Recent advances in the spray drying encapsulation of essential fatty acids and functional oils

The essential fatty acids (EFAs) are recognized as functional oils for humans as they possess nutritional and pharmaceutical benefits and can promote whole-body health in different ways. This review describes and classifies different types of EFAs, gives an overview of the spray drying process alongside its probable challenges for encapsulation of functional oils. Also, various used wall materials, and the effects of the process conditions on the encapsulation efficiency of functional oils have been discussed. Moreover, it focuses on the spray drying encapsulation of functional oils derived from marine and plant-based sources in recent years (2016-2019), and the fortification of different foods with encapsulated functional oils. Protecting EFAs through efficient methods such as spray drying encapsulation and enriching the various foods with encapsulated functional oils is an emerging field, which has drawn lots of attention these days. The wall materials (carriers) and spray drying conditions are two major influential factors that can easily affect the properties of final produced powders.