Hydrolytic enzymes in the dairy industry: Applications, market and future perspectives

In parallel with the continuous growth of the world population, the demand for dairy products is increasing. Dairy manufacturing highly relies on hydrolytic enzymes. Proteases are mainly used as coagulant agents in cheese production, while they also have impact on the flavour and texture of the product. Lipases are employed for cheese ripening; development of flavour, texture, and body characteristics of cheese. Lactases are used to hydrolyze lactose to overcome the bottlenecks caused by lactose in dairy products and increase the availability of good nutrition to those who are lactose intolerant. This paper aims to review the current technological and economic state, and future perspectives of the commercially available exogenous hydrolytic enzymes in the dairy industry. The regulatory aspects and current market trends on hydrolytic enzymes are also discussed. Hydrolytic enzymes in the dairy industry are crucial to reach the desired sensory qualities including texture, taste and aroma. Microbial hydrolases offer several advantages over plant and animal derived alternatives. As the demand for hydrolytic enzymes is increasing, it becomes important to discover new enzymes with superior properties such as higher solubility, product yield, increased specificity, less environmental impact, lower dosage, resulting in better texture and taste of the dairy products. Production of galacto-oligosaccharides from lactose with the help of the transgalactosylation activity of lactase is a fairly new approach. Investigation of alternative proteolytic enzymes is attracting attention due to the increasing interest for whey-hydrolysates and bioactive peptides for their use in functional foods and peptide therapeutics.