Microencapsulation Applications of Essential Oils Used in Food Industry

Abstract

Essential oils, also called aromatic, essential or ether oils, are liquids similar to strong scented oils obtained from plants. In line with the increasing demand of consumers in natural products in recent years volatiles oils, which are natural, environmentally friendly and useful in many ways, are an alternative option to synthetic additives. It founded a solution with the microencapsulation technology that the volatile components they contain are easily affected by environmental conditions. Microencapsulation provides many advantages such as preservation of stability by stabilizing the essential oils, increasing shelf life, ensuring controlled release, masking taste and odor, ease of transport, reduction of nutritional loss. Microencapsulation applied by various techniques such as spray drying, coacervation, extrusion, fluid bed coating, supercritical fluid method is widely used in many fields such as mainly food industry, textile, pharmaceutical, chemical, feed, veterinary, biotechnology, medicine. This review axioms the importance of essential oils, highlighting the benefits gained by microencapsulation, explaining the preparation techniques of microcapsules and the selection of coating materials, taking into account applications in the food industry.