Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938

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Food Chemistry
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodchem

A new pre-gelatinized starch preparing by spray drying and electron beam

irradiation of oat starch
Huishan Shen a, Jiangtao Yu b, Junqing Bai b, Yili Liu a, Xiangzhen Ge a, Wenhao Li a,
Jianmei Zheng a, *
a
Engineering Research Center of Grain and Oil Functionalized Processing in Universities of Shaanxi Province, College of Food Science and Engineering, Northwest A&F
University, 22 Xinong Road, Yangling 712100, Shaanxi, China
b
Yangling Hesheng Irradiation Technologies Co., Ltd., Yangling 712100, Shaanxi, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: As a green and safe physical technology, irradiation is increasingly used to improve starch properties. In the
Oat starch study, oat starch was pre-gelatinized at 70 ◦ C followed by spray drying. Subsequently, the spray-dried starch
Spray drying (SDS) was exposed to electron beam (e-beam) irradiation at different doses to obtain new pre-gelatinized starch.
Electron beam irradiation
Spray drying caused a decrement in the ratio of long B3 chains and the molecular weight of starch. Spray-dried
Molecular structure
starch (SDS) slightly increased solubility and swelling power than native starch. When SDS was subjected to e-
Physicochemical characteristics
Rheological properties beam irradiation, its solubility and swelling power increased dramatically, but the pasting viscosities, gelatini­
zation temperatures, apparent viscosity, storage modulus (G′ ) and lost modulus (G′′ ) reduced. The depolymer­
ization of starch molecules and the breakage of amylopectin chains might be responsible for changing the
physicochemical properties of e-beam irradiated starch. These results showed that spray drying combined with e-
beam irradiation would potentially produce new pre-gelatinized starch.

1. Introduction gelatinization (Sarifudin, Sholichah, Setiaboma, & Tongta, 2021). The

Oat is the fourth main economic crop globally, mainly consumed as
whole-grain foods, and used in animal feed and industrial applications
(Yu et al., 2022). Oat contains protein, dietary fiber, vitamins, phyto­
chemicals, and diversity of essential amino acids, which have health
functions on reducing blood lipids, regulating blood sugar, lowering
cholesterol, and decreasing the occurrence of colon cancer (Falsafi et al.,
2019). Therefore, oat has gained popularity due to its high nutritional
value.
Starch is the main constituent of oat, and accounts for up to 60 %.
Starch’s multi-scale structure, physicochemical and functional proper­
ties decided its application for various purposes. However, native starch
is insoluble in cold water, accessible to retrogradation, and has the poor
anti-shear ability, and it does not possess all the required properties for a
specific use. Physical, chemical, enzymatic and their combined modifi­
cation of starch are conducted to modulate the structure, enhance the
positive features and extend the reach of specific applications.
Pre-gelatinized starch (PGS) is a physically modified starch produced
by heating starch in excess water at a temperature above the starch
gelatinization process can cause chemical and physical changes to the
starch granules by rearranging the intra- and intermolecular hydrogen
bonds between the water and starch molecules and can destroy the
crystalline structures of starch granules (dos Santos, Franco, & Leonel,
2020). The general technologies for the preparation of PGS include
drum drying, spray drying, extrusion cooking, and microwave method.
Spray drying is one of the most economical and effective techniques. The
process involves dehydrating atomized fluid droplets in a hot convective
medium and instantaneously transforming the droplets into a dried
powder (Azhar, Hashib, Ibrahim, & Rahman, 2021). Spray-dried PGS
can keep the granule integrity because it is less damaged by shear and
heat (Ma et al., 2022).
PGS swells rapidly in cold water and exhibits enhanced viscosity and
desirable thickening properties, widely used in food and non-food in­
dustries. Wheat noodles substituted with less than 15 % PGS (w/w)
possessed better mouthfeel and textural properties than the noodles
made from native wheat starch (Yousif, Gadallah, & Sorour, 2012). Li
et al. (2020) reported that adding pre-gelatinized corn starch improved
the tensile strength of dough sheets and enhanced the smoothness of

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhengjm75@126.com (J. Zheng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2022.133938
Received 22 March 2022; Received in revised form 26 July 2022; Accepted 10 August 2022
Available online 12 August 2022
0308-8146/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Shen et al.
noodles. To expand the industrial application of PGS, modifying the
functional characteristics of PGS using other technology has attracted
much attention in recent years (He et al., 2020; Song et al., 2017; Russ,
Zielbauer, Ghebremedhin, & Vilgis, 2016).
Electron beam (e-beam) irradiation is a novel non-thermal, eco-
friendly, and meager energy consumption technology that has been
extensively used in food preservation, sterilization, and material modi­
fication (Xue, Zhao, Wen, Cheng, & Lin, 2017). E-beam irradiation is
produced from an electron accelerator without requiring a radioactive
source (Du et al., 2020). As a result, it exhibits the advantage of conti­
nuity, homogeneity, high utilization rate, and no radioactive hazards
compared to other radioactive source (Manaila et al., 2021).
In recent years, studies have shown that e-beam irradiation has been
more efficient in modifying the multi-scale structure and physico­
chemical properties of starch. E-beam irradiation causes the degradation
of the starch molecular structure and debranching of amylopectin,
resulting in more short, linear-chain molecules (Zhou, Ye, He, Wang, &
Jin, 2020). In addition, e-beam irradiation significantly decreased the
crystallinity, pasting viscosity, gelatinization temperature, and
enthalpy, while increasing the solubility and resistant starch content of
starch (Pan, Xing, Zhang, Luo, & Chen, 2020; Du et al., 2020).
Knowledge about irradiation technology to improve PGS function­
ality is scarce. Therefore, the study aimed to prepare a new pre-
gelatinized starch through spray drying and e-beam irradiation of oat
starch. Furthermore, this work evaluated the effect of e-beam irradiation
on the structural, physicochemical, and functional properties of spray-
dried PGS from a molecular perspective.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
Oat grains were purchased from a supermarket located in Shaanxi,
China. In addition, 8-amino-1,3,6-pyrenetrisulfonic acid (APTS) and
sodium cyanoborohydride were purchased from Sigma Chemicals, St.
Louis, USA. Pullulanase was purchased from Yuanye Biotechnology Co.,
ltd. (Shanghai, China). All other chemical reagents were of analytical
grade.
2.2. Starch isolation
The wet-milling method was applied to isolate oat starch (Xu et al.,
2017). Oat grains (500 g) were steeped overnight in 1500 mL of 0.45 %
Na2S2O5 solution and ground in a blender (HX-PB9289A, AUX, Foshan
Haixun Electric Appliances Co., ltd) to form a slurry. The homogenate
was filtered to remove the fibrous impurities and centrifuged at 2000×g
for 10 min. The starch cake was re-washed with water after removing
the upper protein layer. The white starch cake was dried in an oven for
24 h at 45 ◦ C. The native starch was named NS.
2.3. Preparation of pre-gelatinized starch
The method of Fu, Wang, Li, and Adhikari (2012) was used to pro­
duce pre-gelatinized starch. The starch suspension (10 %, w/v) was
prepared with 40 ◦ C distilled water, and stirred in a 70 ◦ C water bath for
10 min. The starch slurry was dried using a spray dryer (SD-Basic,
LabPlant, Britain) with an inlet temperature of 170 ◦ C and an outlet
temperature of 50 ◦ C. The feed rate was 0.6 L/h. The atomizing air
pressure and flow rate were 4 bars and 70 m3/h. The aspirator rate was
set to 100 %. The spray-dried starch sample was named SDS.
2.4. Electron beam irradiation
E-beam irradiation was conducted following the method of Shen
et al. (2022). Each SDS sample (50 g) was packed in a polyethylene
pouch (8 cm × 9 cm) and placed on a conveyor belt. At room
2
Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938
temperature, the starch sample was irradiated only once by a high-
energy electron linear accelerator (Yangling Hesheng Irradiation Tech­
nologies Co., ltd., Shaanxi, China). The electron beam energy was 10.0
MeV, and the power was 150 kW. The irradiation dose was set to 2, 4, 6,
and 8 kGy, respectively. The irradiated starch samples were named SDS-
2, SDS-4, SDS-6, and SDS-8.
2.5. Microscopy analysis
2.5.1. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
A speck of starch sample was fixed to a slab and sprayed with a metal
coat. All samples were recorded at an accelerating voltage of 5 kV using
a Nova Nano SEM 450 SEM (FEI, USA).
2.5.2. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM)
The CLSM images were observed as Shen et al. (2021) described. The
starch sample (2 mg), APTS solution (10 mmol/L, 4 μL) and sodium
cyanoborohydride (4 μL) were mixed, and put in an oscillation incubator
at 30 ◦ C for 18 h. After washing, the sample was dispersed in a drop of
the glycerol-water mixture (1:1, v/v) and recorded by a LEICA TCS SP8
CLSM (Leica Microsystems ltd., Germany) equipped with 100 × plan
apo/1.4011 oil UV. The excitation wavelength was 488 nm.
2.6. Multi-scale structure
2.6.1. Amylose content (AC)
The amylose content was determined by the Megazyme AMYLOSE/
AMYLOPECTIN reagent kit (K-AMYL, Megazyme Co. ltd., Wicklow,
Ireland).
2.6.2. Amylopectin chain length distribution (CLD)
The CLD of starch was performed by a high-performance anion
chromatography with a pulsed amperometric detector system (ICS-
5000+, Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA) and referred to the method of Ge
et al. (2021). The sample (40 mg) was added to 2 mL of 10 mmol/L
sodium acetate buffer (pH 4.5) and gelatinized for 5 min. Then 5 μL of
pullulanase was added and hydrolyzed at 50 ◦ C for 24 h. The mixture
was centrifugated at 3000×g for 10 min and the supernatant was diluted
50 times. The analytical column was Dionex CarboPac™ PA-100. The
mobile phase was 0.15 mol/L NaOH (A) and 0.5 mol/L sodium acetate
containing 0.15 mol/L NaOH (B). The gradient eluent was 0–2 min, 60
% A; 2–10 min, 50 % A; 10–40 min, 40 % A; 40–60 min, 20 % A.
2.6.3. Molecular weight (Mw)
According to the method of Ge et al. (2021), the Mw was determined
by high-performance liquid chromatography system (HPLC, Waters,
Model 410, MA). About 20 mg of starch sample was dissolved in 1 mL of
0.1 mol/L NaNO3 solutions and gelatinized for 5 min. The HPLC was
performed using an Ultrahydrogel™ LInear column (300 × 7.8 mm,
Waters, Tokyo, Japan) and a differential refractive index detector (600E,
Waters, USA). The injection volume was 20 μL, and the mobile phase
was 0.1 mol/L NaNO3 with a 0.6 mL/min flow rate.
2.6.4. X-ray diffraction (XRD)
The crystalline characteristic was performed by an X-ray diffrac­
tometer (Ultima IV, Rigaku Corporation, Japan), operating at 40 kV and
40 mA. All samples were scanned at a diffraction angle (2θ) range of 4-
60◦ and a 0.02◦ step size.
2.7. Physicochemical properties
2.7.1. Solubility and swelling power
The starch suspension (2 %, w/v) was heated at 50 to 90 ◦ C for 30
min. The solubility and swelling power were calculated as the previous
method by Sun et al. (2022).
H. Shen et al.
2.7.2. Pasting properties
Starch (3 g) and 25 g of distilled water were mixed well in an
aluminum canister. Then the starch suspension was carried out using a
Rapid Visco Analyzer (RVA-4500, Perten Instruments, Sweden). The
time–temperature profile was: heated from 50 to 95 ◦ C at a rate of 12 ◦ C/
min, held at 95 ◦ C for 2.5 min, then cooled to 50 ◦ C at the same rate.
2.7.3. Thermal properties
Starch (3 mg) was added to 9 μL of distilled water and sealed in an
aluminum pan. The sample was heated from 20 to 100 ◦ C at a heating
rate of 10 ◦ C/min. The nitrogen gas flow was 50 mL/min.
2.7.4. Rheological properties
The starch suspension (6 %, w/v) was gelatinized at 100 ◦ C for 30
min with constant stirring. The cooled starch paste was transferred onto
the plate of the HR-1 Rheometer (TA Instruments, USA) equipped with a
40 mm parallel plate (gap = 1 mm). The constant temperature of all tests
was 25 ◦ C.
Dynamic strain sweep: The linear viscoelasticity region was deter­
mined by a dynamic strain sweep, which was performed over a strain
range of 0.01 %–100 % at an angular frequency of 5 rad/s and 25 ◦ C.
Fig. 1. Scanning electron micrographs (SEM) and confocal laser scanning micrographs (CLSM) images of native, spray-dried and irradiated oat starch.
3
Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938
Curves of the storage modulus (G′ ) and loss modulus (G′′ ) versus strain
were recorded to obtain the linear viscoelasticity region.
Dynamic viscoelastic properties: The frequency sweeps were set from
0.1 to 100 rad/s within the linear viscoelastic strain region (2 % strain).
The elastic modulus (G′ ) and loss modulus (G′′ ) were recorded.
Steady shear analysis: After the dynamic oscillatory analysis, the
resulting paste was held for 120 s at 25 ◦ C. The shear stress of the
samples was conducted over the shear rate of 0–300 s− 1. The strain was
2 %. The flow curves (viscosity versus shear rate) were fitted using the
power law model:
η = K(γ)n− 1 .
where η is the apparent viscosity (Pa⋅s); K is the consistency coefficient
(Pa⋅sn); γ is the shear rate (s− 1); n is the flow behavior index.
2.8. Statistical analysis
The reported results were statistically analyzed with the Duncan test
using SPSS 21.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and expressed as mean ±
standard deviation. Statistical significance was set to p < 0.05.
H. Shen et al. Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938

3. Results and discussion
3.1. Morphology observation
Most native oat starch granules exhibited irregular or polygonal
shapes, and a minority of oat starch showed an oval shape (Fig. 1). They
were smooth in appearance with no apparent fissures. As presented in
Fig. 1, spray-dried starch (SDS) granules showed folds and wrinkles on
the surface, and the center of the granules displayed a hollow structure.
During the pre-gelatinization stage, starch granules absorbed water and
swollen under high temperature and agitation. Upon spray drying, the
swollen granules became wrinkled and shrunken (dos Santos, Franco,
Mischan, & Leonel, 2019).
E-beam irradiation did not alter the starch granule surface structure
(Fig. 1). The phenomenon was consistent with e-beam irradiated quinoa
and waxy corn starch (Du et al., 2020; Zhou, Ye, He, Wang, & Jin, 2020).
However, Pan, Xing, Zhang, Luo, and Chen (2020) observed that the
surface morphology of rice starch was not destroyed by low dose e-beam
irradiation. In contrast, small fissures occurred on the starch surface at
high dose irradiation (10 kGy). The change of starch granular micro­
structure upon e-beam irradiation is dose-dependent. An irradiation
dose lower than 8 kGy might be relatively weak to produce apparent
morphological changes in the starch granule.
CLSM is an effective technique to analyze the internal structure of
starch granules, such as growth rings and channels. APTS is a fluores­
cence probe that could react with the reducing end of starch molecules
and exhibit bright fluorescence. Native starch had a dark core in the
hilum (Fig. 1). Other regions of starch granules exhibited strong fluo­
rescence, which implied that oat starch’s hilum contains less amylose.
SDS sample showed lower fluorescence intensity, and some starch
granules lost their intact morphology (Fig. 1). The phenomenon
revealed that SDS was partially gelatinized and disrupted its crystalline
structure. The fluorescence intensity of starch became enhanced after e-
beam irradiation (Fig. 1). The reason is probably that irradiation
induced the degradation of amylopectin chains and produced low mo­
lecular weight fractions, consequently increasing the fluorescence
intensity.
involved starch source, spray dryer type, pre-gelatinization tempera­
ture, inlet temperature, etc.
E-beam irradiation remarkably decreased the AC compared to SDS,
and the AC reduced along with the irradiation dose increased. The
current finding was consistent with previous research (Luo et al., 2019).
This may be because the free radicals destroyed the starch macromole­
cules and degraded the amylose chains, which decreases the binding
ability of amylose and iodine and causes lower AC (Kumar et al., 2017).
3.3. Amylopectin chain length distribution
Amylopectin is the main component with a highly branched struc­
ture in starch. The amylopectin chains generally fall into A, B, and C
chains. Each amylopectin molecule has a single C chain, which carries
the single reducing-end group. B-chains are further subdivided into B1,
B2, and B3 chains. Short chains (A and B1 chains) form a double helix
structure that is participated in crystal formation in the starch granules
(Bertoft, 2017). The amylopectin chain profiles play an important role in
influencing starch’s physicochemical and functional properties.
Native oat starch displayed a major peak at the degree of polymer­
ization (DP) of 9 and a subsidiary peak at the DP of 39, and the largest
DP was 47 (Fig. S1). As shown in Table 1, SDS possessed 45.10 % of A
chains, 37.51 % of B1 chains, 13.84 % of B2 chains, and 3.55 % of B3
chains, respectively. After e-beam irradiation, the chain length distri­
bution of amylopectin shifted to a shorter chain direction (Fig. S1).
Compared to SDS, irradiated starch showed a higher proportion of A
chains (52.90 %–57.81 %) and reduced levels of B1 chains (30.46 %–
34.20 %), B2 chains (10.71 %–11.23 %), and B3 chains (0.87 %–2.44
%). This may be attributed to the degradation of long starch chains
induced by irradiation, releasing more liner short chains (Pan, Xing,
Zhang, Luo, & Chen, 2020). Moreover, the free radicals cleaved the
glycosidic linkages of starch molecules, hence, the amylopectin chains
transformed into short chain fractions. A similar finding was noticed for
waxy maize starch, Zhou, Ye, He, Wang, and Jin (2020) observed that
the amylopectin branched chains become shorter upon e-beam irradia­
tion, and the A chains gradually increased while B chains reduced with
adding irradiation dose.

3.2. Amylose content (AC) 3.4. Molecular weight

From Table 1, native starch had 31.75 % of AC. Spray-dried starch
(34.44 %) presented a slightly higher AC than native starch. However,
dos Santos, Franco, and Leonel (2020) noticed that spray drying did not
significantly (p > 0.05) affect the AC of sweet potato starch. Izidoro,
Sierakowski, Haminiuk, de Souza, and Scheer (2011) reported that the
AC of spray-dried green banana starch was lower than the starch dried in
an oven. These results suggested that the AC of spray-dried starch
Starch molecules generally fall into two groups: amylopectin and
amylose. Amylopectin with larger Mw was first eluted from the HPLC
system (Peak 1). Subsequently, amylose and other macromolecules with
smaller Mw were eluted (Peak 2). Native starch presented the Mw of
amylopectin and amylose was 144.15 × 105 g/mol and 17.49 × 104 g/
mol, respectively, higher than SDS (Table 1). In the pre-gelatinization
process, high temperature promoted the migration of water molecules

Table 1
Amylose content, chain length distribution, molecular weight and crystallinity of native, spray-dried and irradiated oat starch. a, b.

Samples AC (%) Chain length distribution (%) Molecular weight (g/mol) Crystallinity
(%)
A chain (DP B1 chain (DP B2 chain (DP B3 chain (DP ≥ Peak1 (×105) Peak2
6–12) 13–24) 25–36) 37) (×104)

NS 31.75 ± 41.03 ± 0.40d 38.42 ± 0.26a 13.86 ± 0.24a 6.68 ± 0.09a 144.15 ± 17.49 ± 27.86 ± 0.90a
0.07b 0.49a 0.27c
SDS 34.44 ± 45.10 ± 0.34c 37.51 ± 0.05a 13.84 ± 0.26a 3.55 ± 0.04b 80.06 ± 0.39b 9.68 ± 0.19e 27.52 ± 1.19a
0.03a
SDS-2 29.54 ± 57.81 ± 0.18a 30.46 ± 0.40c 10.86 ± 0.37b 0.87 ± 0.08e 63.79 ± 0.19c 14.98 ± 24.52 ± 2.10ab
0.03c 0.31d
SDS-4 29.13 ± 56.15 ± 0.31a 31.81 ± 0.16c 10.71 ± 0.21b 1.33 ± 0.12d 39.91 ± 0.51d 20.69 ± 25.10 ± 0.48ab
0.08d 0.13b
SDS-6 28.78 ± 52.31 ± 0.34b 34.03 ± 0.37b 11.22 ± 0.16b 2.44 ± 0.07c 20.53 ± 0.35e 22.50 ± 22.17 ± 0.47b
0.04e 0.19a
SDS-8 28.68 ± 52.90 ± 0.50b 34.20 ± 0.20b 11.23 ± 0.04b 1.67 ± 0.07d 20.52 ± 0.08e 22.38 ± 20.96 ± 0.95b
0.10e 0.23a
a
AC, amylose content; DP, degree of polymerization.
b
Values with different superscripts within a column were significantly different (p < 0.05).

4
H. Shen et al.
into starch granules, which eventually led to the disruption of intra and
inter-molecular hydrogen bonds. These changes caused the loss of the
crystalline structure of starch granules and damage to the starch struc­
ture, resulting in decreased molecular weight (dos Santos et al., 2018).
E-beam irradiation significantly reduced the Mw of amylopectin,
while enhancing amylose compared with SDS. With extended irradia­
tion dose, the Mw of amylopectin decreased from 80.06 × 105 to 20.52
× 105 g/mol for irradiated starch, whereas the Mw of amylose pro­
gressively increased from 9.68 × 104 to 22.38 × 104 g/mol. The result
may be that irradiation caused fragmentation of the amylopectin mol­
ecules and produced small molecules with low Mw, which merged with
the amylose molecules (Kerf, Mondelaers, Lahorte, Vervaet, & Remon,
2001). Besides, the degradation of amylopectin under irradiation is
more pronounced than amylose. Similarly, Zhou, Ye, He, Wang, and Jin
(2020) observed a decrease of Mw in waxy maize starch, and they re­
ported that increasing the irradiation dose broke the starch chains and
produced short, linear-chain molecules. This was proved by the results
of chain length distribution in Table 1.
3.5. Crystalline structure
As shown in Fig. 2A, native oat starch exhibited a typical A-type
polymorphic form with intense characteristic peaks at 2θ of 15◦ , 17◦ ,
18◦ , 23◦ , and weak peak at 20◦ . The crystallinity of native starch was
27.86 % (Table 1). Spray drying altered the diffraction pattern of oat
starch, showing a tiny peak around 13◦ . Moreover, the peak intensity
occurring at 15◦ , 17◦ , 18◦ , and 23◦ decreased, but the peak value at 20◦
increased. The peak at 20◦ represented the formation of amylose–lipid
complexes. The phenomenon implied that the crystalline structure of
native starch was converted into a non-crystalline form (Fu, Wang, Li, &
Adhikari, 2012).
E-beam irradiation has not altered the position of XRD peaks, sug­
gesting that the crystalline structure characteristics of SDS remained
intact upon irradiation. However, e-beam irradiated starch had lower
crystallinity than SDS, ranging from 20.96 % to 24.52 %. And the
crystallinity was decreased with the rising irradiation dose. This result
may be because of the degradation of starch molecules in the irradiation
process. Besides, starch crystallinity was mainly related to the amylo­
pectin branch chains. Therefore, e-beam irradiation caused rapid
degradation of amylopectin and generated more short chains, resulting
in reduced crystallinity. The influence of e-beam irradiation on the
crystallinity was confirmed by these reports on rice (Pan, Xing, Zhang,
Luo, & Chen, 2020), quinoa (Du et al., 2020), waxy maize (Zhou, Ye, He,
Wang, & Jin, 2020), brown rice and milled rice starch (Luo et al., 2019).
Fig. 2. XRD patterns (A) and DSC curve (B) of native, spray-dried and irradiated oat starch.
5
Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938
3.6. Solubility and swelling power
Solubility and swelling power are crucial properties of starch. From
Fig. 3, the solubility and swelling power of native starch increased with
temperature and reached a maximum value at 90 oC. The solubility and
swelling power of the SDS sample ranged from 1.01 % to 5.82 % and
4.28 g/g to 8.69 g/g, respectively, were higher than native starch at each
temperature point. The crystalline structure of starch granules was dis­
rupted during pre-gelatinization because of the breakage of molecular
hydrogen bonds. The water molecules were easily diffused into starch
granules and formed hydrogen bonds with exposed hydroxyl groups.
Meanwhile, the mobility of starch molecules and the leaching of
amylose increased, which increased the solubility and swelling power of
starch (Fu, Wang, Li, & Adhikari, 2012; dos Santos, Franco, & Leonel,
2020).
The solubility of irradiated starch was higher than that of SDS,
especially at 90 ◦ C (Fig. 3A). As the dose increased, the solubility of
samples increased more obviously; the solubility was 23.72 % for SDS-8
at 90 ◦ C. After irradiation, the depolymerization of starch molecules
may explain solubility improvement. In addition, amylopectin long
chains were broken into more short chains, which had a greater
hydratability than native starch; thus, the solubility increased (Zhou, Ye,
He, Wang, & Jin, 2020). Analogously, the solubility was enhanced with
increasing irradiation dose for quinoa flour, corn, and potato starch
upon e-beam irradiation (Du et al., 2020; Kerf, Mondelaers, Lahorte,
Vervaet, & Remon, 2001).
E-beam irradiation slightly elevated the swelling power of SDS
(Fig. 3B). Irradiation destroyed the constituent of amorphous and crys­
talline domains and damaged the molecular structure of starch granules,
which expedited the amylose leaching out and promoted the granules
swelling. According to Singh, Singh, Isono, and Noda (2010), starch
granules with higher crystallinity have lower swelling power. The
crystallinity demonstrated the high swelling ability of irradiated starch
(Table 1). Besides, the interaction between the starch chains within the
amorphous and crystalline areas also influences the swelling power.
Similarly, irradiated chickpea, buckwheat, and potato starches have
shown higher swelling capacity than native starch. However, this
increment was only observed at temperatures below 70 ◦ C. When sub­
jected to high temperature (>70 ◦ C), the swelling power reduced
significantly for chickpea, buckwheat, and potato starch (Bashir &
Aggarwal, 2017; Verma et al., 2018). Sudheesh et al. (2019) found a
decrease in the swelling index of kithul starch after irradiation, which
gradually reduced with the increase in irradiation dose. The contradic­
tory results on swelling power might be related to the irradiation sour­
ces, starch type, irradiation energy, and processing dose.
H. Shen et al. Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938

Fig. 3. Solubility (A) and swelling power (B) of native, spray-dried and irradiated oat starch.

3.7. Pasting properties
Table 2 listed the pasting properties of oat starch that had undergone
spray drying and e-beam irradiation. The peak viscosity (PV), trough
viscosity (TV), breakdown (BD), final viscosity (FV), and setback (SB) of
native starch were 3312 cP, 2031 cP, 1281 cP, 3439 cP, and 1409 cP,
respectively. Spray drying decreased the pasting viscosities of starch,
which may be due to the destruction of the ordered structure of starch
and the rearrangement of amylose and amylopectin. This was following
dos Santos et al. (2018) report, which observed a reduction in PV, BD,
and FV of cassava and Peruvian carrot starches upon spray drying.
PV refers to the swelling ability of starch granules when they begin to
rupture and breakdown and is concerned with the water-binding ca­
pacity of starch. The PV of starch decreased after e-beam irradiation and
showed a declining trend with increasing doses. The degradation of
starch molecules and the breakage of amylopectin by e-beam irradiation
may explain its reduced PV (Hu, Huang, Yin, Zi, & Wen, 2011). A similar
phenomenon was observed in early studies (Bashir & Aggarwal, 2017;
Gul, Singh, & Sonkawade, 2016).
Similar to the result of PV, e-beam irradiation reduced the TV, BD,
FV, and SB of starch, and decreased along with the irradiation dose
increasing. BD is an indicator of the stability of starch pastes and the
shear resistance in the heating process. The great branching extent and
high level of short amylopectin chains could explain the lessened BD.
The decrease in BD revealed that irradiation modified starch presented
enhanced resistance to heat and mechanical agitation (Bashir &
Aggarwal, 2017). In addition, irradiated starch exhibited lower values of
FV and SB than SDS, suggesting that irradiation made starch less prone
to retrogradation. These findings were consistent with previous studies,
which indicated that the pasting viscosities of rice and wheat starch,
quinoa and rice flour decreased induced by e-beam irradiation (Pan,
Xing, Zhang, Luo, & Chen, 2020; Hu, Huang, Yin, Zi, & Wen, 2011; Du
et al., 2020; Luo et al., 2019). The continuously reduced pasting vis­
cosities suggested that the degradation degree of starch chains was
positively associated with irradiation dose.
The pasting temperature (GT) of native starch was 94.55 ◦ C, which
was higher than that of rice (74.33 ◦ C), quinoa (69.40 ◦ C), sorghum
(75.15 ◦ C), and buckwheat starch (71.80 ◦ C) (Sun et al., 2022; Gao et al.,
2019). Irradiation did not significantly change the GT of oat starch.
However, the greater GT indicated that oat starch showed higher
resistance toward swelling and required more energy to disintegrate the
starch structure than other cereal starch.
3.8. Thermal properties
As summarized in Table 2, the onset (To), peak (Tp), and conclusion
temperature (Tc) of native starch were 56.62 ◦ C, 61.79 ◦ C, and 68.18 ◦ C,
respectively. The highest gelatinization temperatures (To, Tp, Tc) were
found in SDS, and spray drying reduced the gelatinization temperature
range (Fig. 2B). Previous studies supported this finding (dos Santos,
Franco, & Leonel, 2020; Fu, Wang, Li, & Adhikari, 2012). In the pre-
gelatinization process, water molecules infiltrated the starch granules
and disrupted the amylopectin chains that comprise the crystalline re­
gions. The rearrangement of the crystalline structure may explain its

Table 2
a, b, c.
Pasting and thermal properties of native, spray-dried and irradiated oat starch.
Samples Pasting properties Thermal properties
o
PV (cP) TV (cP) BD (cP) FV (cP) SB (cP) PT (min) GT ( C) To (oC) Tp (oC) Tc (oC) ΔH (J/g)

NS 3312 ± 2031 ± 1281 ± 3439 ± 1409 ± 6.77 ± 94.55 ± 56.62 ± 61.79 ± 68.18 ± 8.30 ±
5a 52b 57a 11a 63a 0.05a 0.01a 0.39c 0.44c 0.28bc 0.14a
SDS 3176 ± 2285 ± 891 ± 3364 ± 1079 ± 6.63 ± 94.53 ± 62.92 ± 65.57 ± 70.49 ± 2.01 ±
68a 37a 11b 13a 16b 0.14ab 0.04a 0.10a 0.01a 0.13a 0.12b
SDS-2 2129 ± 1277 ± 852 ± 1890 ± 613 ± 6.37 ± 94.85 ± 61.98 ± 65.38 ± 69.49 ± 1.97 ±
35b 22c 13b 49b 27c 0.05b 0.07a 0.26ab 0.37a 1.12ab 0.11b
SDS-4 1663 ± 875 ± 4d 788 ± 1405 ± 530 ± 1c 6.04 ± 94.80 ± 61.43 ± 65.18 ± 69.25 ± 1.86 ±
16c 12bc 6c 0.05c 0.29a 0.03ab 0.52a 0.17abc 0.22b
SDS-6 1351 ± 630 ± 8e 722 ± 1069 ± 440 ± 5.90 ± 94.83 ± 61.49 ± 64.59 ± 68.72 ± 1.86 ±
20d 12bc 31d 23c 0.04c 0.04a 0.80ab 0.33ab 005abc 0.10b
SDS-8 1089 ± 461 ± 629 ± 2c 823 ± 362 ± 5.87 ± 94.65 ± 60.76 ± 63.71 ± 67.31 ± 1.77 ±
30e 28f 12e 16c 0.09c 0.14a 0.16b 0.03b 0.54c 0.07b
a
PV, peak viscosity; TV, trough viscosity; BD, breakdown; FV, final viscosity; SB, setback; PT, peak time; GT, pasting temperature.
b
To, onset temperature; Tp, peak temperature; Tc, conclusion temperature; ΔH, enthalpy.
c
Values with different superscripts within a column were significantly different (p < 0.05).

6
H. Shen et al.
improved gelatinization temperatures.
SDS had lower ΔH (2.01 J/g) than native starch (8.30 J/g), sug­
gesting that SDS was partially gelatinized. This may be caused by the
disorder of amylopectin crystallite in the heating process (dos Santos
et al., 2018). Moreover, the wet bulb temperature during spray drying
also affects the ΔH, because the hydration and high temperatures cause
the loss of the crystalline structure of starch. Romano, Ureta, Guerrero-
Sánchez, and Gómez-Zavaglia (2020) reported that the ΔH of spray-
dried quinoa starch gradually reduced with the increase of the inlet
temperature.
E-beam irradiation markedly decreased the To, Tp, and Tc of the
starch sample compared to their corresponding native spray-dried
starch. Furthermore, the gelatinization temperatures were reduced
with an increasing irradiation dose (Table 2). The reduction in gelati­
nization temperatures implied that irradiation partially broke the crys­
talline structure of the starch. Starch granules with a high ratio of long
amylopectin chains were more stable, requiring high temperature to
destruction. Thus, the depolymerization of amylopectin chains and
decreased total crystallinity might contribute to the reduced gelatini­
zation temperatures. Zhou, Ye, He, Wang, and Jin (2020) and Pan, Xing,
Zhang, Luo, and Chen (2020) observed similar results for waxy corn and
rice starch: decreasing the To, Tp, and Tc when the dose was increased.
However, e-beam irradiation had no significant influence (p > 0.05) on
the ΔH.
Fig. 4. Dynamic strain sweep (A), dynamic viscoelastic properties (B and C) and steady shear (D) of native, spray-dried and irradiated oat starch.
7
Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938
3.9. Rheological properties
3.9.1. Dynamic strain sweep
The dynamic strain sweep was used to define the linear viscoelastic
region where the strain response was proportional to the applied stress.
The linear viscoelastic region for native, spray-dried, and irradiated oat
starch, established by strain sweep experiments, is shown in Fig. 4A. The
linear viscoelastic region’s upper limit was 10 % for all starch samples.
The storage modulus (G′ ) started to decline at a > 10 % strain and the
lost modulus (G′′ ) increased at a > 10 % strain, indicating the break­
down of starch pastes’ structure beyond this deformation level. There­
fore, the measurement strain value was selected as 2 %, which was
within the linear viscoelastic region.
3.9.2. Dynamic viscoelastic analysis
From Fig. 4B and C, the G′ was always higher than G′′ for all samples,
indicating that all starch samples exhibit a greater elastic characteristic.
The G′ and G′′ of all starch samples progressively increased as the
angular frequency increased. The highest G′ and G′′ were observed in the
SDS sample, suggesting spray drying enhanced the viscoelasticity of
starch and formed a strong cross-linkage network. Spray drying
increased the G′ and G′′ of starch, related to its higher AC. Singh, Singh,
Kaur, Sodhi, and Gill (2003) reported that the high amylose starch
exhibited higher G′ and G′′ than low amylose. After e-beam irradiation,
the G′ and G′′ reduced was dose-dependent. The starch gel had a weak
H. Shen et al.
structure and became soft due to the increased irradiation dose. The
depolymerization of starch molecules and the scission of amylopectin
chains may be responsible for the lower G′ and G′′ of starch (Li, Shi, Du,
Dong, & Yu, 2021). Sudheesh et al. (2019) pound comparable drop in G′
and G′′ in irradiated kithul starch.
3.9.3. Steady shear analysis
The apparent viscosity of native, spray-dried, irradiated oat starch
under steady shear are shown in Fig. 4D. The apparent viscosity of all
starch samples dropped with increasing shear rate (Fig. 4D), which
revealed that all the samples presented non-Newtonian fluid properties.
With a further increase in shear rate, the molecular conformation
changed and the starch paste structure decomposed, which resulted in a
decrease in viscosity (Vriesmann, Silveira, & Petkowicz, 2009). More­
over, the viscosity of irradiated starches showed a lower value than the
SDS, and decreased as the irradiation dose increased. Free radical
mediated depolymerization may decrease the viscosity.
The flow curves of the samples (Fig. 4D) were fitted with the power
law model and the obtained model parameters are listed in Table S1. The
K value is correlated with the consistency of the system. The larger the K
value, the better the thickening effect. The consistency coefficient (K)
was significantly decreased after e-beam irradiation, indicating that
irradiation reduced the consistency of the starch pastes. The flow
behavior index (n) reflects the proximity to the Newtonian fluid. All
starch pastes were pseudoplastic as n values were less than 1, confirming
their shear-thinning behaviors. As irradiation dose increased, the n first
increased and then decreased. SDS-2 and SDS-8 presented enhanced
shear thinning behavior.
4. Conclusion
The work developed a rapid and green method for pre-gelatinized
starch via spray drying combined with e-beam irradiation. SDS
showed a decrease in the Mw of amylopectin and amylose and an
increment in short linear chains, indicating the breakage of glycosidic
bonds, influencing solubility, apparent viscosity, gelatinization tem­
perature, and enthalpy. The rheological properties showed that SDS had
a strong starch gel structure than native starch. The e-beam irradiation
caused a decrement in the Mw of amylopectin, but increased the Mw of
amylose. Free radical mediated the depolymerization of starch mole­
cules and degradation to amylopectin chains, causing greater solubility
and swelling power. Besides, there was a decrease in the pasting vis­
cosities, gelatinization temperature, G′ and G′′ of the irradiated starch
relative to SDS. This research will contribute to the application of irra­
diation technology in starch modification and provide a theoretical basis
for applying pre-gelatinized starch in the food industry.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Huishan Shen: Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. Jiangtao Yu: Methodology, Formal anal­
ysis. Junqing Bai: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation. Yili
Liu: Investigation. Xiangzhen Ge: Investigation, Software. Wenhao Li:
Supervision, Project administration. Jianmei Zheng: Validation.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
8
Food Chemistry 398 (2023) 133938
Acknowledgements
This study was financially supported by the National Key R&D Pro­
gram Subproject of China (2017YFD0401203-01). Additionally, the
authors would like to thank the instrument shared platform of the Col­
lege of Food Science & Engineering and Life Science Research Core
Services of NWAFU, for the assistance in the RVA (Cuicui Ma), DSC (Lu
Cui), rheometer (Lu Cui), SEM (Kerang Huang) and CLSM (Xiaorui Liu).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2022.133938.
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