Duck egg albumen: physicochemical and functional properties as affected by storage and processing

Abstract

The demand for duck meat and eggs in Asian countries increases every year. Duck egg albumen has become an important ingredient in the food industry alongside its hen counterpart, because of its excellent nutritive and functional properties. The major proteins in duck albumen are ovalbumin, ovomucoid, ovomucin, conalbumin, and lysozyme. Comparing with hen albumen, lower contents of ovalbumin, conalbumin, lysozyme and ovoflavoprotein are found in duck albumen. Nevertheless, duck albumen shows better gelling and foaming properties than hen albumen. During storage, duck albumen gel properties are enhanced, while foam volume and foam stability are decreased. Moreover, the changes in quality indices of duck egg including the thinning of the albumen, an increase in albumen pH, loss of water and carbon dioxide occur as storage time is increased. Some processes such as alkaline treatment also cause the loss in nutritive value of egg albumen. In this review, the composition and functional properties of duck albumen and how they are affected by processing conditions are also addressed, in comparison with hen albumen. A better understanding of duck egg albumen would be beneficial so that the food processing industry can exploit the potential of this avian protein.

Effects of (−)-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate on the Functional and Structural Properties of Soybean Protein Isolate

“…Some studies have been conducted on the interaction system between EGCG and proteins. Quan and Benjakul found that the conjugate between duck albumen hydrolysates and EGCG could serve as an antioxidant emulsifier; Cao and Xiong reported that EGCG has caused significant structural changes and induced great digestibility of whey protein isolate, reducing its total sulfhydryl content and surface hydrophobicity; Kanakis et al . found that EGCG has a high binding affinity to whey proteins due to galloyl functional group with multiple peptide binding sites, able to form hydrophobic interactions and hydrogen bonds with the proteins.…”

Modification methods and applications of egg protein gel properties: A review

“…Egg white protein (EWP) is composed mainly of ovalbumin (OVA), ovotransferrin (OVT), ovomucoid (OVM), ovomucin (OVN), and lysozyme (LYZ) (Quan & Benjakul, 2019). OVA is the monomer phosphorylated glycoprotein containing free sulfhydryl groups in EWP.…”

Preservation of duck eggs through glycerol monolaurate nanoemulsion coating

“…Duck eggs are rich in proteins (1.0 mg/g), essential amino acids (46 mg/g), cholesterol (1.1 mg/g), minerals (5.5 mg/g), vitamins (4.9 mg/g), and other nutrients ( Friday, 2011 ; Sun et al, 2019 ). The storage life of duck egg is < 40 days at room temperature (25 °C) and <90 days at cool temperature (4 °C) ( Quan and Benjakul, 2019 ). In the market, duck eggs mainly exist in two forms: (1) Dark duck eggs; and (2) clean duck eggs.…”