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Various natural polymers with hydrophilic properties have been used to form hydrogels for the encapsulation and delivery of nutrients and drugs in food and pharmaceutical industries. Among them, chitosan (ChiHG)-and alginate (AlgHG)-based hydrogels have been extensively explored for delivery of several nutraceuticals in recent years. Release of natural canthaxanthin (CX) obtained from Dietzia maris NITD (accession number: HM151403) has been investigated with emphasis on biomedical applications. Significant changes (P < 0.05) in degree of swelling (%) and moisture content (% dry basis) were found after encapsulation of bacterial canthaxanthin (BCX), but the gel content remained unchanged. BCX encapsulation efficiency was calculated to be 55.92% and 60.45% in ChiHG and AlgHG, respectively. A noticeable change in heat of fusion ( H m ) d melting point (T m ) was recorded in ChiHG and AlgHG after BCX encapsulation. Swelling and BCX release from gel matrix was performed under two different pH (1.2 and 7.4). The results showed that swelling of hydrogel and BCX release was facilitated at higher pH (7.4) than acidic pH (1.2). With regard to the release kinetics data, it was found that BCX is released from both ChiHG and AlgHG in a non-Fickian diffusion transport method. In addition, antioxidant activity of BCX encapsulated hydrogels was found significantly higher (P < 0.001) in terms of DPPH, ABTS, nitrite, hydroxyl radical scavenging and reducing power assay. These results indicated that BCX can be successfully encapsulated into a polymeric hydrogel to obtain a dynamic biomaterial that may be used in drug delivery applications in future.

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In food and beverage sector, biotechnological applications of pectinase have been increasing day by day. However, subdued production volume and low purity of the pectinase in commercial scale still remain a challenge. As a result, researchers are continuously exploring the opportunity to express modern tools such as genetic engineering, metagenomic study, and metabolic engineering to exploit microbes as a promising source for pectinases. Although this enzyme can be found naturally in plants, microbial pectinases retained a high value preference due to its easy fermentation in different bioreactors and inimitable physicochemical attributes. Microbial pectinase has immense potential to contribute in different areas such as textile industries, pharma sector, paper, and pulp industry, environmental engineering, agricultural economics in addition to that food, and beverage industries. The assertion of gene manipulation for better production of pectinase by means of elementary molecular devices and conventional fermentation procedures has been correlated in this study to get a bird's eye view in the structure-functional relationship of the microbial pectinases.