Manufacturing of Short-Chain Fructooligosaccharides: from Laboratory to Industrial Scale

Short-chain fructooligosaccharides (ScFOS) are a group of linear fructose oligomers that include 1-kestose, 1-nystose and 1-beta-fructofuranosylnystose. ScFOS, which naturally occur at low levels in different plant products, are of high interest as food ingredients because of their prebiotic character, organoleptic characteristics and technological properties. Two different industrial processes are used to achieve large-scale ScFOS production: inulin hydrolysis (enzymatic or chemical hydrolysis) or sucrose biotransformation by transfructosylation (enzymatic synthesis) using specific enzymes like fructosyltransferases and fructofuranosidases. Enzymatic ScFOS synthesis seems to be more advantageous than inulin hydrolysis since it is less expensive, and leads to lower molecular weight FOS. The biotechnological process described to carry out this catalysis includes the production of transfructosylation enzymes, separation, enzyme immobilisation and finally the ScFOS production and purification. Such ScFOS production processes may be conducted under submerged or solid-state fermentation under discontinuous or continuous conditions. Several methodologies with different economic/environmental costs and production yields have been described to carry out these ScFOS production stages, although industrial scale-up needs to be optimised. This review tries to address a revision about enzymatic ScFOS production methods and its scale-up to industrial levels.