New starches from Fritillaria species medicinal plants

Fritillaria, an important medicinal plant, are widely utilized in the pharmaceutical industry. The bulbs of Fritillaria contain plenty of starches which have been ignored and wasted during the isolation and separation of the small-molecule bioactive ingredients. With the development of food and medicine industry, new starches with different properties have been paid more and more attention. The object of this work is to study the basic physicochemical properties of starch contained in the Fritillaria bulbs. The results revealed that the crystal type of the three Fritillaria starches was the characteristic B-type which was in agreement with the crystal type of potato starch. The results of scanning electron microscope showed that the size of the Fritillaria thunbergii and Fritillaria ussurensis starch granules ranged from 5 to 30 μm, while the Fritillaria pallidifloca starch granules ranged from 5 to 40 μm. The shape of the three Fritillaria starches was also different from each other. The starch separated from F. ussurensis showed the highest enthalpies of gelatinization (ΔHgel) and the lowest transition temperature (To, Tp, and Tc), while the starch from F. thunbergii showed the highest transition temperature, peak height indices (PHI) and the lowest gelatinization temperature range (R).