Orange contains abundant vitamin C and phenolic compounds is long being considered as one of the fruit that has high nutritional value. However, the nutrients usually decrease considerably during traditional heat processing. To reduce the quality loss, non-thermal technologies arise as better alternative to process products with heat sensitive components. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) that generated large amount of ionized gas species is developed recently as novel non-thermal method to rapidly inactivate microbes and, at the same time, retains the heat-sensitive nutrients and sensory properties. In this study, the effect of CAP on the qualities of orange juice were investigated. Different types of orange juice (fresh with flesh, fresh without flesh, commercial juice) are treated by CAP and their resulting contents of vitamin C and phenolic compounds were compared to the untreated samples. Orange juice samples were obtained by cold press juicer with or without further filtration. All juice samples were immediately treated with CAP and analyzed. The content of vitamin C, total phenolics and antioxidant capacity were quantified by redox titration, Folin-Ciocalteu reagent, and DPPH colorimetric essay, respectively. The concentration of bioactive orange phenolics were individually quantified by HPLC. In comparison to the untreated juice samples, higher amount of vitamin C and phenolics were found in CAP treated juices with the “fresh with flesh” juices being the highest. The increases in these nutrients after CAP treatment were attributed to the disruption of the orange flesh structure and was confirmed by microscopic observation. Moreover, the antioxidant activity was significantly better than the control group as well as the color retention. In conclusion, CAP treatment could benefit the nutrient and sensory quality of juice products and, thus, could be a good non-thermal alternative to traditional heat pasteurization. The result from this work would be good reference for future optimizing of such process development in food applications.

Effects of cold atmospheric plasma processing on vitamin C and phenolic content of orange juice

256th National Meeting (2018)

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