Fuente: PubMed "apiculture" J Sci Food Agric. 2026 Apr 19. doi: 10.1002/jsfa.70670. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTBACKGROUND: To mitigate the low stability of β-carotene (βC), this study developed amphiphilic inulin (INU)-fatty acid (FA) conjugates by hydrophobically modifying INU with stearic acid, oleic acid (OA), linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, which were subsequently employed for βC encapsulation.RESULTS: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance verified successful synthesis, with critical micelle concentrations ranging from 0.014 to 0.035 mg mL-1. Among all the βC-INU-FA micelles, βC-INU-OA showed the strongest stability and homogeneity, with its encapsulation efficiency and loading capacity for βC reaching 62.26% and 0.251 mg mg-1, respectively. It also showed good stability at 4 and 25 °C. Co-assembly molecular dynamics (MD) simulations confirmed that INU-OA could encapsulate βC molecules by the strong van der Waals force provided by OA, resulting in stronger stability compared with unmodified INU. This superior performance of INU-OA was attributed to its cis-double-bond-induced bent conformation, which promoted a porous structure and enhanced hydrophobic interactions with βC, as evidenced by scanning electron microscopy and MD simulations.CONCLUSION: This study combines macroscopic and microscopic analyses to demonstrate the potential of INU-OA-βC micelles as a promising βC delivery system, providing new insights for amphiphilic polysaccharide-based carrier design. © 2026 Society of Chemical Industry.PMID:42002878 | DOI:10.1002/jsfa.70670