4 CONCLUSIONS
The present study investigated the effect of treating canola meals (CP or HE) with SSF by A. niger and A. oryzae on the functionality of extracted protein products (AE-IP or SE). In summary of the findings, protein purity in the resulting isolates was negatively influenced by fermentation, and the magnitude of reduction was greater for AE-IP products than SE. The protein content was also lowered in the presence of residual fat in the CP samples compared to HE when the protein products were produced by AE-IP. There were significant differences in canola protein functionalities extracted from fermented meals compared to the controls. For AE-IP proteins, meal fermentation had an overall negative effect on solubility however some improvements were seen with A. niger fermentation. Pretreatment with A. oryzae increased the protein solubility at pH 7 when extracting proteins via SE. Grouped together, the SE protein products were more soluble than those by AE-IP, while those extracted from CP meals showed higher solubility than those from HE. Fermentation of the meals improved the WHC and OHC of most protein products with strain difference most evident in SE proteins from HE meals. For emulsifying properties, the strain A. oryzae was shown to enhance or maintain the EAI of the isolates more effectively than A. niger , whereas ESI was largely unchanged upon fermentation, regardless of the strains; the AE-IP prepared isolates responded more positively to SSF than those by SE. Foaming properties at pH 3 and 5 were generally diminished by SSF while some increases at pH 7 were observed. A. niger was slightly preferred over A. oryzae to improve or minimize the decreases, while the CP products, control or fermented, tended to foam better than those processed by HE. In short, no overarching trend could be reported for the effect of meal fermentation on the resulting functionalities of extracted canola proteins, as most functional attributes were under the combined influence of pH, test strains, and oil and protein extraction techniques. However, the findings indicate that by modifying processing conditions, functionalities of canola meal protein products could be tailored accordingly to suit potential applications, and SSF by A. niger and A. oryzae remains a promising practice to expand the utilization of canola proteins.