Abstract
Asparagus waste represents products of great interest since many compounds with high biological value are located in the lower portion of the spears. The extraction of bioactive compounds from asparagus by-products is therefore crucial for the purpose of adding value to these by-products. In this paper, bioactive peptides from asparagus waste were extracted, digested, purified and identified. In particular, Alcalase® was chosen as the enzyme to use to obtain protein hydrolysate due to its low cost and, consequently, the possibility of implementing the method on a large scale. In order to simplify the peptide extract to reach better identification, the hydrolysate was fractionated by reversed-phase chromatography in 10 fractions. Two tests were carried out for antioxidant activity (ABTS-DPPH) and one for antihypertensive activity (ACE). Fractions with a higher bioactivity score were identified by peptidomics technologies and screened for bioactivity with the use of bioinformatics. For ACE-inhibitor activity, two peptides were synthetized, PDWFLLL and ASQSIWLPGWL, which provided an EC50 value of 1.76 µmol L-1 and 4.02 µmol L-1, respectively. For the antioxidant activity, by DPPH assay, MLLFPM exhibited the lowest EC50 value at 4.14 µmol L-1, followed by FIARNFLLGW and FAPVPFDF with EC50 values of 6.76 µmol L-1 and 10.01 µmol L-1, respectively. A validation of the five identified peptides was also carried out. The obtained results showed that peptides obtained from asparagus by-products are of interest for their biological activity and are suitable for being used as functional ingredients.