Process of extracting chili (capsicum) oleoresin

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, the present invention provides a process for obtaining oleoresin of improved color and pungency from chili, the said process comprising steps of: i) treating powder or flakes of chili by mixing with a multi enzyme preparation, incubating at a pH in the range of 4.
0 to 7.
0 for a time period of 2 h to 24 h and at a temperature in the range of 200 to 50.
degree.
C.
, ii) drying the enzyme treated chili powder/flakes of step (i) to bring down the moisture level of about 5 12%, iii) powdering or pelletizing the contents of step (ii) into a particle size of about 20 30 mesh, iv) loading the chilli powder or its pellets into extraction column and soaking in a mixture of solvent for a period ranging between 1 h to 3 h; v) draining and collecting the solvent extract of step (iv) or to leave behind soaked chili powder or pellet, vi) extracting further the soaked powder or pellet of step (v) with solvent mixture, vii) repeating the steps (iv) to (vi), pooling the extracts, and viii) concentrating the pooled extract to obtain oleoresin with enriched pungency and color.
An embodiment of the invention, the raw material for the extraction selected is either chili or paprika.
Another embodiment of the invention provides a process wherein the multienzyme preparation used belongs to the endo-1,3 (4) .
beta.
-glucanase class enzymes consisting of pectinase, betaglucanase and hemicellulase.
Still in another embodiment, the pectinase used has an activity in the range of 50 to 120 fungal betaglucanase units per gram and pectinase 5000 12000 psu/g.
Still in another embodiment, the w/w ratio of enzyme preparation to chili powder/flakes used is in the range of 0.
1 1.
0 to 1.
0 to 100.
0.
Yet in another embodiment, the chili powder is converted to pellets of size up to 1-cm diameter and up to 15-mm length using commercially available pelletizing machine.
Yet in another embodiment, the solvents used is selected from polar, non-polar or mixture thereof.
Yet in another embodiment, the ratio of polar solvent: non-polar solvent used is in the range of 20:80 to 60:40