Inhibition of Long‐Term Retrogradation of Corn, Potato, and Pea Starches by Borax

Abstract

AbstractThis work aims to develop a new method for inhibiting the long‐term retrogradation of normal corn starch, waxy corn starch (WCS), potato starch, and pea starch with borax. Differential scanning calorimetry results indicate that adding borax clearly reduces the retrogradation enthalpies of the four starches and decreases the crystallization rate constant. The percentage of retrogradation of WCS combined with 5% borax decreases to 12.06% compared with 69.67% for retrograded WCS without borax after 28 d at 4 °C. Low‐field nuclear magnetic resonance analysis shows that borax remarkably decreases the spin–spin relaxation time of the four starches. The results demonstrate that borax can be used as a new inhibitor and can retard the long‐term retrogradation of starch.