Preparation of Low-Fishy Microencapsulated DHA-Rich Algal Oil Powder Using Infant Rice Powder

Area of Science:

• Food Science
• Nutritional Science
• Materials Science

Background:

• Commercial DHA-rich algal oil powder and microcapsules suffer from unpleasant fishy odors due to compounds like hexanal and (E,E)-2,4-heptadienal.
• Oxidation susceptibility further degrades the quality of DHA-rich algal oil.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop microcapsules for DHA-rich algal oil to mitigate odor and oxidation issues.
• To evaluate the efficacy of infant rice powder (IRP), maltodextrin (MD), and whey protein concentrate (WPC) as wall materials for microencapsulation.

Main Methods:

• Microencapsulation of DHA-rich algal oil using spray-drying.
• Utilized IRP, MD, and WPC as wall materials with sodium starch octenyl succinate (SSOS) and monoacylglycerol (MAC) as emulsifiers.
• Optimized wall material ratio (1:3:1 IRP/MD/WPC) and emulsifier content (3.5%).

Main Results:

• Achieved highest encapsulation efficiency (85.20 ± 6.03%) and lowest aldehyde content (65.38 ± 3.23%) with the optimized formulation.
• Resulting microcapsules exhibited good appearance, improved oxidation stability, 1.69 ± 0.57% water content, and 631.60 ± 23.19 nm average particle size.
• Microcapsules demonstrated significantly lower fishy odor and enhanced sensory acceptability compared to commercial algal oil powder.

Conclusions:

• Microencapsulation with infant rice powder is an effective strategy to improve the sensory properties and stability of DHA-rich algal oil.
• The developed microcapsules offer a promising alternative to commercial DHA-rich algal oil products with reduced fishy odor.