From Spray Drying to Nanofibers: How Electrospinning Is Rewriting Flavor Encapsulation

Flavor is the invisible architecture of the food industry. More than 10,000 volatile compounds have been identified in foods, yet only a small fraction directly shapes what we actually perceive as taste and aroma, because many of these low-molecular-weight molecules are easily destroyed by heat, light, evaporation, or their own poor solubility in water. A comprehensive review published in Current Research in Food Science by Mahshid Mojarad, Zolaikha Shiravani, Elahe Abedi, Dornoush Jafarpour, Mehran Sayadi, and Seyed Mohammad Bagher Hashemi now maps the full landscape of technologies designed to protect these fragile compounds, comparing the industrial workhorses of encapsulation with an emerging electrohydrodynamic technique that spins flavors into nanofibers thinner than a human hair. The stakes are enormous: flavor loss during baking, storage, and packaging costs manufacturers both money and consumer trust, and the review argues that the next generation of controlled-release systems could transform everything from soft drinks to active meat packaging.

The review begins by distinguishing the vocabulary of flavor science. Flavor encompasses the overall sensory perception of food, including taste, touch, smell, sight, and even sound, while aroma refers specifically to the odor detected by the olfactory system. The compounds responsible range from naturally occurring phenolics, terpenoids, alcohols, esters, ketones, and pyrazines found in essential oils, spices, and citrus peels, to synthetic molecules engineered to mimic smoky, citrus, fruity, buttery, or caramel notes. Many of these molecules carry bonus biological activity, including antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and immune-boosting properties. But their volatility is their undoing. In products such as cookies and bread, flavors can be lost during baking or develop off-notes, which is why manufacturers increasingly turn to encapsulation, the practice of wrapping active compounds in protective carrier materials that shield them from degradation, delay their release, prevent oxidation, and ultimately enhance the eating experience.

Encapsulation operates across macro, micro, and nano scales, from capsules larger than 5,000 micrometers down to structures of just 1 to 100 nanometers. While the microscale dominates the food industry today, the review highlights growing evidence that nanoencapsulation offers superior stability, better controlled release, enhanced solubility in liquids, and improved penetration through biological barriers. The conventional toolbox includes physicochemical methods such as coacervation and emulsification, physicomechanical methods such as spray drying and freeze drying, and chemical methods based on polymerization and cross-linking. Each technique produces capsules that differ in size, morphology, release profile, and stability, and the authors stress that no single method is universally superior. Selection depends on the chemistry of the flavor compound, the carrier material, the intended food application, economic constraints, and production scale rather than encapsulation efficiency alone.

Spray drying remains the most widely applied industrial technique, prized for its simplicity, low cost, scalability, and high throughput. In this process, a flavor is dissolved or dispersed in a carrier matrix, atomized into a heated drying chamber, and rapidly converted into spherical particles, often under nitrogen to prevent oxidation. The review cites strawberry flavor encapsulation achieving 85 percent efficiency using maltodextrin, modified starch, and gum arabic at an inlet temperature of 190 degrees Celsius, yielding microcapsules with roughly 90 percent solubility. Yet the method has a critical weakness: retention of volatiles varies enormously with molecular weight. High-carbon volatiles may retain up to 95 percent of their aroma, while low-molecular-weight compounds such as acetaldehyde may retain as little as 20 percent, creating potential inconsistencies between liquid and powdered flavor versions. Powder adhesion to equipment and thermal reactions further complicate the picture, and most studies remain at laboratory scale with limited data on real processing conditions and long-term storage.

The cooler alternatives each carry their own trade-offs. Spray chilling, which solidifies lipid-encapsulated flavors in a cooling chamber at 34 to 42 degrees Celsius, minimizes thermal degradation and suits heat-sensitive compounds, but it is restricted to lipid-based carriers and requires flavors to remain stable at the lipid melting point. Applications include coating the potent aroma compound 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline with paraffin for stability and masking bitter plant extracts for dark chocolate. Freeze drying, which removes water by sublimation, excels at preserving heat-sensitive compounds and creates porous structures that facilitate controlled release, but its high energy consumption, long processing times, and cost confine it largely to high-value products such as coffee and spices. In a comparative study of chamomile extract, freeze drying better preserved total polyphenol content, yet spray drying achieved higher encapsulation efficiency of about 90 percent versus 84 percent, underscoring that the optimal choice depends on the core material and the priorities of the manufacturer.

Coacervation occupies a middle ground, forming micro- or nanocapsules by depositing proteins or polysaccharides around flavor droplets in an emulsion. It can encapsulate both hydrophilic and hydrophobic compounds at room temperature, protecting heat-sensitive flavors and achieving impressive efficiencies, with recent reports of cinnamon extract encapsulation in alginate reaching up to 97 percent while masking undesirable flavors. However, the process is notoriously sensitive to pH, ionic strength, polymer molecular weight, and solvent properties, which can produce variable particle sizes, aggregation, and elevated costs. The review notes that systematic studies of how the molecular characteristics of flavor compounds, such as electrical charge and hydrophobicity, influence coacervate formation remain limited, and calls for predictive models to improve reproducibility and industrial applicability.

Against this backdrop, electrospinning has emerged as the review’s most compelling alternative. The technique applies a high-voltage electrostatic field to a polymer solution containing the flavor, stretching it into elongated fibrous structures with diameters ranging from nanometers to micrometers, high surface-area-to-volume ratios, and interconnected porosity. Because the process operates under mild conditions without high temperatures, pressure, or harsh chemicals, it preserves the structural and sensory integrity of volatile compounds. Two advanced variants, emulsion electrospinning and coaxial electrospinning, produce core-shell fibers in which the aromatic compound is physically confined to the inner core and surrounded by an outer polymer layer, reducing contact with the environment and limiting burst release. Shell thickness, core-to-shell flow ratio, and polymer hydrophobicity can be tuned to precisely control release kinetics. Reported encapsulation efficiencies are striking: thyme essential oil in potato starch nanofibers reached 99 percent, saffron in gelatin reached 96 percent, and thymol in pullulan-whey composites reached 87 percent with release targeted to the small intestine.

The practical applications documented in the review read like a preview of future food packaging. Electrospun polyvinyl alcohol nanofibers loaded with laurel and rosemary essential oils reduced lipid oxidation in chicken breast fillets by up to 68 percent while improving microbial and color stability. Gelatin-chitosan nanofibers carrying thyme essential oil showed bactericidal activity against Clostridium perfringens in sausages, suggesting a viable alternative to nitrite. Polycaprolactone nanofibers incorporating lemon essential oil and a metal-organic framework extended the shelf life of red meat at 4 degrees Celsius by up to 18 days, and a bilayer acorn starch-zein film with cinnamon essential oil extended the shelf life of rainbow trout fillets by six days while cutting lipid oxidation by 44 percent. Perhaps most intriguingly, stimulus-responsive systems are now being designed to release flavors only when triggered by light, pH shifts, temperature, humidity, or even the spoilage enzymes secreted by contaminating microbes, enabling packaging that actively responds to the state of the food it protects.

Significant hurdles remain before electrospinning can displace conventional methods at scale. Production throughput is low, scalability is difficult, the range of food-grade solvents is limited, and the process is sensitive to parameters such as voltage, viscosity, humidity, and flow rate, with even small changes altering fiber morphology and release kinetics. Regulatory approval of a polymer in bulk form does not automatically extend to its nanofibrous form, because electrospinning can alter conformation, crystallinity, surface area, and degradation behavior, and data on gastrointestinal fate and long-term toxicity of electrospun nanostructures are sparse. The review concludes that electrospinning should be viewed as a complementary technology that expands the encapsulation toolkit rather than a universal replacement, and it calls for validation in real food matrices, predictive computational models including machine learning, greener solvent systems such as natural deep eutectic solvents, and comprehensive sensory and consumer studies. If those challenges are met, the fibers now spinning in laboratories could soon deliver aroma exactly when and where the palate demands it.

Subject of Research: Controlled-release encapsulation technologies for aromatic and flavor compounds in food systems

Article Title: Recent Advances in Technologies for the Controlled Release of Aromatic Compounds: From Encapsulation to Electrospinning

Article References: Mojarad, M., Shiravani, Z., Abedi, E., Jafarpour, D., Sayadi, M., & Bagher Hashemi, S. M. (2026). Recent Advances in Technologies for the Controlled Release of Aromatic Compounds: From Encapsulation to Electrospinning. Current Research in Food Science, Article 101586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crfs.2026.101586

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.crfs.2026.101586

Keywords: encapsulation, electrospinning, flavor compounds, aromatic compounds, controlled release, spray drying, freeze drying, coacervation, nanofibers, essential oils, food packaging, food science