Amylases for Food Applications—Updated Information

Discovering of new industrial applications from microorganisms is diverse as they came from variety of environmental niches. The majority of existing biotechnological applications are of microbial origin and enzymes are the most important among them. Microbial enzymes surpass those from animals and plant sources since their ease of production and genetic manipulation, diverse catalytic activities, etc. The role of enzymes in many processes has been known for a long time, in which the enzymes from microorganisms, used particularly for baking, brewing, alcohol production, cheese making etc. Starch represents one of the most pervasive and an important renewable biological resource that forms a major source of food to a large population. Starch hydrolysis forms the basis of many industrial processes and acid hydrolysis was significant during the earlier days. However, this was almost completely replaced by enzymatic hydrolysis, nowadays, since the availability and abundance of starch hydrolasing microorganisms, corrosion-free reaction, and specificity of the reaction. One of the major applications of these enzymes is in the food industry and starch hydrolysis yields a diverse range of products such as glucose, maltose and fructose syrups, cyclodextrins, fat mimetics substances, etc. They also find application as brewing and baking agents. Enzymatic liquefaction and saccharification of starch require higher temperatures; that demands novel thermostable amylases. In this chapter, we are discussing about various aspects of amylase enzymes, their sources, application in the food industry and future prospects of thermostable amylase from mesophilic organisms, etc.