Enhanced stability of red‐fleshed apple anthocyanins by copigmentation and encapsulation

BACKGROUND Red‐fleshed apples are a great source of natural colorants and functional food ingredients because of their high anthocyanin content. Generally, anthocyanins are highly unstable after extraction, which limits their wide applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries. This study was aimed at investigating the effects of combining copigmentation with encapsulation on the stability of anthocyanins from red‐fleshed apples. In this study, red‐fleshed apple anthocyanins were copigmented with caffeic acid, and then the copigmented complexes were encapsulated using gum arabic and maltodextrin using spray drying and freeze drying. RESULTS All anthocyanin microcapsules had high encapsulation efficiencies ranging from 93.84 to 96.85% with mean hydrodynamic diameter smaller than 350 nm. After heating at 80 °C for 2 h, the dispersions of microencapsulated anthocyanins with copigments exhibited the highest absorbance values at λmax (515 nm) (P