Advances in Spray-Drying Encapsulation of Food Bioactive Ingredients: From Microcapsules to Nanocapsules

Many natural food bioactive ingredients are sensitive to processing and environmental conditions and thus it is necessary to improve their stability to create products with long shelf lives. Encapsulation by spray drying is a widely used economical strategy to tackle this issue, and many scientists and manufacturers are using it in their research, development, and production activities. In this review, the spray-drying process is described, as are recent trends in the encapsulation of fish oils, essential fatty acids, probiotics, phenolic compounds, and natural food colorants. The formulation and process conditions used in previous research and the results obtained are tabulated. Also, new innovations in bioactive encapsulation using nano–spray drying are described.