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.