Designing of a wheat gluten/montmorillonite based system as carvacrol carrier: Rheological and structural properties

An antimicrobial delivery system was designed from film-forming solutions containing wheat gluten 20% (wt/vol) (WG) as matrix, montmorillonites (Mmt) as structuring agent and carvacrol as active agent (15% wt/wt dry WG). The objectives of this work were to understand how the addition of montmorillonites (0–10% wt/wt dry WG) affects the carvacrol retention capacity of both the film forming solution and the resulting film obtained by casting. For this purpose, structural, granulometric and rheological changes that occurred in the film-forming solutions were studied. The introduction of carvacrol in a WG solution containing increasing amounts of Mmt resulted in dramatic changes in its rheological behaviour. Depending on the Mmt amount added (