[6-1130-P] Postharvest/Food Technology and Process Engineering (6th)

[6-1130-P-29] Combined Effect of Pre-treatment and Vacuum Packaging for Maintaining the Quality of Peeled Shallot (Allium ascalonicum L.)

*Phanida Renumarn¹, Kranert Kilian Joachim ⁴, Natthaya Choosuk¹, Chanthima Phungamngoen², Kasama Chareekhot³ (1. Department of Innovation and Product Development Technology, Faculty of Agro-Industry, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok(Thailand), 2. Department of Agro-Industry Technology and Management, Faculty of Agro-Industry, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok(Thailand), 3. Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Technology, Udon Thani Rajabhat University(Thailand), 4. Food Science -Technology and Economics, University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven(Germany))

Keywords:Pre-treatment, Microbial Quality, Ready to Use, Fresh-cut , Shallot

The effect of combined pre-treatment by heat treatment by hot water (HW) and acidified sodium chlorite (ASC) solution and vacuum packaging for maintaining the quality of minimally processed shallot (Allium ascalonicum L.) were evaluated during stored at 5±2 °C. The shallot were blanching in boiled water and cooled down immediately below 20±2 °C by using tap water. After that, the shallot were then peeled with a sharp stainless steel knife and dipped in citric acid pH 4 with 100 ppm of sodium chlorite as acidified sodium chlorite (ASC) solution for 10 min. The samples were place into the polyethylene bags as packaging materials, stored at 5±2ºC for 9 days. The samples were dipped in tap water as the control. The microbial population (total bacteria and yeast and mold counts) and antioxidant qualities of minimally processed shallot were investigated and compared with the control. The results of the study revealed that dipping the peeled shallot with either HW combined ASC solution or pre-treatment with tap water could be reduce the microbial loads. The combined treatments had a powerful effect by decreasing the total bacteria and yeasts and molds during storage with the ranges of 0.30-0.71 and 0.38-0.54 log CFU.g^-1, respectively, which are lower than in the control samples. In addition, the combined treatments did not effect on weight loss and total phenolic content as compared to the control throughout the storage period. This results of this study suggest that HW combined ASC treatment has the potential to reduce microbial contamination and maintain the antioxidant capacity of peeled shallot.