Microencapsulation of fennel and chamomile aqueous extracts for application in cottage cheese

Nowadays, there is an increasing concern among consumers to choose “natural foods” or foods in which synthetic additives were replaced by natural ingredients. Some of these ingredients possess antioxidant and antimicrobial properties making them suitable to be used as natural preservers, bringing also health benefits in the prevention of several diseases [1]. Foeniculum vulgare Mill. (Fennel) and Matricaria recutita L. (Chamomile) are examples of plants that showed both antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. Furthermore, their aqueous extracts proved to be suitable for incorporation in cottage cheese, maintaining the nutritional properties and improving the antioxidant potential of cottage cheese samples, up to 7 days [2, 3]. Nevertheless, a decrease in the bioactive properties of the studied samples was observed after 14 days of storage. In fact, problems linked with the incorporation of natural extracts into food matrices, mainly related to their stability and bioavailability, are often referred in literature, being well known that several agents (light, moisture, heat and pH) can induce changes in those extracts. In this context, microencapsulation emerges as a solution to provide protection and controlled release of natural extracts, being increasingly used in several fields including in pharmaceutical and food industries [4]. Therefore, the aim of this study was to prepare microcapsules with the aqueous extracts of fennel and chamomile for incorporation in cottage cheese samples, in order to solve the previously mentioned decrease in bioactivity observed after 14 days of storage