Texture And Color Changes Of Fresh-cut Carrot After High Pressure Processing

Consumers are demanding high quality and convenient products with natural flavor and texture, and greatly appreciate the fresh appearance of minimally processed food because of busy lifestyles, increasing purchasing power and increasingly health-conscious. Fresh-cut carrot slices are one of the most widely used products in prepared salads, and require strict treatment conditions to protect quality. It is a considerable challenge to keep fresh-cut looking and tasting like raw carrot during a relatively long self-life. Without damaging the sensory of products, high pressure processing (HPP)has an potential to use in fresh-cut processing.The effects of HPP on changes of texture and color of fresh-cut carrot slices were investigated during storage at temperature of4℃. Carrots were treated in a pressure range from0.1MPa to600MPa at20℃for0,2,5,10and20min.The specific results are as follows:1, HPP could damage texture of fresh-cut carrots, and even in a pulse it still turned up. Texture losses could be more than30%, and texture after HPP could not meet consumers’ demand during storage.2, All pretreatments used in this study can reserve the texture well and the best one was mild heat treatment combined with soaking in chloride concentration (1.0%)3, Residual pectinmethylesterase (PME) activity, microstructure and damage to cell members in fresh-cut carrot slices (relative electrolyte leakage) were investigated. Analysis of microscopy images and relative electrolyte leakage provided the high correlations with tissue hardness. Cell damage after HPP may play a very important role in hardness losses.4, There was no significant difference observed in color compared samples after HPP to raw, which happened even during storage time."White blush" was not observed in samples after HPP.The texture and color of samples were maintained well after treatment combined HPP and other handling methods. The result is useful for the application of HPP on fresh-cut products and the exploration in mechanism in this research is meaningful for the research in future.