Ahmad Fatahi Ardakani - Associate Professor, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Ardakan University, Ardakan, Iran
Mansooreh Soleimanifard - Department of Food Chemistry, Faculty of Food Science, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran

Propolis has limited applications in food and medicine products because of being sensitive to processing and environmental conditions and its scent, smell and taste. Today, encapsulation systems are appropriate methods to eliminate these defects. The aim of this research is to produce extract propolis loaded-microparticles [core: propolis extract (PE), wall material: sodium-caseinate (NaCas) and maltodextrin (MD)] by method of homogenization-sonication combined system. Then, dynamic properties of particles (size, polydispersity index (PDI), Zeta potential), encapsulation efficiency (EE), morphology properties of microcapsules were studied. The best treatment (ratio of ۱:۵ of propolis extract powder to sodium-caseinate) has demonstrated particle size being less than (۶۲۹ ± ۴.۱۷), appropriate heterogeneity index (۰.۴۸۵±۰.۱۱), Zeta potential (-۱۰.۸۰) and the highest encapsulation efficiency (۹۶.۱۸ ± ۲.۰۴), although some formulations have dynamic light scattering (DLS) and appropriate efficiency, too. Although, in all treatments, particles have spherical, regular and integrated surfaces, otherwise increasing the amount of propolis extract powder increased the space among particles and decreased cohesion.

Propolis, Microcapsules, Dynamic and morphology properties.