Recent advancement in protected delivery methods for carotenoid: a smart choice in modern nutraceutical formulation concept

ABSTRACT

Carotenoids are fat-soluble bio pigments often responsible for red, orange, pink and yellow coloration of fruits and vegetables. They are commonly referred as nutraceutical which is an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs claiming to have numerous physiological benefits. However their activity often get disoriented by photonic exposure, temperature and aeration rate thus leading to low bioavailability and bio accessibility. Most of the market value for carotenoids revolves around food and cosmetic industries as supplement where they have been continuously exposed to rigorous physico-chemical treatment. Though several encapsulation techniques are now in practice to improve stability of carotenoids, the factors like shelf life during storage and controlled release from the delivery vehicle always appeared to be a bottleneck in this field. In this situation, different technologies in nanoscale is showing promising result for carotenoid encapsulation and delivery as they provide greater mass per surface area and protects most of their bioactivities. However, safety concerns related to carrier material and process must be evaluated crucially. Thus, the aim of this review was to collect and correlate technical information concerning the parameters playing pivotal role in characterization and stabilization of designed vehicles for carotenoids delivery. This comprehensive study predominantly focused on experiments carried out in past decade explaining how researchers have fabricated bioprocess engineering in amalgamation with nano techniques to improve the bioavailability for carotenoids. Furthermore, it will help the readers to understand the cognisance of carotenoids in nutraceutical market for their trendy application in food, feed and cosmeceutical industries in contemporary era.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Carotenoids
• bioavailability
• encapsulation
• nutraceutical
• cosmeceutical

Acknowledgements

Authors wish to thank Lovely Professional University, India for necessary support during the work and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences for CAS-TWAS President’s Fellowship to Ruchira Mitra.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Authors’ Contributions

Surojit Bera: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Data curation. Ruchira Mitra: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Data curation, Joginder Singh – review & editing, Supervision.

Additional information

Funding

The work did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Surojit Bera

Dr. Surojit Bera is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at School of Bioengineering and Biosciences, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab, India. He has a Master of Science (Gold Medallist) degree in Microbiology and PhD (INSPIRE Fellow) in Biotechnology. He has a rich work experience over 10 years in the field of carotenoids, drug delivery, bioremediation and third generation biofuel. He has several high-impact research papers and book chapters to his credit. He is also serving as a Reviewer/Guest editor for many international reputed journals.

Ruchira Mitra

Ruchira Mitra is currently working as CAS-TWAS President's Fellow at Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing under the affiliation of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P.R China. She has a Master of Technology degree in Biotechnology. She has more that 08 years’ of research experience in the field of carotenoids, biopolymers, bioremediation and bacterial genetic engineering. She has several high-impact research papers and book chapters to his credit. She is also serving as a Reviewer for many international reputed journals. She has participated in multiple international conferences and workshops.

Joginder Singh

Dr. Joginder Singh works as Senior Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India. He has published more than 150 research, review articles and book chapters in leading International and National journals or books. He has wide area of research experience, especially in the field of environmental impacts on plant-microbe interactions, development of microbial consortium for bioremediation and exploring rhizospheric microorganisms influencing plant metabolites. He is also serving as a Reviewer/Guest editor for many international reputed journals. He has been awarded as best reviewer award and young scientist award by National and International organizations.