Abstract
There is great interest nowadays in adding hydrophobic bioactive compounds such as curcumin to the diet. However, curcumin is characterized by a very low water solubility and a chemical instability. Therefore, the development of protein complexes able to bind and protect curcumin is a major current challenge.The aim of this work was to generate high pressure-induced nanoaggregates from a patatin-rich potato protein isolate and evaluate the efficiency of these nanoaggregates to bind and protect curcumin.First of all, the aggregation kinetics of 4% (w/w) patatin-rich dispersions (pH 6 and 7) processed by high hydrostatic pressure (400 and 600 MPa) at 20°C were investigated. Nano-sized aggregates obtained for a pressurization time of 8 h were then selected and characterized in terms of denaturation yield, surface hydrophobicity and zeta potential. To optimize the efficiency of curcumin complexation to potato protein nanoaggregates, the curcumin addition before or after high pressure treatment was compared. Finally, the antioxidant activity of the curcumin-protein nanocomplexes was also studied just after high pressure treatment and after cold storage for 10 days.This study allowed to select the processing parameters to applied in order to optimize the complexation efficiency of curcumin to high pressure-induced nanoaggregates and also preserve the antioxidant activity of the processed dispersions.