If you’ve had the opportunity to look through our website, you should already know that papain comes from the water-soluble portion of the latex of Carica Papaya.
Usually when we tell people that papain comes from the latex of the papaya we get the following questions:
- What portion of the papaya contains the latex?
- How was the enzyme extracted from latex?
The latex of the papaya is located between the fruit and the skin of the green, unripened papaya. To extract the latex from the fruit, farmers lay a rubber mat around the base of the papaya tree and take a knife and pierce just the skin of the papaya, without cutting into the fruit portion. The latex is allowed to drip out of the fruit and onto the mat below. Latex is then either dried immediately, or filtered and then dried. This dried latex is referred to as flake.
From the flake, we use a water extraction method to separate the enzyme from the non-soluble portions of the latex. No chemical solvents are used in this process. After the water extraction, the enzyme is then stabilized as a food grade liquid or dry product.