Estabilidade dos compostos bioativos do extrato de camu-camu em pó

Abstract

Camu-camu is a fruit native of the Amazon region and has a high content of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds. This fruit quickly degrades and its bioactive compounds are very unstable to processing and storage, since they are sensitive to factors such as humidity, temperature, light and oxygen. The stability of these fruits and their bioactive compounds can be increased by spray drying using encapsulating agents. Therefore, powdered camu-camu extracts using spray-drying, using maltodextrin (MD), inulin (IN) and oligofructose (OL) as encapsulating agents were evaluated for their physico-chemical and morphological properties, as well as for storage stability at temperatures of 25 ° C and 45 ° C and relative humidity of 22%, 51% and 75% for a period of 4 weeks. The freeze-dried camu-camu extract (CEL) was obtained as a way to evaluate the influence of the encapsulating agents on the storage stability of the powders. In general, encapsulation increased the stability of the camu-camu extract. The retention of the bioactive compounds and the antioxidant activity before storage ranged from 55 to 71% (ascorbic acid), 77 to 83% (phenolic compounds), 72 to 90% (anthocyanins) and 69 to 92% (DPPH). Regarding the stability of the powders to the storage, MD generally offered more satisfactory results when compared to inulin and oligofructose. However, IN and OL can be used in conjunction with other biopolymers in the spray drying of bioactive materials since they can present prebiotic functionality, adding value to the powdered product.