ABSTRACT
Lipids associated with isolated starch granules have been found to occur on the surface as well as inside the granule [1,2]. The surface lipids are mainly triglycerides (TG), followed by free fatty acids (FFA), glycolipids (GL), and phospholipids (PL), and they include those that may have been present on the granule surface in situ within the plant tissue and the nonstarch lipids, which are absorbed into the surface layer of starch granules during isolation procedures [1,3]. The nonstarch lipids occur as spherosomes and as components of membranes and organelles associated with storage protein [1]. The internal lipids are predominantly monoacyllipids [1,4,5], with the major components being lysophospholipids (LPL) and FFA. It is likely, that both free and internal lipids may be present in the free state as well as bound to starch components, either in the form of amylose inclusion complexes [6] or linked via ionic or hydrogen bonding to hydroxyl groups of the starch components [5]. Selective binary solvent extraction techniques [5,7] have shown that amylose-complexed lipids are more abundant in cereal than in legume and tuber starches (Table 1).
