Ultrasonication enhanced the multi-scale structural characteristics of rice starch following short-chain fatty acids acylation.

Considering the variation of the diffusion character of the three anhydrides, ultrasonication was applied for investigating its impact on the reaction efficiency of the rice starch acylation from three short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The current data indicated that the signal peak of the FTIR spectrum at 1720 cm-1 and additional resonances in the NMR confirmed the occurrence of the acylation reaction onto the starch molecules. More interestingly, this is the first study to reveal that a lower power density ultrasonication improved the reaction efficiencies of acetylation (19%), while a higher power density could lead to a reduced acylation reactivity of propionylation compared to the control one. On the contrary, the reaction efficiency of butyrylation (64%) was significantly enhanced by the ultrasound-assisted treatment with a greater association between reaction efficiency and ultrasonic power density, indicating the importance of the diffusion character for impacting the acylation reactivity among these three anhydrides. The ultrasonic-assisted SCFAs-modified rice starch has a lower peak viscosity and setback value, indicating that the replacement of the acyl groups for OH groups in the starch avoids starch molecules rearrangement. Meanwhile, the rheological properties exhibited that the starch achieved from ultrasonic-assistance significantly reduced the area of the hysteresis curve, suggesting a destroyed gel textural property. Thus, an appropriate ultrasonication but not all could effectively enhance the acylation efficiency and improve starch rheological property.