Acta Scientiarum Polonorum Technologia Alimentaria

Background. The spray-drying method is employed to produce value-added powder products from the ex­tract of palmyra palm peel (Borassus flabellifer), an agricultural byproduct rich in antioxidants such as poly­phenols, flavonoids, vitamin C, and carotenoids.
Material and methods. This study investigated the influence of two natural carriers – gum arabic (0.25–1%) and maltodextrin(5–12.5%) – on the retention of bioactive components in palm fruit husk extract. Two opti­mization strategies employed in parallel: response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural networks integrated with genetic algorithms (ANN-GA).
Results and discussion. Both carriers significantly enhanced the concentration of bioactive compounds in the spray-dried powder. The combination of maltodextrin and gum arabic synergistically improved the microencapsulation efficacy of antioxidants. The ANN-GA model demonstrated superior prediction accuracy over RSM, reducing the experimental error to approximately 1–2% compared to 5% with RSM. The optimal formulation – 6.53% maltodextrin and 0.44% gum arabic – yielded 14.09 mg TAE/100 g polyphenol, 0.0039 mg QE/100g flavonoid, 1.29 mg/100 g carotenoid, and 7.36 mg/100 g vitamin C.
Conclusion. This study highlights the importance of artificial intelligence models in optimizing food process­ing techniques and offers a promising approach for the valorization of nipa palm husks in functional food development.