In this study, the use of spray-drying technology for encapsulating Flavourzyme® (protease–
peptidase complex) was evaluated to overcome the limitations (low encapsulation efficiency and
no large-scale production) of other encapsulation processes. To the best of our knowledge, spray
drying has not been applied previously for the immobilization of this enzyme. Firstly, bovine serum
albumin (BSA), as a model protein, was encapsulated by spray drying in chitosan and tripolyphoshate
(TPP) cross-linked-chitosan shell matrices. The results showed that the chitosan–TPP microcapsules
provided a high encapsulation efficiency and better protein stability compared to the non-crosslinked
chitosan microcapsules. The effect of enzyme concentration and drying temperature were tested
during the spray drying of Flavourzyme®. In this regard, an activity yield of 88.0% and encapsulation
efficiency of 78.6% were obtained with a concentration of 0.1% (v/v) and an inlet temperature of
130 ◦C. Flavourzyme®-loaded chitosan microcapsules were also characterized in terms of their size
and morphology using scanning electron microscopy and laser diffractometry
