Effect of drying and interfacial membrane composition on the antimicrobial activity of emulsified citral

•Citral emulsions stabilized by caseinate or caseinate/pectin were prepared.•Additional pectin layer was shown to protect citral during spray-drying.•Antibacterial activity of the dried capsules was measured on four bacterial strains.•Emulsions containing pectin and 5% citral showed the widest inhibition zones. Citral-in-water emulsions were prepared with two different essential oil concentrations of 2.5 and 5.0% (w/w), then spray-dried in the presence of the same amount of maltodextrins (20%). The microcapsules were prepared with two different emulsifier compositions: monolayer microcapsules (ML) stabilized by sodium caseinate alone and layer-by-layer microcapsules (LBL) stabilized by sodium caseinate and pectin. The encapsulation efficiency was higher for LBL microcapsules (e.g. 99.6 ± 0.4% for 2.5% citral) than that for ML ones (e.g. 78.6 ± 0.6% for 2.5% citral) which confirm that the additional pectin layer was able to protect citral during the spray-drying process whatever citral concentration. Furthermore, our results showed that the antibacterial activity of the obtained microcapsules significantly depends on both citral concentration and interfacial membrane composition. The presence of two layers surrounding the citral droplets may result in a progressive and controlled release of the encapsulated citral.