Abstract: Cinnamon-litsea cubeba complex essential oil (CLCEO) shows a good antifungal effect on harmful molds such as Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger, which is expected to be used as a mildew inhibitor in grain and cereal storage process. However, the strong volatility of CLCEO diminished its antifungal efficacy, restricting its application in grain storage. In order to prolong the antifungal time, β-cyclodextrin was selected as the wall material and CLCEO was used as the core material to prepare cinnamoma-litsea cubeba complex essential oil microcapsules (CLCEOMs) by molecular embedding method in this study. At first, single factor experiment was designed to investigate the effect of wall material content, wall-core ratio, embedding temperature and embedding time on the embedding rate. Then, the preparation process of CLCEOM was optimized by the response surface experiment. In addition, the microstructure of CLCEOM was observed under scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that the regression model was extremely significant (P< 0.01) and the regression equation had a good fitting degree (R²=0.992 6, R_Adj²=0.979 4); the factors affecting the embedding rate in descending order were:wall-core ratio > embedding temperature > wall material content > embedding time; compared with the former three factors, embedding time showed less influence on embedding rate, therefore, the former three factors were selected for further experiment; the interaction between wall-core ratio and embedding temperature, embedding temperature and wall material content, wall-core ratio and wall material content was significant (P< 0.05); from the photos of SEM, β-cyclodextrin was a crystal particle with irregular shape and size, and the particle was randomly distributed; compared with β-cyclodextrin, CLCEOM had a smaller, more regular form and belonged to a cubic crystal structure. In this research, the optimal conditions for preparing CLCEOM were adding 9.70% wall material with the wall-core ratio of 9.99:1 at the embedding temperature of 32.4℃ and the embedding time was 120 min, and at that time, the embedding rate of CLCEOM was 66.87%. In order to operate easily, the optimal conditions were finally determined as follows:the wall material was 9.70%, the wall-core ratio was 10:1, the embedding temperature was 32.4℃ and the embedding time was 120 min, while the embedding rate of CLCEOM was 67.12% under this condition. Further research should be conducted to explore the effect of CLCEOM on the microflora and the quality of grain and cereal during storage process to test the possibility of CLCEOMs as mildew inhibitors. This paper provides scientific data for the development of a new, safe and green preservative for grain storage industry.