Updating insights into the rehydration of dairy-based powder and the achievement of functionality

Dairy-based powder had considerable development in the recent decade. Meanwhile, the increased variety of dairy-based powder led to the complex difficulties of rehydrating dairy-based powder, which could be the poor wetting or dissolution of powder. To solve these various difficulties, previous studies investigated the rehydration of powder by mechanical and chemical methods on facilitating rehydration, while strategies were designed to improve the rate-limiting rehydration steps of different powder. In this review, special emphasis is paid to the surface and structure of the dairy-based powder, which was accountable for understanding rehydration and the rate-limiting step. Besides, the advantage and disadvantage of methods employed in rehydration were described and compared. The achievement of the powder functionality was finally discussed and correlated with the rehydration methods. It was found that the surface and structure of dairy-based powder were decided by the components and production of powder. Post-drying methods like agglomeration and coating can tailor the surface and structure of powder afterwards to obtain better rehydration. The merit of the mechanical method is that it can be applied to rehydrate dairy-based powder without any addition of chemicals. Regarding chemical methods, calcium chelation is proved to be an effective chemical in rehydration casein-based powder.