Elucidation of stabilizing pickering emulsion with jackfruit filum pectin-soy protein nanoparticles obtained by photocatalysis

Abstract

There is still the dearth of reports of jackfruit filum pectin-based nanoparticles as the Pickering emulsifiers with respect to the applications in foods, cosmetics and medicines. So we fabricated soy protein-jackfruit filum pectin nanoparticles (SPP) by photocatalysis as Pickering emulsifier. Jackfruit filum pectin exhibited lower yield (17.31%), degree of methoxylation (15.53%), but higher galacuronic acid content (74.22%). A strong linkage between pectin and soy protein was formed by photocatalysis. The conjugated polymer could self-assemble into compact near globular nanoparticle. The mean size of SPP was larger than that of soy protein nanoparticles but smaller than that of soy protein-pectin complex without photocatalysis. Besides, the zeta potential of SPP was −33.8 mV, significantly lower than that of soy protein nanoparticles but higher than that of control sample, further confirming that SPP surfaces were completely covered with pectin molecules. Compared with control sample, the three-phase contact angle increased from 42.7 to 90.6°, indicated that SPP could be developed as effective Pickering emulsifiers. The emulsions stabilized by SPP exhibited high thermal stability and excellent salt tolerance as well as good freeze-thaw stability in comparison with emulsions covered with control sample. These findings would provide a potential way of producing effective Pickering emulsifier.GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Soy protein
• jackfruit filum pectin
• pickering emulsion
• photocatalysis
• stability

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31601415), National Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong, China (No. 2016A030307022), Characteristic innovation project of Higher Education of Guangdong, China (No. 2016KTSCX082), and the Major Program of Lingnan Normal University (No. LZL1501).