High-pressure homogenization as compared to pasteurization as a sustainable approach to obtain mandarin juices with improved bioaccessibility of carotenoids and flavonoids

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Highlights

  • Bioaccessibility of carotenoids and phenolics from mandarin juices was studied.

  • Pasteurization and energy-saving high-pressure homogenization (HPH) were compared.

  • Five-fold increases in total carotenoids bioaccessibility by HPH processing observed.

  • Overall, bioaccessibility of flavonoids remained unchanged by both treatments.

  • HPH is a sustainable option to obtain juices with improved nutritional properties.

Abstract

High-pressure technologies are among those with increased interest in the sustainable production of quality-enhanced food products. In this work, Ortanique mandarin juices have been submitted to traditional pasteurization conditions (time/temperature of 65 °C/15 s, 85 °C/15 s and 92 °C/30 s) and energy-saving high-pressure homogenization (HPH, 150 MPa) treatments to compare the effects on the physicochemical composition and in vitro bioaccessibility of carotenoids and flavonoids. In general, physicochemical attributes of the homogenized sample were similar to those found in fresh juice, with similar ascorbic acid content and cloudiness but with significant colour differences in all cases. The bioaccessibility of total carotenoids was similar in fresh and pasteurized juices in contrast to the HPH sample that exhibited a five-fold increase, which suggests a positive effect of particle size reduction to favour the action of digestive enzymes. A clear increase in the levels of epoxycarotenoids was detected in the micellar fractions of digested HPH juices, although such carotenoids are not detected in human fluids or tissues. Regarding the bioaccessibility of flavonoids, no significant differences were found in the samples studied. Results obtained can help the implementation of HPH processing to obtain natural beverages with enhanced nutritional properties.

Introduction

Colour is an attribute of food quality with especial relevance in citrus juices It is mainly imparted by carotenoids, precursors of vitamin A and health-promoting compounds (Meléndez-Martínez, 2019; Stinco et al., 2012). Citrus products are also good sources of flavonoids (Tripoli et al., 2007). The biological actions of health-promoting compounds are mostly due to the bioavailable fractions. Bioaccessibility, the amount of compound released from the matrix as a result of digestion and available for absorption is one of the main factors governing bioavailability. This parameter can be obtained using in vitro simulated digestions. These are simple, inexpensive and reproducible (Fernández-García et al., 2009, Rodríguez-Concepción et al., 2018). The simplicity and high-throughput of these methods are useful to accelerate the optimization of processing techniques aimed at developing products with enhanced bioavailability of their functional components. Stinco et al. (2012) demonstrated how carotenoids from industrially processed orange juices showed an enhanced bioaccessibility compared to their hand-squeezed counterparts as a consequence of the particle-size reduction induced by processing. Positive effects of other industrial practices (i. e. pasteurization, ultra-freezing) on bioaccessibility of carotenoids from orange juice with changes in the microstructure and size of suspended particles was also demonstrated using simulated in vitro digestions (Mapelli-Brahm et al., 2018a). These findings were similar to previous results reported in diverse carotenoid-containing matrices. As another example, positive effects of industrially scalable disruptive techniques on carotenoids extractability were evidenced by Xie et al. (2016) studying microalgal cell cultivars treated by high-pressure homogenization (HPH). Such treatment was proposed as a plausible alternative to conventional thermal stabilization for the citrus industry to produce minimally processed juices with extended shelf-life (Carbonell et al., 2013).

HPH processing can be considered a promising option for the commercialization of healthy, safe and attractive high-quality citrus juices. These, continue to be increasingly demanded by the consumers and sought by the agro-food industry. In HPH, a pressurized fluid is forced to flow through a minute gap, resulting in both homogenization and fluid heating effects. Among the advantages of this methodology are that the temperature and pressure can be optimized to achieve pasteurization or sterilization effects and that both homogenization and preservation can take place in the same unit operation (Martínez-Monteagudo et al., 2017).

There is a global demand for sustainable foodstuffs and eco-innovative stabilization, mostly non-thermal, technologies such as HPH and pulsed electric fields. These have been implemented at industrial plants (Pereira and Vicente, 2010). Compared to traditional thermal stabilization for the obtaining of bovine milk, the energy consumed by HPH processing has been shown to be significantly lower (about 15%) and environmental benefits increases up to 57–58% have been reported (Smetana et al., 2015). Reduction of the environmental burden achieved is mainly due to the combination of sterilization and homogenization treatments in a single step. Homogenization was proposed as an interesting alternative to valorize biomasses, for instance pistachio shell (Özbek et al., 2018).

Despite the beneficial effects and high acceptance of mandarin juice in key population segments such as children (Codoñer-Franch et al., 2010) the impact of HPH processing on the potential bioavailability of health-promoting carotenoids and flavonoids from this foodstuff remains unclear.

This research aims to assess the effects of HPH processing and traditional thermal treatments on the bioaccessibility of carotenoids and flavonoids from Ortanique mandarin juices. The effect of the treatments in other parameters (ascorbic acid, colour, particle size, cloudiness, pectin methylesterase activity) was also evaluated.

Section snippets

Chemicals

HPLC-grade solvents methanol (MeOH), methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and acetonitrile (ACN) were acquired from Merck (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany). The other extraction solvents were all of the analytical grades from Scharlab (Scharlab S.L., Barcelona, Spain). Water was purified by a NANOpure Dlamond™ system (Barnsted Inc., Dubuque, IO). Pepsin (porcine gastric mucosa), pancreatin (porcine pancreas), bile salt and other reagents used in the in vitro digestion procedures were acquired from

Physicochemical parameters

Table 1 summarizes the physicochemical properties of juices assayed. In general, the parameters considered were significantly affected by processing relative to the fresh juice (ºBrix to acid ratio of 10.80). The ascorbic acid levels were significantly different across samples. The treatment leading to lower and higher reductions were HPH and pasteurization at 92 °C, respectively. Residual PME activity achieved by the softest thermal and HPH treatments was around 40% that initially shown by FJ

Conclusions

High-pressure homogenization and pasteurization have different effects on physicochemical parameters, ascorbic acid content and the contents and in vitro bioaccessibility of carotenoids and flavonoids of Ortanique mandarins. While HPH treatments had a better effect on ascorbic acid retention, pasteurization showed a significantly higher positive effect on bioaccessibility of flavonoids. The most remarkable increase was observed in sample pasteurized at 65 °C (∼2-fold increase relative to the

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Enrique Sentandreu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Carla M. Stinco: Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Isabel M. Vicario: Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition. Paula Mapelli-Brahm: Formal analysis. José L. Navarro: Resources, Funding acquisition. Antonio J. Meléndez-Martínez: Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Project administration.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the Andalusian Council of Economy, Innovation, Science and Employment through the projects P11-AGR-7783 and CAROTINCO-P12-AGR-1287. The Spanish Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria (INIA project RTA2014-00034-C04) supported the contract of E. Sentandreu. Authors thank quality assistance from the technical staff of the Service of Biology (SGI, Universidad de Sevilla).

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