Elsevier

Carbohydrate Polymers

Volume 61, Issue 1, 4 July 2005, Pages 95-102
Carbohydrate Polymers

Microencapsulation of cardamom oleoresin: Evaluation of blends of gum arabic, maltodextrin and a modified starch as wall materials

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2005.02.020Get rights and content

Abstract

Although the spice oleoresins provide complete flavour profile than their respective essential oils, their sensitivity to the light, heat and oxygen is a disadvantage. This can be overcome by effective encapsulation. The present work reports on the microencapsulation of cardamom oleoresin by spray drying using binary and ternary blends of gum arabic, maltodextrin, and modified starch as wall materials. The microcapsules were evaluated for the content and stability of volatiles, entrapped 1,8-cineole and entrapped α-terpinyl acetate for 6 weeks. A 4/6,1/6,1/6 blend of gum arabic:maltodextrin:modified starch offered a protection, better than gum arabic as seen from the t1/2, time required for a constituent to reduce to 50% of its initial value.

Introduction

Spices form a major class of ingredients used in most food products today. Among the major spices, India leads in area and production of black pepper, cardamom (large), ginger, chilli and turmeric (Sasikumar & Sharma, 2001). Cardamom, known as the ‘Queen of spices’, is the dried fruit of Elletaria cardamomum, a perennial herbaceous plant of the order of Zingiberaceae (Mathai, 1985). The cardamom flavour is incorporated in processed foods, mainly by using cardamom essential oil or the solvent-extracted cardamom oleoresin. With most spices, the total extracts or oleoresins are known to reflect the flavour quality more closely than the distilled volatile oil. Commercial cardamom oleoresins have volatile oil contents ranging between 52 and 58% (Govindarajan, Narasimhan, Raghuveer, & Lewis, 1982). The major compounds present in the cardamom oleoresin are 1,8-cineole and α-terpinyl acetate comprising two-third of the total volatiles (Lewis, Nambudiri, & Philip, 1966). Cardamom oleoresin has a more mellow and less harsh flavour characteristic of cardamom (Krishnan, 1981, Rosenberg et al., 1990, Sankarikutty et al., 1988, Versic, 1988, Zilberboim et al., 1986), and is used in the flavouring of bakery, confectionery and meat products.

These spice extracts are used either in the form of liquid concentrate or adsorbed on a carrier (Gilberston, 1971). In both cases oleoresin undergoes oxidative degradation. It was found that destruction of several pigments occur under exposure to oxygen:hydroxylic groups are converted into unstable ketones, which in turn decomposes. Apart from the fading effect, the oxidation products and intermediates (such as peroxides) may have a detrimental effect on the foodstuffs themselves. Hence, there is a need for protection of the oleoresin against environmental factors, which contributes to its deterioration, e.g. oxygen, light, moisture. Microencapsulation using carbohydrates such as hydrolysed starches (SHP), emulsifying starches and gums (especially gum acacia), serve as the most common carrier materials (Reineccius, 1988, Reineccius, 1989) is most common approach to tackle this problem. These encapsulated flavours are prepared by locking the natural spice extractives into special matrix resulting in improved heat stability and shelf life. The spray drying technique is quite suited for the encapsulation of spice oils and oleoresins (Raghavan et al., 1990, Sankarikutty et al., 1988). The microcapsules may range from several millimeters in size (0.2–5000 μm) and have multitudes of shapes, depending on the materials and methods used to prepare them (Balassa & Fanger, 1971). Spray-dry microencapsulation has been used to improve the stability of carotenoids in carrot pulp and paprika oleoresin (Leach, Oliveria, & Morias, 1986).

Gum arabic is a very effective encapsulating agent because of its protective colloid functionality. It produces stable emulsions with most oils over a wide pH range. It also forms a visible film at the oil interface, but the mechanism of emulsification is still not understood. Gum arabic is compatible with most gums, starches and carbohydrates and proteins. Cost and limited supply have been restricted the use of gum arabic for encapsulation. Hence, maltodextrins and modified starches were used as alternative carrier materials (Reineccius, 1988). Maltodextrins have been investigated as replacers of gum arabic in spray dried emulsions (Anandaraman and Reineccius, 1987, Bangs and Reineccius, 1988, Kenyon and Anderson, 1988, Trubiano and Lacourse, 1988). Mixture of gum arabic and maltodextrin was reported effective in microencapsulation of cardamom oil using spray drier (Sankarikutty, Sreekumar, Narayanan, Mathew, 1988). The major shortcomings of maltodextrin are its lack of emulsifying capacity and marginal retention of volatiles (Reineccius, 1988, Buffo and Reineccius, 2000). Retention of volatile flavour compounds increases with an increase of DE of the maltodextrins (Bangs and Reineccius, 1981, Anandaraman and Reineccius, 1986) suggesting the importance of DE to the functionality of wall system. The chemically modified starches most closely reproduce the functional properties of gum arabic. 1-Octenyl succinyl anhydride (n-OSA) starches stabilize an emulsion through a number of possible mechanisms. n-OSA starches are reported to be superior to gum acacia in emulsification properties and in retention of volatile flavours during spray drying (Trubiano & Lacourse, 1988). The products encapsulated in gum arabic showed a reduction in content during the shelf life study at controlled temperature (Bertolini, Siani, & Grosso, 2001). However, the modified starches have some disadvantages, they are not considered natural for labeling purposes, often have an undesirable off-taste and do not afford good protection to oxidizable flavourings (Qi & Xu, 1999). Reports on microencapsulation of spice oleoresins in scientific literature are scant. Microencapsulation of garlic oleoresin by spray drying using edible gums as wall material has been described (Xiang, Yang, Li, Wang, & Cheng, 1997). Zilberboim, Kopelman, & Talman (1986) utilized spray-drying process to encapsulate paprika oleoresin and several volatile esters in gum arabic. Microencapsulation of capsicum oleoresin in a gum mixture composed of carrageenan and maltodextrin at a ratio of 0.5–3.5:9.5–7.0 was studied (Xiang, Yang, Li, Wang, & Cheng, 1977). Microencapsulation of red pepper oleoresin using gum arabic and modified starch has also been tried (Jung & Sung, 2000).

There are no reports on encapsulation of cardamom oleoresin. In the light of this information, an attempt has been made to encapsulate cardamom oleoresin by spray drying using gum arabic, modified starch-HiCap100 and maltodextrin as the wall materials. Our previous work (Krishnan, Bhosale, & Singhal., unpublished work) had evaluated the different wall materials individually for encapsulation of cardamom oleoresin, and found gum arabic to be better than maltodextrin and the modified starch. The present work deals with the microencapsulation of cardamom oleoresin by spray drying using binary and ternary blends of gum arabic, maltodextrin, and modified starch as wall materials. The microcapsules were evaluated for the content and stability of volatiles, entrapped 1,8-cineole and entrapped α-terpinyl acetate.

Section snippets

Materials

Gum arabic was obtained as gift sample from TIC Gums, USA. Octenyl succinylated waxy maize starch (HiCap100) obtained was from National Starch Chemicals Corporation, Mumbai. Cardamom oleoresin was gifted from Synthite Chemicals, Kerala, India. Standard 1,8-cineole was gift samples from Balsara Chemicals, Mumbai and standard α-terpinyl acetate was purchased from Beeta Chemicals, Mumbai. All chemicals used were of AR grade.

Preparation of microcapsules by spray drying

About 30% solution of the different blends of gum arabic, maltodextrin and

Analysis and stability of EC, ETA, NV and TV in free and encapsulated oleoresin

The cardamom oleoresin was analysed for total volatiles (60.71%) and non-volatiles (39.28%). It also showed 28.58% of 1,8-cineole and 50.80% of α-terpinyl acetate. This oleoresin evaluated for six weeks for the levels of percentage retention of 1,8-cineole, terpinyl acetate, total volatiles and non-volatiles. A semi-log plot of %1,8-cineole, %α-terpinyl acetate and %volatiles vs. storage time showed a sharp linear decrease in all the cases, indicating the decrease in these constituents to

Conclusion

The results obtained in the present work indicate gum arabic to be a better wall material for encapsulation of cardamom oleoresin as compared to the other wall materials. As far as the blends were concerned, the stability of the cardamom oleoresins decreased as the quantity of gum arabic decreased in its blend with maltodextrin and HiCap100. GA:MD:MS (4/6,1/6,1/6) blend proved to be more efficient than the other blends even better than 100% gum arabic.

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