Art and Science behind Modified Starch: Treatment, Function and Application

Dear Colleagues,

Starch is the main storage reserve polysaccharide of plants and one of the most available and economical organic materials on the Earth. Native starch is a renewable, abundant, cheap, and biodegradable natural material used widely in food processing and packaging industries. Starch affects texture, viscosity, gel formation, adhesion, binding, moisture retention, film formation, and product homogeneity. The wide range of botanical sources provides native starches that meet the requirements for a multitude of different applications. However, native starches are not always suitable for specific industrial application due to functional limitations such as low resistance to shear stress, poor thermal properties, fast retrogradation, and syneresis. These natural limitations can be improved greatly by starch modification, which is generally divided into physical (e.g., hydrothermal treatment, physical field treatment, milling, and extrusion), chemical (e.g., cross-linking, etherification, esterification, acid hydrolysis, and oxidation), enzymatic, and genetic modifications. Moreover, starch using dual or three modification processes is also being investigated for generating novel starch products with desirable properties.

We are pleased to invite you to submit articles addressing the latest developments and recent knowledge regarding physically, chemically, enzymatically, and genetically modified starches including their structures and functional properties as well as applications in food processing and packaging industries. The research outcomes will contribute to optimizing and developing starch treatment techniques to facilitate the design and production of modified starch-based products with enhanced performance.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• New methods and technologies of starch modification;
• Mechanisms underlying starch modification;
• Targeted regulation of starch functional properties using modification;
• Design and applications of novel modified starch-based products.

Dr. Fei Ren
Dr. Jinwei Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• starch modification
• treatment method
• structural property
• functionality
• food processing
• food packaging