extraction of hull-less barley (cultivar lut) ß-glycan using hot water: optimization using response surface methodology

introduction: β-glucan is the most important water soluble fiber found in cell wall of some cereals such as barley, oat, wheat and rye, that are composed of β-d-glucoseunits with (1→4) (70%) and (1→3) (30%)anomericbonds(benito-román, alonso, & cocero, 2013).β-glucan is regarded as a dietary fiber in functional foods. it can act as a hydrocolloid due to its thickening characteristic in aqueous phase and can be used as a stabilizer in some foods such as sauces, salad dressing and ice cream (dawkins & nnanna, 1995; kontogiorgos, biliaderis, kiosseoglou, & doxastakis, 2004; temelli, 1997; wood & webster, 1986). hull-less barley is a barley variety that has no hard coat around its’ seeds. the content of soluble fiber e.g. β-glucan in hull-less barley is higher than of ordinary barley varieties. hull-lessbarley cv. lut is the first commercial hull-less barley in iran registered in 2013 by spii(seed and plant improvement institute). lut is a kind of spring barley cultivar which is precocious and resistant to lodging. it’s average yield is 6.425 t/ha and it is suitable to cultivation in temperate regions of iran (spii, 2013).this type of barley contains about 6% β-glucan and thus is a good source for β-glucan extraction.to date no research has been conducted on properties of β-glucan from this cultivar of barley.considering high technological properties of β-glucan, the present study was carried out to determine the optimal condition for extraction of β-glucan from hull-lessbarley using hot watermethod to achieve the highest qualitative and best functional properties. materials and methods: barley flour was obtained by grinding whole kernels of cv. lut in a laboratory mill and sieved through a 0.50 mm screen. prior to the extraction procedure, 50 g of barley flour was suspended in 200 ml of aqueous ethanol (80%, v/v) and stirred under reflux for 3 h to remove most of the lipids and inactivate the endogenous β-glucanases. the liquid phase was separated by vacuum filtration and dried at 40 °c for 12 h. 50 g of dried defatted barley flour was suspended in specified amounts of distilled water (solven:flour ratio = 6:1, 8:1 and 10:1) in a 1000 ml beaker. ph was adjusted to the designed levels (5, 7, and 9) by 0.1 n hcl and 0.1 n naoh solutions. extraction procedure carried out at 50±1°c for 30, 60 and 90 minutes. total β-glucan content was determined by the specific enzymatic method of mcclear and glennie-holmes (1985) using the mixed linkage β-glucan assay kit (k-bglu 07/11) supplied by megazyme international (wicklow, ireland). the colour of β-glucan gums was measuredusing a hunter-lab colour flex 45 spectrophotometer (hunter associates laboratory, inc., reston, va, usa). the l*a*b* (cielab space) colour space measurement was used for colour analysis of β-glucan samples. emulsion stability (es) against high temperature was determined by heating emulsions in a water bath at 80 °c for 30 min followed by centrifuging at 1200 g for 10 min. for foam stability, ovalbumin was dissolved in distilled water and added to β-glucan solution and then whipped vigorously with a laboratory rotor-stator homogenizer at room temperature. flow behaviour measurements were done by a brookfield viscometer. the flow behavior index (n) and consistency coefficient (k) values were obtained by fitting the power law model. all chemicals, reagents and solvents were of analytical grade and obtained either from sigma-aldrich co (deisenhofen, germany) or from merck (darmstadt, germany). results &discussion;: results showed that the extraction time, solvent: flour ratio and ph had significant effect on extraction yield, purity, foam and emulsion stability, consistency coefficient (k), flow behavior index (n) and colour. increasing the extraction time had significant effects on β-glucan’s yield and purity and improved the emulsion and foam stabilizing effect of β-glucan. increasing the ph from 5 to 9 significantly enhanced the purity, consistency coefficient (k), foam and emulsion stability. at higher ph levels, extraction yield, flow behavior index (n) and l* decreased. with increasing solvent:flour ratio, extraction yield, purity, consistency coefficient (k), foam and emulsion stability significantly increased. in contrast, the flow behavior index (n) decreased as a result of increase in solvent: flour ratio. however, solvent: flour ratio had no significant effect on l*, a* and b*. models presented in this study were highly significant and the correlation coefficients could be used for optimization of ß-glucan extraction from hull-less barley. considering the importance and desirability of the response variables, the best results were obtained when the extraction time, solvent: flour ratio and ph were 90 min, 10:1 and 7.33 respectively. at the optimal condition, extraction yield, purity, foam stability, emulsion stability, consistency coefficient (k), flow behavior index (n), l*, a* and b* were 4.12%, 69.11%, 86.95%, 88.77%, 1.51 pa.sn, 0.62, 73.42, 0.81 and 8.72 respectively.