Flaxseed gum from flaxseed hulls: Extraction, fractionation, and characterization

Soluble dietary fibre with low viscosity has the potential to deliver acceptable mouthfeel and texture when included in the diet in a significant amount to show health benefits. Soluble flaxseed gum (SFG) was reported to have low viscosity, thus has potential in applications as a fibre fortifier. In the present work, SFG extracted from flaxseed hulls was fractionated into a neutral fraction gum (NFG) and an acidic fraction gum (AFG) using ion exchange chromatography. The protein content in SFG (11.8%) and AFG (8.1%) were completely removed by protease to obtain two more protein-free fractions, SFGnP and AFGnP; NFG contained no protein. The uronic acid content in NFG (1.8%) was mostly eliminated, whereas in AFC increased to 38.7%. NFG consisted of high molecular weight (MW) (1470 kDa) arabinoxylans and exhibited pseudoplastic flow behaviour; whereas AFG was mainly composed of rhamnogalacturonans with a higher MW fraction (1510 kDa) and a lower MW fraction (341 kDa) and showed Newtonian flow behaviour. The ranking of intrinsic viscosities (mL g−1) in decreasing order was: SFG (446.0) > NFG (377.5) > AFG (332.5). AFG was expected to have higher chain flexibility for its lower value of Huggins constant (0.16) compared to that of NFG (0.54) and SFG (0.48). In comparison with SFGnP, AFGnP and NFG, SFG and AFG showed better surface activities and emulsifying stabilities due to the presence of protein in both fractions.