STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE, ENCAPSULATING AGENT CONCENTRATION, DRYING AIR FLOW AND SAMPLE FEED RATE IN THE MICROENCAPSULATION PROCESS OF Trichoderma sp. BY SPRAY DRYING

The use of agrochemicals in agriculture has been causing serious environmental damage, and biological control through fungi is an option to minimize this problem. The application of factorial planning in processes that have a large number of variables is important, since it allows to study the effect and interaction of several factors, such as temperature, concentration, air flow, etc., in the drying systems. The objective of this study was to improve the shelf life of conidias, by means of the evaluation of inlet air temperature (Ti) (60 and 80°C), encapsulating agent concentration (2 and 8% m/v), drying air flow rate (9,90 × 104 and 1,17 × 105 Lh-1) and flow rate from the sample to the dryer (0.2 and 0.6 Lh-1) in the viability of Trichoderma sp. microencapsulated by spray drying, using maltodextrin DE20 (MD20) as an encapsulating agent.