Development and optimization of electrosprayed vitamin C - chitosan nanoparticle: A CCD-RSM approach and characterization of bioactive encapsulant.

Electrospraying for Vitamin C (VC) encapsulation in Chitosan (Cs) nanoparticles was investigated and particle size, zeta potential, loading capacity (LC%) and encapsulation efficiency (EE%) were examined. Cs concentration (1-2% w/v) and voltage (21-25 kV) were varied with VC (0.25-0.75 w/w Cs). Twenty experiments in a face-centered CCD-RSM design were evaluated. ANOVA suggested voltage and Cs concentration as significant factors for particle size and VC content affected zeta, LC and EE%. RSM proposed optimum processing parameter at 2% Cs, 0.746 VC: Cs mass ratio and 21 kV voltage with 251.1 ± 59.03 nm particle size, 36.6% LC and an EE of 85.42%. Encapsulated particles were subjected to release behaviour, antioxidant property and analyzed through FTIR, DSC and XRD. Encapsulated VC had better antibacterial properties than Cs nanoparticles, and comparable VC retention in apple juice showed its effectiveness. Overall, nanoencapsulation of VC using electrospraying was successfully developed to be used in numerous food processing applications.

Effect of pulsating microwave treatment on wheat parboiling: Comparative assessment and structural characterization.

The current study focusses on investigating the impact of pulsating microwave (MW) treatment to develop an efficient wheat parboiling method through comparative assessment with conventional parboiling. Three independent variables i.e., MW power level, effective treatment time, and pulsating mode on-off combination were tried for the process optimization. Higher moisture gain was observed during pulsating MW treatment, irrespective of the power level. The optimised gelatinization was obtained at 900 W power level and 9 min treatment time with on-off combination of 30 s -120 s considering specific energy absorption, water quality and degree of gelatinization. The microwave parboiled sample showed no major difference in molecular rearrangement, surface morphology and starch deformation as compared to the conventionally parboiled (CP) samples analysed using XRD, SEM, and FTIR study, whereas slight variation in protein conformations were noticed. This technological and structural study revealed that the proposed method can effectively replace the CP method.