Microencapsulação de extratos naturais pigmentados, extraídos de cascas de frutos amazônicos para aplicação em alimentos

Abstract

The Amazonian flora presents a wide diversity of plants, fruits and flowers that have aroused great interest in science. Among these, bacupari, pupunha and tucumã stand out, which boast a wide availability of pigments, being alternatives for application in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Color is considered the main organoleptic attribute when it comes to acceptance and preference of a food and the use of additives, with the aim of making it visually attractive, is common in industries, but there are suspicions that artificial colorings have potential effects harmful to human health, and there is a need to replace them with natural dyes. Carotenoids are natural pigments, found in fruits and vegetables, which play an important role in photosynthesis and photoprotection, however they are unstable compounds in the presence of high temperatures, light and oxygen, demonstrating difficulties in maintaining their properties when subjected to certain intrinsic conditions of various products. Microencapsulation is a process based on the confinement of active substances in microcapsules, which can provide protection against unstable factors. Therefore, the objective of this work was to elaborate, characterize and evaluate the stability of microcapsules, containing natural pigments extracted from the peel of Amazonian fruits (bacupari, pupunha and tucumã), aiming at their application in foods as a natural dye.