Extraction and deproteinization of pumpkin polysaccharide

Abstract

Extraction and deproteinization methods of polysaccharide from pumpkin were studied. We extracted crude polysaccharide by the method of hot water extraction. The percentages of deproteinization and polysaccharide loss were compared as indexes using the trichloroacetic acid (TCA) method, the NaCl method, the and CaCl₂ method, respectively. The results showed that the TCA method exhibited the lowest percentage of deproteinization, and a little higher percentage of polysaccharide loss than the other two methods. The CaCl₂ method excelled over the NaCl method in deproteinization.

Keywords::

• Pumpkin
• polysaccharide
• extraction
• deproteinization
• comparison

Declarations of interest: The present work was supported by Foundation Project of Chongqing Normal University (No. 10XLZ004), Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (numbers CSTC, 2009BB5238 and 2009JJ1075), and Chongqing Education Commission Foundation (number KJ080810), China.