Effect of maltodextrin and Persian gum as wall materials and tannic acid as copigment on some properties of encapsulated sour cherry anthocyanin microcapsules.

Due to the instability of anthocyanins, their application as natural colorants is limited. To improve their stability, anthocyanins extracted from sour cherry were copigmented with tannic acid at varying molar ratios. The optimal anthocyanin:copigment molar ratio was determined to be 1:0.25. Subsequently, both non-copigmented and copigmented anthocyanins (using the optimal tannic acid molarity) were spray-dried with either maltodextrin alone (T1 and T2) or a combination of maltodextrin and Persian gum (T3 and T4). The anthocyanin retention in T2 and T4 was approximately 53 % and 38 %, respectively, which were higher than in the non-copigmented samples. All powders demonstrated high encapsulation efficiency (>90.37 %). Stability tests on the anthocyanins conducted over 28 days indicated that light exposure had no effect on the reduction of anthocyanin content when maltodextrin was used. Thus, the copigmentation of anthocyanins with tannic acid, combined with encapsulation in maltodextrin, presents a promising method for producing a stable natural colorant.