Papain Production Technology: Process Development for Quality Papain from Papaya Latex

The latex present in the young fruits of papaya and other parts contains two proteolytic enzymes, papain and chymopapain. A study was undertaken to find out changes, occurring during storage of raw and pre treated latex at different temperature and packaging material, drying of latex by different drying methods and its storage under different temperatures and packaging materials. The freshly extracted latex was dried using hot air oven, fluidized bed dryer, vacuum oven and solar dryer at different drying temperatures. The vacuum oven drying at 60 oC drying temperature and 300 mm Hg pressure was found to be best in respect of colour, texture of and papain activity (494.88 TU/mg) followed by fluidized bed drying at 60 oC (482.32 TU/mg) and hot air oven drying at 50 oC (466.69 TU/mg). The papain activity of the samples dried by solar drying method was 399.94 TU/mg, which was about 19% lower than the activity of the sample dried at 60 oC in vacuum oven. The lowest reduction in papain activity was found in the samples packed in aluminum foils followed by the samples packed in glass containers .