Opportunities for industrializing Chinese traditional Liangpi: Insights from starch structure and modification

Liangpi, a traditional Chinese wheat starch-based gel food, remains scientifically underexplored despite its widespread consumption. This review establishes multi-scale starch structural modulation strategies (granular to molecular levels) to address the industrialization demand for functional enhanced Liangpi production. The interplay between starch gelatinization-retrogradation dynamics and inherent hierarchical architecture critically governs processing behavior (thermal pasting, cooling formation) and product quality (texture, digestibility, storage stability). Industrial hot extrusion surpasses conventional steaming by enabling uniform gelatinization and shear-driven structural reorganization, ensuring standardized functional consistency. Modified starches engineered through molecular restructuring optimize textural parameters, digestibility, and shelf-life extension. This synthesis bridges traditional methods with modern food engineering, offering standardized protocols that preserve regional authenticity while enabling next generation Liangpi design. The proposed framework contributes to the understanding challenges and provides a blueprint for structurally tailored heritage starch foods, emphasizing the critical role of starch science in reconciling artisanal traditions with industrial scalability.