Pectin from Duckweed (Lemnaceae) As Potential Commercial Pectin and Its Gelling Function in Food Production: A Review

Abstract

Duckweed, a small flowering plant which comes from Lemnaceae family, has been rising in popularity to many researches and applications for its numerous valuable functional properties. One of its special features is fast growing plant and easily adapted to various types of regions which makes it attractive to be manipulated in many applications including in biofuel production, waste water treatment and also for pharmaceutical and medicinal purposes. Pectin is the common component found in plant cell wall and it has been used as food additive for its capability to gel, emulsify and stabilize food products.  Several requirements for commercial pectin such as galacturonic acid content (GalA) and degree of amidation have been regulated. Studies have proven that duckweed have significant amount of pectin which make it as a potential source of gelling agent in food industry. However, the structural properties of pectin from duckweed need to be investigated, in order to ensure if they meet the regulated requirements for industrial production. It is also to determine the suitability of duckweed pectin utilization in different type of food products since pectin of different sources have different structural characteristics, thus exhibit different gelling capability. This present review discusses on the potential of pectin from duckweed species to be utilized as food additive with gelling function in food products. Several extraction methods also have been reviewed, which each of them showed different efficiency and affect the extracted pectin characteristics.