Ultrastructure of potato starch granules as affected by microwave treatment

Abstract

The effect of microwave heating on the lamellar ultrastructure of potato starch granules was studied using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and the linear correlation function was generated from SAXS data to obtain the parameters of the lamellar repeats architecture. To investigate how the molecular vibration of the microwaves influences the lamellar structure during heating, rapid convection heating was applied through an oil bath for comparison. The results showed that the samples subjected to the microwave and the rapid convection heating displayed similar data, which could demonstrate that the effect of microwave heating on submicroscopic structure of potato starch may be mainly due to its rapid heating effect.