Carbon Monoxide Fumigation Improved the Quality, Nutrients, and Antioxidant Activities of Postharvest Peach

Advances in gas fumigation technologies for postharvest fruit preservation

This work summarizes the application of gas fumigation technology in postharvest fruit quality management and related biochemical mechanisms in recent years. Gas fumigants mainly include SO2, ClO2, ozone, NO, CO, 1-MCP, essential oils, H2S and ethanol. This work indicated that gas fumigation preservatives can effectively improve postharvest fruit quality, which is mainly manifested in delaying senescence, inhibiting browning, controlling disease and alleviating chilling injury. Gas preservatives are mainly involved in postharvest fruit quality control in the roles of antifungal agent, anti-browning agent, redox agent, ethylene inhibitors, elicitor and pesticide remover. Different gas preservatives have different roles, but most of them have multiple roles at the same time in postharvest fruit quality management. In addition, the role of some gas preservatives with direct antifungal activity in the control of postharvest fruit diseases can also activate defense systems to improve fruit resistance. It should be noted that some gas fumigation treatments with slow-release effects have been developed recently, which may allow gas fumigation gases to perform better. Moreover, some gas fumigants can cause irrational side effects on the fruit and some combined treatments need to be found to counteract such side effects.

Comparison of the effects of dynamic high-pressure microfluidization and conventional homogenization on the quality of peach juice

BACKGROUND

Dynamic high-pressure microfluidization (DHPM) is an emerging and promising technique for continuous production of fluid foods. This study aimed to investigate the influence of DHPM and conventional homogenization (CH) on the quality of peach juice. Processing was performed by passing peach juice through CH at 20 MPa and DHPM at 20-160 MPa for one or three passes. The effect of DHPM pressure and passing number were also assessed.

RESULTS

The results indicate that DHPM could maintain the antioxidant activity of peach juice much better than CH processing. Total phenolic compounds were decreased by 11.7% and 7.9%-15.8% through CH and DHPM processing in different conditions. Moreover, particle size, non-enzymatic browning index and turbidity decreased significantly under DHPM and CH processing, and decreased more and more with the increasing of DHPM pressure and treatment times. However, vitamin C content and zeta-potential did not reveal remarkable variation before and after these two types of processing.

CONCLUSION

Taken together, DHPM is able to maintain the quality and stability of peach juice, which can be a reliable technological alternative to CH to produce fresh-like peach juices. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.