Impact of Wall Materials on Physicochemical Properties of Microencapsulated Fish Oil by Spray Drying

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of wall materials composition on physicochemical characteristics of fish oil microcapsules produced by spray drying (180 A degrees C). Four different combination of coating materials (fish gelatin, chitosan, combination of gelatin and chitosan, and a mixture of microbial transglutaminase (MTGase) with maltodextrin) were applied to two different fish oils to produce 40 % solid emulsions. Scanning electron microscopy and extraction of surface and encapsulated oils revealed that fish gelatin provided the highest preserving effect on the covering fish oil. Meantime, addition of MTGase to gelatin could also increase this ability and reveled less surface oil than chitosan treatment (2.63 and 2.80 % versus 4.66 and 5.23 %, respectively; P < 0.05). Mixture of gelatin and maltodextrin with MTGase as wall material led to the highest encapsulation efficiency, being selected as the best microencapsulation condition; meantime, application of chitosan with maltodextrin provided the worse encapsulation efficiency (P < 0.05). All indices of powders (encapsulation efficiency, surface morphology, and particle size) showed that powders prepared from gelatin and gelatin with MTGase increased the encapsulation efficiency and would increase the stability of microcapsule powders.