Encapsulation of Beta-carotene in Lipid Microparticles Stabilized with Hydrolyzed Soy Protein Isolate: Production Parameters, Alpha-tocopherol Coencapsulation and Stability Under Stress Conditions

The objectives of this research were to study the encapsulation of beta-carotene (BC) in solid lipid microparticles (SLM) of palm stearin (PS) and stabilized with hydrolyzed soy protein isolate (HSPI), and also to investigate the effect of alpha-tocopherol (TOC) addition to the systems. Through the characterizations of SLM produced with different formulations, it was verified that systems with 5% (w/v) PS, 1.0% (w/v) HSPI, and 0.3% (w/v) xanthan gum (XG) presented the highest stability, with average diameters of approximately 1.2 μm. This formulation was applied for the production of BC-loaded SLM, with different concentrations of TOC. In SLM containing TOC, nearly 75% of encapsulated BC was preserved after 45 d of storage. The kinetic profiles for degradation of encapsulated BC were fitted to a pseudo-1st-order model, and the results showed that the main difference among the systems with different BC:TOC ratios was the residual concentration of BC. The stability of the BC-loaded SLMs was also studied after stress conditions, and the results showed that the SLMs were able to support thermal treatments over 60 °C but presented low stability after different ionic strength stresses.