Study On Antioxidant Activities And Microencapsulation Of Caraway Essential Oil

Caraway is a perennial plant belonging to the Umbelliferae and distributed in Northern and Central Europe, Siberia, Turkey, Iran, India, and North. It is located in China's Sichuan, Tibet, the Northeast and North China. The fruit of caraway is a schizocarp, which at harvest splits into two halves, called"seeds". The seed is the only part of caraway contains essential oil about 3-6% with limonene and carvone as the major constituents. In China the essential oil of caraway has been widely used in food additives, seasoning, and cosmetics and so on. In this paper, caraway essential oil extraction method, antioxidant activities on essential oil and molecular microencapsulation were studied.These researches about caraway essential oil in this paper included three aspects:(1)Essential oil was extracted from the seeds of caraway by hydrodistillation (HD) and Microwave-assisted hydrodistillation (MHD), and an optimal extraction condition was got as follows: HD, distilling 2 hours, the ratio about raw material to water is 1:50 (w/v), and the extraction ratio is about 4.7%; by MHD, Microwave power 800W, the ratio about raw material to water is 1:50 (w/v),radiant time 4 minutes, distilling about1 hour, and the extraction ratio is about 4.2%. Two kinds of different caraway essential oils extracted from caraway planted in china were analyzed by GC-MS. The main constitutes were limonene and carvone.(2)The antioxidant activities of caraway essential oil was evaluated based on hydroxyl radical, superoxide anion scavenging activities, and phosphomolybdenum complex. From this result we can find that caraway essential oil has a notable antioxidant activity.(3)β-CD and its three derivatives could form a 1:1 host-guest complex with caraway essential oil and the complex could be characterized by fluorescence spectroscopy. The pH study showed that CDs easily found a complex with caraway essential oil in neutral media. While Van der Waals force and hydrophobic interaction may also contribute to the complex formation. Complex also can be approved by changes of Infrared spectra.