Shelf life and sensory evaluation of orange juice

food and bioproducts processing 8 7 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 102–107

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Food and Bioproducts Processing
journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/fbp

Shelf life and sensory evaluation of orange juice after exposure to thermosonication and pulsed electric fields
M. Walkling-Ribeiro, F. Noci, D.A. Cronin, J.G. Lyng, D.J.Morgan ∗
School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine, College of Life Sciences, UCD Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

a b s t r a c t
Thermosonication (TS) andpulsed electric fields (PEF) represent emerging technologies for liquid food preservation. In the present study shelf life and sensory attributes of orange juice were evaluatedfollowing treatment with a combination of these technologies (TS/PEF). The juice was exposed to batch TS at 55 ◦ C for 10 min followed by continuous PEF at a field strength of 40 kV/cmfor 150 s. High-temperature short-time (HTST) pasteurisation (94 ◦ C for 26 s) was used as a control. Sensory attributes (i.e. colour, odour, sweetness, acidity, flavour and overallacceptability) of different orange juices processed with TS/PEF or exposed to HTST pasteurisation were evaluated by 37 panellists using a hedonic scale (1–9 points). All sensoryattributes were rated equivalent for TS/PEF- and HTST-treated juice (P ≥ 0.05). During the shelf life study the effect of TS/PEF on selected physical properties (pH, ◦ Brix andconductivity), microbiological activity and colour stability was monitored directly after processing and following 25 ◦ C storage up to 168 days. No significant change in the physicalproperties was detected after TS/PEF or HTST treatment during 168 days of shelf life (P ≥ 0.05). Although the counts for both treatments were consistently within safe levels (