Juice were extracted from fresh leaves of 70 species of plants growing in Korea by mincing and pressing the resulting pulp through a cotton cloth. Leaf protein concentrates could be prepared from many species of land and water plants that are at present economically unimportant. The choice of plants is of considerable important. Total-N, protein-N and pH determinations were made on the extracts, and total-N remaining in the fibre were calculated. Leaf protein concentrates were precipitated from the extracts at 75∼80℃, and analysed total-N as protein-N of products. The present paper deals with the calculated yields of leaf protein concentrates from various plants, relations between yield of leaf protein concentrates and total-N of leaves, or pH of extracts, and the amino acid compositions of leaf protein concentrates. Results are summarized as follows.
1. Spinach and radish were the best sources of easily extractable, but good results were also obtained with Indian mustard, kail, chenopod, red bean, cucumber, squash, houndberry, white flowered gourd, potato, Humulus japonicus, arrowroot and soybean as a good resources for the production of leaf protein concentrates.
2. In general, the greater the protein content of leaves the greater the yield of leaf protein concentrates. However, there are some plants difficult to make a adequate protein extraction by a simple mechanical process.
3. It was to be expected that leaf protein concentrates would be more extractable with the higher pH of extracts. There were a poor yield of the leaf protein concentrate in the pH values lower than 5.50 of the first extracts.
4. Protein content of the leaf protein concentrate shows marked differences, depending on species and season. It ranged between 29 to 80% of protein contents. However, the majority of plants yielded products containing more than 50% of protein. Products containing more than 75% of protein were obtained from two species of radish and Indian mustard. Cabbage and Digitaria sanguinalis cilialis (summer) made products containing 29 to 32% of protein.
5. The amino acid composition of leaf protein concentrates was not greatly altered by species of plants. On an amino acid compositional basis, the leaf protein concentrate has a favorable balance of essential and non-essential amino acids, the only exception being methionine, which was usually low in all cases.
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