Effect of different plasma processing on chemical profiling of camu-camu Juice

What is it about?

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a powerful technique to characterization of taste profile based on organic compounds from foods. Likely, gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) enables the detection of aroma profile of foodstuff. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the influence of two different cold plasma processes (dielectric barrier discharge atmospheric plasma (ACP) and glow discharge plasma (GP)), as well as the effect of different processing conditions on taste and aroma profiles from camu-camu juice. Both ACP and GP processing resulted in modifications on taste and aroma, which were strongly dependent of the frequency of plasma generation, flow rate, and treatment duration. The GP processing resulted in higher influence on camu-camu composition than ACP, which decreased the contents of important flavor compounds while increasing vitamin C and ethanol contents. Moreover, GP during 10 min at 10 mL/min and 20 min at 20 mL/min of plasma flow rate did not present significant effect on the juices composition as a whole (taste and aroma related compounds). The ACP processing presented significant influence on the juices composition at 420 and 530 Hz, while 200 and 960 Hz maintained the overall organic composition. Therefore, the use of NMR and GC-MS coupled to advanced chemometric analysis (data fusion) allowed a deep understand the camu-camu chemical variability submitted to plasma technologies based on taste and aroma compounds. This information indicates that appropriate treatment conditions are important for decontamination while preserving and improving the food characteristics in order to match the consumer demands.

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