated the effect of enzymatic hydrolysis on the oil extraction pressing rate at different operational pressures. Samples hydrolyzed enzymatically by either of the two commercial enzyme mixtures at 45°C and 30-40% moisture showed oil extraction yields up to 60%, an increase of greater than 50%, as compared with control samples in which the enzyme solutions were replaced by water. Both the oil extraction rate and yield by pressing increased when enzymatic pretreatment was applied. The oil extraction yield increased slightly when the operation pressure was elevated; however, when the sample was preheated, the oil extraction yield was greatly increased, especially for enzyme-treated samples. Results confirmed the importance of temperature and moisture as enzymatic hydrolysis parameters that improve rose-hip oil extraction yields in the cold-pressing process. When pressing was carried out after preheating enzymatically treated samples, it was possible to increase the oil extraction yield to 72% compared with the control without preheating, which resulted in a 46% oil yield.