3.2. Water activity, encapsulation efficiency, hygroscopicity and solubility
Table 2 shows the values obtained for the water activity, encapsulation efficiency, hygroscopicity and solubility for all the treatment combinations. The values obtained for the encapsulation efficiency were high, varying between 97.33 ± 0.81 and 99.57 ± 0.32. Though there was a significant difference between the treatments, the differences can be considered as small, indicating that neither different proportions of core material nor the encapsulating agent interfered with the mass of active material to be encapsulated. The high values obtained for the encapsulation efficiency indicated that the methodology chosen to encapsulate AA was adequate for the proposed objective and was highly effective because a significant amount of AA was found on the inside of the microcapsule, but only a small amount was found on the surface.