Effect of atmospheric cold plasma pretreatment on the formation of ternary complexes among wheat starch, β-lactoglobulin and fatty acids with different chain lengths.

This study aims to examine the effect of atmospheric cold plasma (ACP) pretreatment (1-4 min) on the formation, structure, and digestibility of ternary complexes among wheat starch (WS), β-lactoglobulin (βLG) and fatty acids with different chain lengths (octanoic acid (OA), capric acid (CA), lauric acid (LA)). The complexing index results demonstrated that the greatest quantity (72.53 %, 70.38 %, 67.38 %) of WS-fatty acids-βLG complexes was formed when WS was treated with ACP for 1 min, leading to the best ordered structure and lowest digestibility caused by the increase in amylose content of WS (30.02 %). Furthermore, OA formed more complexes (72.53 %) with the same modified WS and βLG than CA and LA due to higher solubility. In conclusion, short-term ACP pretreatment of WS could promote the WS-fatty acids-βLG complexes and improve structural orderliness and resistant starch content. The present study provides an emerging green technology to facilitate the formation of starch-fatty acids-protein complexes.