Encapsulation of Essential Oils of <i>Piper Nigrum</i> and <i>Monodora myristica</i> from South-West Nigeria Using Gum Arabic

Abstract

Investigations were conducted on the encapsulation of the essential oils of and using gumArabic as an encapsulating agent. The essential oils of these plant materials were extracted using hydro-distillation method. The essential oil yield for was 2.40% while that of was 2.90%. The prepared gum Arabic was used to encapsulate the essential oils of the said plant materials ( and ) at an optimum in-feed concentration and to achieve maximum essential oil (flavour) retention during spray-drying. The gumArabic provided ideal viscosity for the infeed mixtures. The spray-dried samples were analysed for total encapsulated oil, surface oil and moisture content. The moisture content, total oil and surface oil for were 3%, 80% and 5% while for the values were 2.5%, 80% and 4% respectively. Prior to the encapsulation of the essentials, the physico-chemical properties of the oils were evaluated, namely: percentage non-volatile residue, specific gravity, refractive index, acid value, ester value, saponification value and solubility in70% ethanol and the results were: 0.89, 0.8860, 1.4810, 8.20, 82.25, 140.02 and 1:5 clearly soluble respectively for and 1.21, 0.9021, 1.4950, 9.64, 75.32, 118.64 and 1:5 clearly respectively for . The two essential oil samples were well retained in the gum Arabic encapsulation matrices.

Keywords: Monodora, African nutmeg, essential oil, Black Pepper, Piper nigrum, flavour encapsulation.