Abstract: The enzymatic extraction of flavor compounds from Agaricus bisporus was investigated. In this paper, four different protease, neutral protease, papain, protamex and flavourzyme were compared for their efficiencies in hydrolyzing Agaricus bisporus. The results indicated that the hydrolysate from flavourzyme contained significantly higher contents of soluble solid and flavor amino acids than the hydrolysates obtained with other proteases. Besides, flavourzyme could remove the bitterness and astringency and maintain the umami taste of the hydrolysate while enhancing the saltiness and making it richer in taste. The hydrolysate was clear and transparent. Therefore, flavourzyme was selected as the best enzyme and the conditions including hydrolysis time, temperature, pH and enzyme dosage were optimized based on free amino acid concentration using one-factor-at-a-time method and an L9?(34) orthogonal array design (OAD) with four factors at three levels. The hydrolysis efficiency was highly significantly affected by temperature and significantly affected by pH. The optimal conditions for enzymatic hydrolysis were found to be as follows: enzyme dosage 1 000 U/g, pH 6.5, temperature 60 ℃, time 3 h. The hydrolysate prepared under the optimized conditions contained 140.27 mmol/L free amino acids and could be used as base seasoning.

Key words: Agaricus bisporus, enzymatic hydrolysis, free amino acids, taste, flavorzyme