Biodegradable polymers like gelatin, alginate, chitosan, dextran, gellan gum, starch, and cellulose have made ways to some innovative drug delivery vehicles/carriers thin films, hydrogels, microgels, micelles, liposomes and many more. the idea of these vehicles was to achieve control drug release with minimal side effects. most of the biodegradable polymers are water soluble, so ensuring the uniform distribution of hydrophobic drugs inside the vehicle is a challenging task. to overcome this, synthesis of polymeric beads, polymeric and drug nanoparticles came into the picture together with beta-cyclodextrins. the acceptance of these biodegradable polymeric vehicles is again limited by the use of some toxic chemicals during the formulation stage e.g. cross-linkers like glutaraldehyde, tripolyphosphate etc. hydrogels prepared from sodium alginate and gelatin require cross-linkers for improved mechanical properties. this work aims at minimizing the above drawbacks and bring into the picture the first use of soya nuggets as potential drug delivery vehicles. ¬¬¬soya is considered as one of the high nutrient protein rich diets. it’s potential as a highly effective drug carrier comes from the fact that they undergo tremendous swelling which can come handy at the time of drug loading and release. the high swelling degree is a result of high porosity and network structure of swelled soya nuggets. just as any other biodegradable polymer carrier, soya nuggets were tested for their swelling behavior, mechanical properties, and drug release characteristics. the effect of ph was evaluated on swelling as well as on drug release. it was also observed that the nugget weight also influenced the swelling degree, which in turn affected the mechanical properties and loading efficiency of the drug. to have a control over the swelling, the nuggets were coated with low viscosity sodium alginate and further crosslinking with cacl2 results in tighter control on swelling as well as on drug release. this detailed study gave an insight to another potential application of soya protein i.e. an effective drug carrier, apart from a rich source of food. the swelling study confirmed that 5% cross-linked sample swelled at a slower rate in ph 1.2 than ph 7.4. the porosity of the nuggets were tested solvent replacement method and it was observed that it increased with increasing weight and then showed a decreasing trend, the same behavior was observed for the loading efficiency of the drug. the swelling degree was also affected by the nugget weight. the storage and loss modulus of swelled soya increased with increasing nugget weight, which confirmed that with the increase in weight the nuggets became stiff, due to this the low weight nugget swelled more while the high weight nugget swelled less. the storage modulus was higher than the loss modulus, which also confirmed the elastic nature of soya nuggets. the ft-ir analysis confirmed the interactions of sodium alginate-cacl2 with the nugget and also confirmed the stability of the drug inside. piperine was used as a model hydrophobic drug. sem analysis revealed the high porosity of soya nuggets. nuggets with 1% sa coating and 5% cacl2 resulted in a slow and steady release up to 24 h weight of the nugget also played a crucial role in loading as well as the release of the drug. the swelling degree of soya nuggets can be taken into an advantage, by loading high amount of drug inside. the worldwide acceptability of soya further strengthens its chances to be a potential carrier. the experimental data helped us in predicting the swelling, diffusion and drug release kinetics. swelling kinetics: the swelling kinetics of soya nuggets followed the second-order kinetics. with the equation for second order kinetics (details in the attached manuscript), the initial rate of swelling and the water content inside the nuggets at equilibrium was calculated. sodium alginate coating and cacl2 cross-linking led to a reduction in the initial swelling rate. diffusion kinetics: the swelling of soya nuggets results from the diffusion of water molecules into the nuggets. the inflow of water firstly creates open spaces i.e. swelling and then the water molecules starts to diffuse into the pores of soya nuggets. depending on the relative rates of diffusion and polymer relaxation, three classes of diffusion mechanisms are identified, assuming soya nuggets to be spherical in shape. fickian diffusion in which the rate of diffusion is much less than that of relaxation (n = 0.43); zero order, in which diffusion is very rapid compared with the relaxation processes (n = 1) and non-fickian or anomalous diffusion, which occurs when the diffusion and relaxation rates are comparable (0.43 < n < 1).when the water penetration rate is much below the polymer chain relaxation rate, it is possible to record the n values below 0.43. this situation can be referred to as less fickian behavior. in the case of soya nuggets, less fickian case was encountered for all the cases studied. n values ranged from 0.17- 0.326. drug release kinetics: since the soya nuggets have a matrix kind of structure (polymer mesh), and were also coated with sa, the release of drugs was expected to follow higuchi kinetics (drug release as a function of t1/2). the kinetic rate constant kh was obtained for each case and the results were compared. the results follow the higuchi kinetics till 480 m.