Mayan octopus (Octopus maya) is an endemic species of high commercial value to the Yucatan Peninsula. This cephalopodred in color and has a pair of spots under its eyes, it reaches up to 100 cm with a short lifespan of approximately a year. In 2019, almost 12,000 tons were caught, with annual revenues of 360 million pesos which represented 15,000 direct jobs. O. maya is commercialized without its mantle (MA) and tentacle’s ends (TE), which are removed to obtain visually attractive products. However, research is being carried out to create products of high value from these wastes, ensuring the sustainable use and exploitation of O. maya. This is the case of obtaining collagen from mayan octopus wastes (MA and TE) which can be used in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.
Collagen is a structural protein considered the most abundant, it’s found in tissues such as skin and tendons, but also in bones and gristles. Due to its high protein content and its functional properties, collagen is highly demanded in the food industry as a gelling agent, emulsifier in food industry and drug delivery systems, with a wide range of applications such as cell scaffolding, moisturizer agent, etc. In southeast unit of CIATEJ a collagen extract has been obtained from O. maya which is being characterized. The determination of texture profile analysis (TPA) will allow to infer its quality as a biomaterial and gelling agent. TPA in collagen samples (moisture=97.65 %) was performed with a texturometer (EZ-SX, Shimadzu). A penetration test was carried out with a 15 mm plate in a cylindric container with a diameter of 25 mm. A downward compression polarity speed of 2 mm/s with a displacement limit of 15 mm/s was used in both compression cycles and determining the parameters of hardness, adhesiveness, cohesiveness, adhesive force and gumminess. Samples showed a slight hardness of 0.31 N in collagen extracts from O. maya (Table 1), which is less than collagen from pork (14.6 N) 6.67% (w/v), also the samples exhibited slight adhesive force and gumminess with no adhesiveness (0 N), while extracted collagen from pig reported 13.17 N (Fig. 1) this may be due to a higher moisture content in the octopus’ samples. It’s recommended to increase collagen concentration in the samples as well as to continue evaluating its textural but also its viscoelastic and flow behavior in to infer potential applications in the industry.