Spray Drying of Fructooligosaccharide Syrup Produced from Jerusalem Artichoke Tuber Applying Different Drying Aids and Properties of Powder Products

HighlightsFructooligosaccharide syrup was processed to powder form using spray-drying techniques.Various drying aids were applied in feed preparation to improve the spray-drying efficiency and powder characteristics.Powder recoveries obtained were higher than 50% and thus high enough for commercial production.Powder produced can be applied as functional ingredients in food and animal feed.Abstract. Fructooligosaccharide (FOS) syrup was produced using Jerusalem artichoke tuber (JAT) as the raw material. The syrup was processed to powder form by applying a spray-drying technique with inlet/outlet air temperatures of 190/90°C with three different drying aids comprising maltodextrin (MD), whey protein concentrate (WPC), and sodium caseinate (SCN) at various ratios. The key objectives of this study were to determine the suitable drying conditions by considering the powder recovery as well as to investigate the qualities of the different powders. The application of MD at the ratio of drying aid-to-total soluble solid in syrup of 1:1 w/w resulted in the highest values for powder recovery, bulk density, and water solubility and the lowest moisture content and hygroscopicity compared to its counterparts. Although the powder recovery using these conditions was 72.28%, the FOS content (the most desirable component in the powder product) was 33.53% d.b., which was clearly lower than that from using SCN at the ratio of 0.25:1 w/w that produced an FOS content of 50.26% d.b. However, the powder recovery using these conditions was 58.87%. These powder products could be applied as functional ingredients in food and animal feed, with their production costs being lower than those for the commercial high-purity FOS powder that requires more complicated processing techniques. Keywords: Fructooligosaccharide, Maltodextrin, Sodium caseinate, Spray-drying, Whey protein concentrate.