Residual Gas Volume Effect on Quality of Retort Pouch Wet‐pack Pears

Abstract

Wet pack pears in retort pouches were studied for six months. Four selected residual gas volumes [10, 15, 20 and 30 cubic centimeters (cc)] were used to determine the influence of residual gas volume on physicochemical and sensory attributes. Three storage temperatures (4.4, 26.7 and 37.8C) were used to carry out an accelerated shelf‐life study. Residual gas of 30 cc promoted faster darkening and higher ascorbic acid degradation than the rest of the volumes studied (α≤ 0.01). No significant effect of residual gas volume was found on any other attribute analyzed. Temperature accelerated the consumption of remaining oxygen in the pouches, degradation of ascorbic acid, formation of 5‐hydroxymethyl‐2‐furaldehyde (HMF) and 2‐furaldehyde, and softening of pears. Calculated activation energies (Ea) for HMF and 2‐furaldehyde formation, ascorbic acid, and color degradation were 35, 31.1, 29.8, and 10.4 kcal/mol, respectively. Residual gas volume of 20 cc was the maximum volume studied that accomplished the desired shelf‐life for this product.

Improving color preservation of diced peaches in flexible retortable pouches

“…Some reports have shown that pH may decrease during nonenzymatic browning due to the appearance of carbonyl compounds (Roig et al, 1999). However, it has also been reported that pH increases during the storage of retort pouch wetpack pears (Olivas et al, 2002). No changes in °Brix were observed in cashew apple (pH 4.4) during storage; the constant concentration of soluble solids, reducing and total sugars suggested that there was no participation of sugars in the nonenzymatic browning reactions (Damasceno et al, 2008).…”

Packaging of retort-processed seafood, meat and poultry

“…Its presence has been shown to affect physico-chemical, sensory properties and product shelf life (Olives, 2002). The residual air in the pack should be less than 2% of the volume of the pouch contents (Venugopal, 2006) and higher levels of air in the pouch may result in deflating of the pouches during thermal processing.…”

The Effects of Residual Air and Viscosity on the Rate of Heat Penetration of Retort Food Simulant in Pouch When Using Static and Oscillating Motions

“…Residual air has been studied as a critical factor in relation to product quality and shelf life after processing (Olivas and others ; Rodríguez and others ; Sepülveda and others ). It has been established that when there are large levels of residual air relative to the total pouch volume, the gas acts as an insulator increasing process times and decreasing the average heating slope (Rodríguez and others ; Campbell and Ramaswamy ).…”