Forty-first Conference Preliminary Studies on the Enzymic "removal" of Dextran from Deteriorated Cane Juice

Dextran is one of the by-products of sour-storage rot of sugar cane (Egan, 1971). The presence of dextran in cane juice entering the mill has many deleterious effects on raw sugar processing and quality (Foster, 1969a,b; Henderson, 1971; Foster and Wright, 1969; Leonard and Richards, 1969). Hence, the removal of the polysaccharide from juice may alleviate these effects. Physico-chemical methods for the removal of dextran in the mill have not been successful (Tilbury, 1970). Tilbury (1971) has reported that incubation of mixed juice with dextranase at 4 3 T reduced the level of dextran (1500-9000 ppm on Brix) by 22-100 per cent of the original concentration. The properties of commercial preparations of dextranase have been examined in buffer-sucrose solutions and in deteriorated cane juice. In this paper, some properties of these enzymes are summarized and a method proposed for the use of dextranase under processing conditions.