To increase the stability of bioactive compounds and to protect them from adverse environmental conditions, they can be encapsulated in lipids and/or polymeric matrices. Here, pantothenic acid was encapsulated in liposomes and in different hydrogel microcapsules that consisted of alginate or alginate pectin mixtures. With liposomes, an encapsulation efficiency of 0.75 +/- 0.02 was achieved, and for alginate microparticles, 0.60 +/- 0.02. The release of pantothenic acid from liposomes and from the different alginate pectin microparticles loaded with liposomes followed first-order kinetics. For alginate microparticles and alginate microparticles loaded with liposomes, pantothenic acid release followed Higuchi kinetics, which suggests that this pantothenic acid release was mainly driven by a diffusion controlled mechanism. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the encapsulation of pantothenic acid. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.