Studies On Quality Assessment Methods And Processing Parameters Optimization For Sea Cucumber

As a traditional precious sea food, sea cucumber has high nutritional value and health carefunction. Recently, sea cucumber aquaculture has increased year by year, the enlarging ofproduction is also remarkable. It indicates an optimistic future of the sea cucumber market. Withthe improvement of people’s living standard, demand for the quality of sea cucumber is alsoincreasing. Based on the need of sea cucumber industry development, the thesis aimed tooptimize the determination methods of several critical indexes in quality evaluation of seacucumber. The effects of key processing technologies on sea cucumber were also studied. Themain contents and results are as the following:1)TA-XTplus texture analyzer was used to compare the application effect of TPA projectand Puncture project. The stability and accuracy of measure data are studied. According to thehardness of different parts and different test sites of sea cucumber, the parameters are as follows:P/2N probe, pre-test speed1mm/s, test speed5mm/s, post-test speed5mm/s, distance10mm,trigger force5.0g. The center position in backside of middle section was suggested as the testsite. Relationship between the texture analysis result and sensory evaluation was simulated, andgained a good relativity. According to the established method, the hardness of different productscould be reflected significantly. This method could provide technological means in qualityassessment of sea cucumber.2)Aiming at the adulteration phenomena, the paper studied the technological parameters ofillegally added exogenous sugar dissolution in dry sea cucumber, the measurement conditions forthe crucial index in quality evaluation of sea cucumber, rates of dry weight after rehydration(RDR) was also optimized. The optimum condition for RDR determination is changing waterone time during24h presoak, clearing and wiping off the calcareous part around the mouth,cutting into sections about5mm and boiling for20min, then rehydrating for24h. Under thecondition, salinity dissolving rate in sugar added to dried sea cucumber could exceed99.90%.Residual rate of exogenous sugar was2.15%, and the proportion of residual content ofexogenous sugar in total mass of sea cucumber was only0.77%and protein loss was relativelylow. The optimized measurement conditions can improve the accuracy of RDR measurement ofdried sea cucumber.3)Effect of boiling, drying and curing on dried sea cucumber quality were studied in thepaper. Results showed that loss of protein and mucopolysaccharide increased significantly withthe prolongation of heating time. It is suggested to shorten the boiling time of fresh sea cucumberin processing. Compared with continuous drying, intermittent drying had the advantage of lessmass loss, and showed a better rehydration capacity and appearance. The nutrients of sea cucumber with salting and sugaring were severely lost, the nutrients loss of sugaring weregreater than that of salting.4)The edible sea cucumber was produced with high pressure, ordinary pressure and lowpressure. The influences of different cooking conditions on the quality of products were analyzedby comparing the mass loss, volume shrinkage, nutrients loss and physical propertiescharacteristics. Results indicated that the rate of mass loss and volume shrinkage were increasedwith increasing heating pressure. High pressure made the indicate sea cucumber gentle and soft,and low pressure powerful and structured. The higher the cooking pressure, the faster therehydration rate, the higher the rehydration capacity. Time needed for producing edible seacucumber at high, ordinary and low pressure is obviously different from each other. Time underhigh pressure is short, only10minutes, cooking under ordinary pressure needs1hour, however,more than2hours are needed for sea cucumber cooking under low pressure. When edible, nosignificant difference in nutrients loss was founded among different cooking pressure.