Stability and Antioxidant Activity of Pea Protein-curcumin Nanoparticles
Maintaining and increasing the stability and bioefficacy of bioactive substances is the key to the development of functional foods.In this study,the pH-driven method was used to prepare pea protein-curcumin nanoparticles(PP-Cur)using pea protein as the embedding material and evaluate their stability and their antioxidant properties,using cur-cumin retention rate as the evaluation index to study the PP-Cur nanoparticles at different temperatures,light conditions.The stability of PP-Cur nanoparticles under different temperature,light conditions and simulated gastrointestinal conditions was investigated.Its scavenging effect on ABTS free radicals was examined and its total antioxidant capacity was deter-mined by FRAP method.The results showed that the retention rate of curcumin in PP-Cur was significantly higher than that of free curcumin after treatment at 75,85 and 95 ℃ for 2 h.The retention rate of curcumin in PP-Cur nanoparti-cles after irradiation under UV light for 3h was still(89.9±1.95)%,which was significantly higher than that of free cur-cumin(P<0.05),and that after simulated digestion in gastrointestinal tract,the retention rate of curcumin in PP-Cur nanoparticles remained(94.38±1.93)%,which was significantly higher than that of free curcumin after gastrointestinal simulated digestion(P<0.05).In addition,it was concluded that PP-Cur nanoparticles with ABTS radical scavenging ca-pacity of 0.119 mol TE/g,DPPH radical scavenging rate of 71.27%and FRAP value of 0.019 mol FeSO4/g,the encap-sulation of pea protein could maintain and improve the antioxidant capacity of curcumin.In summary,the results demon-strated that pea protein encapsulated curcumin could effectively improve the stability and antioxidant activity of curcumin and could be used as a delivery matrix for hydrophobic bioactive substances.