Whey microbeads manufactured using a cold-set gelation process, have been used to encapsulate bioactives.
In this study whey microbeads were used to encapsulate riboflavin using 2 methods. Riboflavin was
added to the microbead forming solution however diffusional losses of riboflavin occurred during the
subsequent bead preparation. To overcome riboflavin loss, a second approach to ‘load’ whey microbeads
by soaking in riboflavin was assessed. Significantly (p 6 0.05) higher concentrations of riboflavin were
obtained in ‘loaded’ microbeads (361 mg/L) compared to riboflavin added to the microbead forming solution
(48 mg/L). Riboflavin uptake by the microbeads was shown to be via a partition process. As partitioning
is often driven by hydrophobic interactions the uptake of amino acids and peptides of varying
hydrophobicities by the microbeads was examined. The % encapsulation increased with increasing molecule
hydrophobicity with a maximum of 89% encapsulation. Whey microbeads are well suited to act as
sorbents for encapsulation.