Current encapsulation strategies for bioactive oils: From alimentary to pharmaceutical perspectives

• Bioactive oils are used by food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.
• The main disadvantage of bioactive oils is instability that limits applicability.
• Encapsulation is a good approach to solve this problem.
• Different encapsulation technologies are applied.
• An overview of the advantages and disadvantages of these is given.

Bioactive oils are commonly used for their pharmaceutical, cosmetic and nutritional properties. Generally, these are volatile substances sensitive to oxygen, light, moisture, and heat. These reported special characteristics could diminish their applicability in the use of cosmetics, food and pharmaceutical industries. Thus, encapsulation is one of the most efficient methods for the formulation of bioactive oils and various investigations have been developed in this aspect. The encapsulation system is selected in line with the intended usage of the final formulation, which can vary depending on the size, shape or nature of selling components. In this review, we state an overview on the different systems for the encapsulation of bioactive oils, as well as, the elaboration methods currently utilized.