Brazil has a huge amount of biodegradable raw materials, many of them under-exploited, such as the cashew tree gum, a byproduct from cashew industry. The objective of the present work was to study the use of cashew tree gum as a wall material for encapsulation, and to compare its performance with that of gum arabic, since their structures are very similar. Bixin, the liposoluble fraction of annato pigment, was microencapsulated by spray drying using two alternative formulations: in the first one, a blend of gum arabic and maltodextrin was used as the wall material; in the other, gum arabic was replaced by cashew tree gum. The microencapsulated pigment was evaluated in terms of its water solubility, morphology, crystallinity and color stability. Bixin powder produced by using cashew tree gum as wall materials was slightly but significantly less soluble (64.67%) than that produced by using gum arabic (68.67%). Electronic microscopy showed that bixin microcapsules had irregular forms and cracked surfaces. X-ray powder diffraction spectra showed that pure bixin presents predominantly crystalline structure, while both gums are predominantly amorphous. There was little difference between color degradation of samples encapsulated with both wall materials, indicating that the ability of cashew tree gum to protect color from fading was similar to that of gum arabic. All samples presented negative Δa* and Δb*, indicating losses in red and yellow shades. ΔL* was slightly positive without light exposure, and negative under light exposure, indicating darkening associated to light degradation. Encapsulated pigment with gum arabic and cashew tree gum presented respectively ΔE* (total color difference) in dark and ligth (8,584; 40,070) and (8,464; 37,319). Results from using cashew tree gum were quite similar to those obtained by using gum arabic, suggesting the feasibility of using cashew tree gum to replace gum arabic as wall material.