Application of multicriteria decision technique to determine optimum sodium alginate concentration for microencapsulation of Lactobacillus casei Shirota by extrusion and emulsification

Abstract The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of sodium alginate concentration on microencapsulation of probiotic Lactobacillus casei Shirota (LCS) by extrusion and emulsification methods and determine the optimum alginate concentration using Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach. Determined morphology and size of the capsules, encapsulation efficiency, release of entrapped cells, and survivability of entrapped cell exposed heat treatment, simulated gastric and intestinal juice conditions were significantly varied depending on encapsulation method and alginate concentrations ( p < .05). The beads obtained with extrusion more protected the probiotic cells than beads obtained with emulsification. TOPSIS was performed to determine optimum alginate concentration regarding capsule size, encapsulation efficiency, release rate of entrapped cells, and survivability of entrapped cell exposed heat treatment, simulated gastric and intestinal juice conditions. According to TOPSIS, 2% and 2.5% of alginate may be effectively used to microencapsulation of LCS for extrusion and emulsification methods, respectively. Practical applications Microencapsulation is a technology that is widely used for enclosed valuable core material in very small capsules with coating materials. The stability of microencapsulated probiotic bacteria is affected by several factors such as coating material and its concentration, microencapsulation methods, etc. The results of this work present the optimum sodium alginate concentration using TOPSIS for microencapsulation of Lactobacillus casei Shirota by extrusion and emulsification methods and present the ideal microencapsulation method.