Application of pulsed electric fields to tomato fruit for enhancing the bioaccessibility of carotenoids in derived products

Abstract

The application of pulsed electric fields (PEFs) to whole tomatoes is proposed as a pre-processing treatment to obtain purees with high health-related properties. Tomato fruit was subjected to different electric field strengths (0.4, 1.2 and 2 kV cm-1) and number of pulses (5, 18 and 30 pulses). Tomatoes were stored at 4 °C for 24 h after PEF processing and then ground and mixed with 5% olive oil. The resulting tomato-based product was subjected to in vitro gastrointestinal digestion. PEF treatments significantly increased the amount and bioaccessible fraction of carotenoids in the derived product. Treatments conducted at 2 kV cm-1 and 30 pulses led to the greatest increase in the concentration of any of the carotenoids studied in tomato-based products. The amount of carotenoids incorporated into the micellar phase was increased in the products obtained from PEF-treated tomatoes, especially after the application of 5 pulses at 2 kV cm-1. Under such treatment conditions, the bioaccessibility of lycopene, δ-carotene, β-carotene, γ-carotene and lutein was increased by 132%, 2%, 53%, 527% and 125%, respectively. Therefore, the application of PEFs as a pre-treatment could be considered as a promising technology to obtain tomato derivatives with high antioxidant potential.

Innovative Hurdle Technologies for the Preservation of Functional Fruit Juices

“…Moreover, the authors revealed that PEF treatment applied to tomato fruit increased the bioaccessibility of δ-carotene (2%), β-carotene (53%), lutein (125%), lycopene (137%), and γ-carotene (527%). These results strongly confirmed that PEF could lead to an easier release of carotenoids from the tomato matrix [ 49 ]. On the other hand, PEF had a negative effect on the cellular membranes of tomatoes that led to softening of the vegetable [ 50 ].…”

“…Recent experiments showed that PEF preprocessing applied to whole raw tomatoes ( Lycopersicum esculentum cv. Raf) increased concentrations of individual carotenoids (phytofluene, phytoene, lycopene, δ-carotene, lutein, γ-carotene, β-carotene) [ 49 ]. In particular, the concentrations of phytoene and phytofluene were increased by 178% and 131%, respectively, in tomato products treated with PEF and compared to untreated fruit.…”

Enhancing phenolic content in carrots by pulsed electric fields during post-treatment time: Effects on cell viability and quality attributes

“…There are also studies in other whole products: potato (Galindo et al, 2009), apple (Soliva-Fortuny, Vendrell-Pacheco, Martín-Belloso, & Elez-Martínez, 2017), and tomato (Vallverdú-Queralt et al, 2013). However, the effect of PEF on both bioactive content and quality attributes were only studied in blueberry (Jin, Yu, & Gurtler, 2017) and tomato (González-Casado, Martín-Belloso, Elez-Martínez, & Soliva-Fortuny, 2018). As far as we know, there is no available information about the effect of PEF and post-treatment time on the phenolic content and on the quality attributes of whole carrots.…”

Effects of pulsed electric fields pretreatment on the quality of jujube wine

“…Pulsed electric fields (PEF), regarded as an emerging non-thermal treatment technology, has been used in inactivation of pathogenic microorganisms in food processing, which can also improve the colour, texture and flavour (Lee et al, 2017;Fauster et al, 2018;Tian et al, 2018) of food compared with other thermal processing approaches (Gonzalez-Casado et al, 2018). Besides, PEF techniques have been employed to modify the structures of the polymer compounds such as starch (Hong et al, 2016a(Hong et al, , 2016b and ovalbumin nanotube .…”