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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
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Curcumin-loaded chitosan nanoemulsion: Evaluation of stability and release kinetics

Leanne Jane C. Lazaro1# ,  Paul Jhon G. Eugenio1# ,  French James A. Garvida1# ,  Marilou M. Sarong2,3#*
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1 Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Central Luzon State University, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, Philippines
2 Department of Soil Science, College of Agriculture, Central Luzon State University, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, Philippines
3 Crop Management Division, Crops and Resources Research and Development Center, Central Luzon State University, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, Philippines
BMT, 00056 https://doi.org/10.12336/bmt.25.00056
Submitted: 3 June 2025 | Revised: 11 August 2025 | Accepted: 12 August 2025 | Published: 11 September 2025
Copyright © 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 License.
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Abstract

Curcumin, a potent bioactive compound derived from Curcuma longa, exhibits significant antibacterial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties, indicating broad applications in the food and agricultural industries. However, its practical utility is constrained by inherently low water solubility, poor bioavailability, and chemical instability when exposed to environmental factors. This study addresses these limitations by nanoencapsulating curcumin within a chitosan-based nanoemulsion, curcumin-loaded chitosan nanoemulsions (CurChiNEM), formulate through an emulsification process followed by ionotropic gelation using sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP). Initial extraction from turmeric yielded 8.29% curcumin, confirmed by a maximum absorption wavelength at 425 nm. Formulation 1 (2.5 mg/mL curcumin concentration) achieved the highest encapsulation efficiency (77.82 ± 1.2%) and resulted in the smallest particle size (664 ± 0.467 nm), determined using ImageJ. Scanning electron microscopy further revealed that the formulate nanoemulsions resulted in smooth, quasi-spherical particles. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy further confirmed the effective crosslinking of chitosan to TPP and loading of curcumin. Moreover, the formulated nanoemulsion significantly enhanced curcumin’s stability, retaining 87.56% of its content after 28 days of ambient storage, 77.02% under prolonged ultraviolet light exposure, and approximately 67.71% when subjected to 100°C treatment. In contrast, free curcumin degraded rapidly under identical conditions, exhibiting near-total loss. In vitro release studies conducted at pH 7.4 elucidated a diffusion-controlled release mechanism, optimally described by the Higuchi release kinetics model (R2 = 0.9736). These compelling findings affirm the chitosan/TPP nanoemulsion as a highly effective and promising delivery system for substantially enhancing the stability and facilitating the controlled release of curcumin, thereby broadening its potential for diverse applications.

Keywords
Curcumin
Chitosan
Bioactive compound
Release kinetics
Stability assessment
Funding
This research was supported by Central Luzon State University under the project titled “Development, Testing and Field Evaluation of Nano-enabled Seed Technologies (NeST) to Increase Productivity of Major Agricultural Crops” with grant number (164-648-458-A-012).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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