Studies On The Quality And Enzymatic Browning Mechanism Of Freshcut Artemisia Selengensis

Owing to the freshness, convenience and cleanness, freshcut fruit and vegetables have been developed very fast in industrial countries, and many horticulturists, food scientists and engineers, business man, investors, consumers and as well as governors have been drawn much attention into it. Freshcut has now become a new postharvest area of horticultural crops. Due to cutting and cleaning processes, freshcut fruit and vegetables lose their quality quickly, companied with rapid biological reactions, are easy to be contaminated by microbes, and therefore have only about 1 week shelf life. Worldwide researches recently worked on freshcut fruit and vegetables mainly include following aspects: raw materials requirements (species and cultivars of fruit and vegetable, minimal quality requirements and so on), biology (respiration, ethylence, secondary metabolism, enzyme activity and change, water loss, and control; mechanism of damage response, ect.), microbiology (sources of contamination, species and their quantity, prediction model, ect.), product quality and evaluation (quality indices, methods of, and son on), processing techniques (cleaning, cutting, packaging, ect.), food safety and quality control (HACCP certification). Browning mechanism and its control especially get people's attention.As a healthy, natural and green wild vegetable, Artemisia selengensis with the characteristics of green color, crisp texture, attractive aroma, delicious flavor, and rich in nutrients has already become a representative vegetable in Nanjing and even in Jiangsu province. Although Artemisia selengensis is suitable to be processed into freshcut product, browning is such a severe problem that results in quality loss dramatically during processing. This thesis touched the quality change and browning property of Artemisia selengensis after cutting and during storage in order to obtain that how the quality of freshcut Artemisia selengensis is changed, what browning especially enzymatic browning mechanism is and how we could control it. The main research results are as following:The edible stems of Artemisia selengensis after removed leaves, sprout and fiberizated parts, cleaned in ice water were cut into the length of 2.5-3.0 cm. The contents of water, protein, fat, soluble solids (S.S.), ash, Vc, edible fiber and Se were determined. The results showed that the edible stems of Artemisia selengensis were rich in protein, ash and edible...