The Effect of Enzyme-Assisted Maceration on Bioactivity, Quality and Yield of Essential Oil from Waste Carrot (Daucus carota) Seeds

The effect of an enzyme preparation derived from the nonpathogenic filamentous fungus Mucor circinelloides on the bioactivity, quality and yield of essential oil from waste carrot seeds (Daucus carota) was investigated. The Taguchi method was applied to determine the levels of input factors ensuring the greatest efficiency of hydrodistillation (pH 4.9–5.0; 4.0 g enzyme preparation/100 g of seeds; time – 6.0 h). Under these conditions, the oil yield increased by approximately 30%. The main constituent compounds of the oil are: carotol (34.6%), sabinene (8.0%), alpha-pinene (6.4%) and daucol (4.3%). Essential oil obtained from enzyme-pretreated carrot seeds has the same antimicrobial activity against Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida sp., Aspergillus niger and Penicillium expansum as that from the control sample. Practical Applications The proposed innovative method of preparation of plant material prior to hydrodistillation leads to an increase in essential oil extraction efficiency by about 30%, and thus enables better exploitation of the potential of the plant. The proposed method may be implemented on an industrial scale, thanks to tools of computational statistics that allow one to determine the optimum technological parameters of the process. Developed in this way, the technology is environmentally friendly and provides significant economic benefits.