Gliadin-based nanoparticles used for pickering stabilization: Current status and future perspective

The adsorption of solid particles at fluid interfaces to stabilize emulsions or foams has been known for more than a century. Over the past 10 years, the focus of the Pickering emulsion and foam has gradually shifted toward food applications with thanks to facile developments of a huge variety of food-grade particle stabilizers. Wheat gliadins are characterized by their amphiphilic characteristic with distinct hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains, and by their abundant source and the facile and environmentally friendly production process. Taken together, these properties enable them to be attractive building blocks for creating functional colloidal nano- and microstructures with emerging applications as delivery vehicles of bioactive ingredients, and in engineering interface nanoarchitecture and bulk phases. The unique properties of gliadin enable it to engineer Pickering emulsions into advanced porous materials with emerging application without chemical crosslinking and polymerization. Herein, we present an overview on the state-of-the-art of the generation of the nanostructures from gliadin and their performance in stabilizing Pickering emulsions and/or foams and propose future perspectives for research and applications. We demonstrate the gaps in the ongoing understanding and suggest new direction on the scalable production of gliadin-based nanostructures for constructing Pickering emulsions and their templated-porous materials, highlighting the points that need to be further explored.