The citral compound that contributes to the strong-lemony odour of lemongrass has high
volatility and low physicochemical stability. To overcome the problems, the inclusion
complex of the encapsulation technique was applied with rice starch as a coating material
to improve the stability and protect against any unfavourable reaction. Therefore, this
study was conducted to determine the structural characterization, citral retention and
thermal properties of native rice starch, gelatinised rice starch, inclusion complex of rice
starch–citral compound, and inclusion complex of rice starch–lemongrass extract.
Lemongrass extract and standard citral compound were homogenised into rice starch
dispersion at 80oC for 15 mins and freeze-dried at −50.0±2.0oC. The formation of the
inclusion complex powder was determined using different analyses including
morphological structure using the scanning electron microscope, crystallinity structure
was determined with X-ray diffractometer, identification and quantification of citral
compound using HS-SPME-GC-FID and the thermal properties of inclusion complex
analyzed using differential scanning calorimetry. The microstructure of both inclusion
complex of rice starch-lemongrass extract and rice starch-citral compound exhibited a
laminated multiangular shape with crumble formation together with the characteristics of
V-type pattern of crystalline complexes. The low degree of crystallinity of the inclusion
complex of rice starch–lemongrass extract obtained high in citral entrapment
(29.34±3.13%) with the highest concentration of citral retention (7.33±0.78 ppm). Both
inclusion complex of rice starch-citral compound and rice starch-lemongrass extract
displayed an endothermic peak at 138oC, which is attributed to an inclusion complex
occurrence with significant difference (p<0.05) of enthalpy of 0.44±0.05 J/g and
1.61±0.70 J/g, respectively. These findings showed that rice starch was effective in
complexing with aroma compounds in improving the stability and protecting the citral
compound of lemongrass extract from any unwanted changes. This inclusion complex
should be regarded as an important strategy in designing a novel model of citral
compound of lemongrass for food flavouring application.ha