Starch modification through environmentally friendly alternatives: a review

Starch is a versatile and a widely used ingredient, with applications in many industries including adhesive and binding, paper making, corrugating, construction, paints and coatings, chemical, pharmaceutical, textiles, oilfield, food and feed. However, native starches present limited applications, which impairs their industrial use. Consequently, starch is commonly modified to achieve desired properties. Chemical treatments are the most exploited to bring new functionalities to starch. However, those treatments can be harmful to the environment and can also bring risks to the human health, limiting their applications. In this scenario, there is a search for techniques that are both environmentally friendly and efficient, bringing new desired functionalities to starches. Therefore, this review presents an up-to-date overview of the available literature data regarding the use of environmentally friendly treatments for starch modification. Among them, we highlighted an innovative chemical treatment (ozone) and different physical treatments, as the modern pulsed electric field (PEF), the emerging ultrasound (US) technology, and two other treatments based on heating (dry heating treatment - DHT, and heat moisture treatment - HMT). It was observed that these environmentally friendly technologies have potential to be used for starch modification, since they create materials with desirable functionalities with the advantage of being categorized as clean label ingredients.