Preface

Intech Open editorial offered us the opportunity to be editors.The topic that matched into our expertise was "Starch modifications" and we began our journey of being editors. This book represents the final results and it is our first book on this theme.

The book describes starch modifications from physical treatments to ionizing radiation proc‐ ess, the key properties of modified starch, and its application fields.

The book is composed of six chapters and the main purpose of the book is provide to the readers a view of modification procedures widely used through starch, description of the main characteristics about modified starches and finally it is providing application fields and application examples. The first chapter provides an overview of the procedures for modifying starches commonly used. The second chapter analyzes the graft process using synthetic poly‐ mer and starch from point of view of reaction conditions and solvent type use during the reaction. The use of acetylate starch on pharmaceutical industry is analyzed in depth.

The third chapter shows us evaluation of styrene content over physical and chemical prop‐ erties of elastomer/TPS-EVOH/chicken feather composites.

The fourth chapter describes production and characterization of starch nanoparticles. The last chapter focuses on an unusual procedure to modify starch using radiation that comes from several sources like UV, gamma or accelerated electrons. Throughout the chapter, the readers could know reaction conditions and characteristics of starches attained.

We hope the book will be useful.

**Emmanuel Flores Huicochea** National Polytechnic Institute Yautepec, Morelos, Mexico

**Rodolfo Rendón Villalobos** National Polytechnic Institute Center for Development of Biotic Products Yautepec, Morelos, Mexico

**Chapter 1**

Provisional chapter

**Introductory Chapter: Starch Modifications**

Starch is the main polysaccharide used as food and ingredient or additive in the food industry. The main advantages over other polysaccharides are the low cost and renewable raw material, but even starch can be obtained from several natural sources or modified by engineering genetic, as the waxy starch of corn. It also has drawbacks such as: lower solubility usually in water, lower shear stress resistance, lower capacity to support thermal decomposition, and high retrogradation, and these issues limit the use on several temperatures and pH usually

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.78366

The native starch can be improved by means of physical, chemical, and ionic treatments. The physical treatments are cost-effective, are less labor intensive, and only have initial investment of equipment than the chemical treatments (Figure 1). The aim of physical treatment is to produce changes in the granular structure, and the common processes involved are heat moisture, annealing, and extrusion. However, today, there are novel processes like sonication and high hydraulic pressure. Figure 2 shows the main characteristics of these processes. This plot is an easy way to view and compare process conditions like moisture, temperature (glass and gelatinization), and the effect of treatment on granule structure and molecular weight. For example, after annealing process, the granular structure and molecular weight remains without change, and the moisture percent is similar that heat moisture processes employ, but the

The chemical modified starch has lot of reports in the literature compared with the other treatments; on this spectrum of chemical modifications, the starch molecules can reduce the molecular weight of chains, add functional groups like acetyl, or even oxidize OH groups present in the monomer of the starch polymers. The chemical treatments also can associate chains of starch like in cross-linked reaction or even make a web around the starch granule. Another step forward in the reactions, complexity of starch is graft copolymerization, which means adding synthetic monomers or polymers or semisynthetic polymers to the biopolymers of starch. Another interesting

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

temperature of process is set between glass and gelatinization temperature.

Introductory Chapter: Starch Modifications

Emmanuel Flores Huicochea

Emmanuel Flores Huicochea

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78366

1. Overview of modifications

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

found on food system and industrial applications.

#### **Chapter 1** Provisional chapter

#### **Introductory Chapter: Starch Modifications** Introductory Chapter: Starch Modifications

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.78366

#### Emmanuel Flores Huicochea Emmanuel Flores Huicochea

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78366
