Abstract:Pepper leaves, which are rich in protein resources, have been buried and burned as agricultural wastes for a long time, causing serious environmental pollution and resource waste. At the same time, capsaicin, as a highquality natural biological antibacterial substance, has restricted its development and application due to its strong pungent smell. Therefore, based on the method of microcapsule technology, the protein extracted from the leaves of the plant pepper was used as the wall material and capsaicin as the core material. The leaf protein capsaicin microcapsules were prepared by spray drying (SD) and vacuum freeze drying (FD) methods, and the SEM and X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FITR) spectrometer, thermogravimetric (TG) analyzer, laser particle size analyzer and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) technology were used to characterize the physical and chemical properties of leaf protein, capsaicin and their microcapsules under different drying methods. The SEM results showed that the microcapsules had significant differences in their microstructures under different drying methods. The microstructures under SD were spherical and complete, while under FD were sheet-like structures with different shapes. XRD analysis showed that the microcapsules all showed characteristic peaks of diffusion diffraction pattern by different drying methods, which proved that capsaicin was completely loaded into leaf protein, and no crystals were formed during sample preparation. FTIR analysis showed that no new chemical bond was produced in capsaicin embedding under different drying methods, and no chemical reaction occurred with leaf protein. TG analysis showed that the thermal stability of microcapsules obtained by different drying methods was improved, and the thermal stability of leaf protein was lower than that of capsaicin, which guaranteed the successful release of capsaicin. The particle size analysis showed that the D90 of the microcapsule powder prepared by SD method was 70.2μm, which was significantly smaller than the particle size of the microcapsules in the FD mode, and it was easier to release the embedded matter. The embedding rate of microcapsules was 90.38% and 85.43% respectively under SD and FD conditions, which indicated that SD method had excellent properties for the preparation of leaf protein-capsaicin microcapsules.