Atmospheric cold plasma facilitates malate esterification of yam starch and its effect on the structure and...

ACP or MA esterification have attracted widespread attention owing to altering the function of starch. However, the effect of ACP pretreatment on MA esterification and the final starch properties remains underexplored. This study explored how varying durations of ACP pretreatment influence the esterification efficiency of MA with YS. With increasing ACP pretreatment time to 4 min, DS and RE of malate YS initially increased and then stabilized. The introduction of more MA groups disrupted double helical structure and caused the decrease in long-range and short-range order, consequently leading to a decrease in swelling power, initial decomposition temperature and initial weightlessness rate, and an increase in solubility. Notably, when ACP pretreatment time was 2 min, the RS content reached the maximum (68.05%) due to the combined effect of increased DS (steric hindrance and electrostatic repulsion, increased RS content) and starch depolymerization (cleavage of glycosidic bonds, decreased RS content). This study presented a new method for dual modification of starch, which has potential applications in low-GI foods.