Curcumin has been widely recognized as health-promoting compound. However, the intrinsic hydrophobicity, chemical instability and photodegradation limits its applications in foods. In this study, a novel emulsion was developed to encapsulate curcumin using debranched starch (DBS). The encapsulation efficiency of curcumin was 71.11% with a loading rate of 12.07%. The prepared emulsions showed better stability and solubility of curcumin than those stabilized only with Tween80 and lectin. The DBS incorporated emulsion had a uniform droplet size distribution with an average value of <1 μm. The molecular dynamics (MD) simulation showed that the water bridge between debranched starch and curcumin may play an important role in the complexation process, thus contributing to a better performance of the emulsion. This work shed light on the encapsulation process and interaction between DBS and curcumin, which is valuable to develop new emulsion-based delivery systems for bioactive lipophilic compounds using modified starch.
Keywords: Curcumin; Debranched starch; Emulsion; Interaction mechanism; Molecular dynamics simulation.
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